Come along between 2 & 4 and meet Helen Maguire from the Secret Garden. In the Secret Garden you will find all sorts of natural wonders and delights to soothe the mind, lift the heart and inspire the soul. 3 Dimensional flower cards, flower pendants,enchanted forests, and a fairy or two!

The Secret Garden will open it’s gates on Saturday,13th March, in the Leitrim Design House with a special 3 Dimensional Mother’s Day Greeting card Collection. 

Eunan Sweeney, a native of Ballinamore County Leitrim is a self taught photographer who has been involved in photography for over 25 years. Well known for his Landscape Photography Eunan also works as a commercial photographer covering events and also undertaking portrait and commission work. His landscape portfolio is constantly expanding and includes a variety of work collected while travelling abroad and throughout Ireland. Many of his well known landscape photographs have been taken in the North West Region where the unspoilt countryside offers endless photographic opportunities.

Eunan’s photography has been published and collected worldwide and his website is regularly updated with new work. His photographs canbe purchased framed or unframed and are available in a range of sizes. Eunan develops, prints and frames all his images from his studio in County Leitrim ensuring full control over the quality of his finished photographs. Eunan joins us on the 28th of November along with Wendy Knight from Wendy Louise Designs. Wendy, a milliner will bring a collection of hats for you to try on. Eunan will record the fun!

Meet the Maker is a weekly craft event supporting local artists and craftworkers hosted by the Leitrim Design House inviting you to meet with individual artists, designers and craftspeople to view and talk about their work.For enquiries please phone the Leitrim Design House at 071 9650550 or email info@leitrimdesignhouse.ie.

Eunan and Wendy can be contacted directly through their websites.

www.eunansweeneyphotography.com

www.wendylouisedesigns.ie

Leitrim Design House launches collection of prints and watercolours of scenes from the North West.

On Sat 21 Nov the Leitrim Design House at the Dock will be launching a range of prints taken from the extensive collection of pen & ink drawings by local artist Sandra Vernon. Well known over the years for her portrayal of the buildings and streetscapes of the area, Sandra has taken the title of her collection, An Artists Eye from the pages of drawings she has been doing for the Leitrim Guardian over the years. This year she has used the medium of watercolour with her drawings and pleased with the reaction to them, decided to combine the paintings with a series of limited edition prints for this collection. The images mainly concentrate on Leitrim, but include some of Roscommon and Sligo as well. There will be approx 25 different scenes to start with, but with such an extensive collection to choose from it would be impossible to include everything, so if its not there please do ask; either the staff at the Design House or the artist herself. The prints will be mounted and in clear envelopes, but if one requires them in a frame that can be quickly organised. Sandra works mainly to commission, portraits, both human and animal as well as buildings and scenes. She will be available to meet you and discuss her work between 2 -4pm on Sat 21^st November in the Leitrim Design House at the Dock in Carrick on Shannon.

Meet the Maker is a weekly craft event supporting local artists and craftworkers hosted by the Leitrim Design House and they  invite you to meet with individual artists, designers and craftspeople to view and talk about their work.

For enquiries please phone the Design House at 071 9650550 or Sandra at 071 9625276, sandravernon@eircom.net

Soraya Ricalde, a Spanish Jewellery Designer living and working in North Leitrim is the winner of the Leitrim Enterprise Board Awards Winner 2009 “New to the Market”.

Soraya works with precious metal, silver and 9ct/18ct yellow and white gold, adding precious and semiprecious stones. She also works with new and different materials such as sea-shells, wood, fabrics, etc creating contemporary functional jewellery pieces and is always experimenting.

Soraya’s work is inspired by the simplicity and beauty of nature.The pieces she creates reflect the natural environment all around her. Soraya collects samples of organic shapes; sea-shells, seaweed, rocks, wood and many other natural formations from the landscape and uses these materials to inspire her designs. Growing up in the North of Spain by the sea, surrounded by lakes and mountains and now living in North Leitrim an area full of lakes and mountains influences and infuses all of Soraya’s work.

Niall Miller’s craft is rooted in the hedgerows of Ireland. A craft that takes nothing but inspiration from the landscape of Leitrim. A craft that brings the functional into the realms of art. Niall Miller will be showing some of his new products including a pair of gorse chairs in the finishing stages. He will demonstrate how to make rope from New Zealand Flax (Phormium)-a common garden plant. The flax rope will be used in the seat of the gorse chairs. He will also demonstrate how to make bindings from briars.

