This is about marble and a success story, not about fish; but 40 or more years ago, when the squadrons of sea trout used to come up to the lake after the first floods of July, the Joyce's at Recess were well established as a general business with an interest in Connemara marble. This is not a substance you turn only into ashtrays or pretty bibelots, but is being recognised worldwide for tiles, slabs which can be turned into table-tops and anything that other marbles are used for. Robert Joyce, managing director, is the fourth member of the family to be involved. You could say that the Joyces have been involved for almost the whole of this century. His great grandfather first bought the quarry in 1948, according to an article in the lively magazine Galway Life. Robert, anyway, having worked abroad after taking a business degree in University College Galway, says that Connemara marble has been mined and exported from Ireland for hundreds if not thousands of years. One of the first records of it is a green, carved marble axehead which found its way to Suffolk in England 2,000 years ago. Robert and his father, chairman of the company, decided to expand overseas. Now they have markets in Italy, Britain and the US. The Italians are big in the marble industry and have told him that there is no marble in the world like it. It has unique qualities of colour and diversity which cannot be found in any other marble elsewhere.
The world is their marketplace now. A marble tabletop would be fine, and friends have some small ones mounted on attractive ironwork. But it is not just to be admired. There is Connemara marble in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, in the House of Commons in London, too. Last month the family will have been at Verona in Italy for an international show where they will have mounted a display along with designers from many parts of the world, buyers, builders and architects. You can't miss the Joyce establishment at Recess - for it practically is Recess. There is a bar, a general shop and a craft shop. Sean Lester, who lived nearby, was a frequent visitor in his day. Y