Maria Noonan Mc Dermott will be in residence at the Leitrim Design House on Saturday 10th October. Her work is highly original; her creative and imaginative pieces ensuring her a reputation for innovative artwork that is highly collectable and truly unique. Maria’s work is distinctly recognisable as she paints with knife confidently applying layer upon layer, the texture playing a key role in the overall structure of her pieces. Working from her studio in Kinlough, Co Leitrim, Maria says that sometimes she gets so lost in her painting that she becomes something of a hermit; so this is a great opportunity to meet the artist, see her at work and have a chat.

Maria has had a busy year so far; a solo exhibition in County Clare, a number of commission pieces and numerous group exhibitions.  She also has found time to set up a new art group called ‘The North West Artists Group,’and their first major exhibition is in Markree Castle, Collooney, Co. Sligo on Saturday 24th October. The group is a diverse blend of art and artists from Leitrim, Sligo, Mayo and Donegal.

Handbag and accessory company Hope & Benson have long been known for their retro style tweed, floral embellished handbags. Designed and produced by Manorhamilton based designer Angela Hope together with her business partner Daniela Benson, the collection is stocked by over 170 shops throughout Ireland, the UK, Europe, the US and Japan.

10th March 2008

Eileen Abbott - 2007 Art of Fashion

Introducing RED THREAD

I am looking forward to our RED THREAD event in Sligo in a couple of weeks. Its really exciting, our very own red carpet event! I am busy organizing the press release for same and about to put together a gown that I designed specially for the event using the RED THREAD theme. It’s tight going as all has to be complete by the weekend. The more pressure the more creativity flows!!! Bring it on….

Eileen Abbott
Couture Designer
Mohill, Co Leitrim

RED THREAD - Design & Applied Art is a new co-operative body established to promote the work and interests of a group of designers, artists and craftspeople who were brought together under the Leitrim Design House’s Art of Fashion and Business Development programmes. Here are some of the RED THREAD designers and makers at the launch of the Leitrim Design House - “Art of Fashion”

Left to right:
Michelle McCarroll, Eileen Abbott, Wendy Knight, Renate Regan and Aistrid Tomropp Hoffman

19th February 2008

Erika’s New Directions

A lot of last year was taken up with developing a new direction for some of my work; more conceptual, less functional, and on a larger scale than the jewellery I had been producing before. I completed a number of commissions during the year, one being the large silver bowl on a ‘wave’ stand that, to date, is the largest piece I’ve made, measuring about 8 inches across. I made quite a lot of spoons and ladles, many of which were commissioned as christening presents.

During the year 3 of us from Leitrim, Brigitta Varadi, Peter Fulop and myself, met President McAleese in Aras an Uachtarain. We were there as part of a group of designer/artists being acknowledged for their contribution to the arts of Ireland. This was not only an honour but a pleasure, and the gardens are gorgeous! The President made an excellent speech, entirely without notes, and seemed to know her subject very well.

In November I took part in SOFA (Sculptural Objects and Fine Art), an enormous annual exhibition held in Chicago, where the Crafts Council of Ireland had a stand showing the work of 17 makers from Ireland. The work from Ireland ranged from silver and ceramics to wood, glass and textiles, and was easily of a standard equal to any work on show in any of the other galleries taking part.

For this exhibition I had developed a collection of silver pieces inspired by my research into antique ladles and spoons. I found that many of the pieces I was looking at made no sense to me at all until I read their description, and I decided I wanted to make objects that held out the promise of having a function while not actually having any - being so ambiguous as to be entertaining and puzzling.

The collection has an element of playfulness while also having a simplicity of form and balance - the injection of humour seems to be the element that was I was missing in my work, and I’ve found it very stimulating, enjoying it more than anything I’ve done for many years. The show was very successful and I learnt a lot about working in a wider arena. Spending 5 days in Chicago was also fun!

This year I want to extend the collection into sculptural pieces not necessarily made in silver, as I feel the different metals will add a different dimension to the work, developing the ideas further and bringing it to a wider audience than that solely for collectors of silver. I made a piece for an exhibition (’Side by Side at the Hunt’), held in the Hunt Museum in Limerick, at the end of the year - a silver bowl about 8cm across. It was inspired by a porcelain tea bowl in their collection, with the 2 pieces being shown alongside each other. The images on the porcelain bowl of people talking in a garden surrounded by nature gave me the idea of making a piece that combined ancient and modern themes from life in Ireland, along with recognisable natural elements, like trees and animals.

Despite branching out into this new area, I continue to work to commission and make jewellery in my real life, - I’ve included a picture of a pair of earrings I made recently for a client. I want to try to maintain both strands of my work now I’ve discovered how enjoyable working on conceptual pieces can be.

Erika Marks

Jeweller

11th February 2008

No such thing as a quiet January ….

It always surprises me when people complain about January being quiet and boring after all of the excitement of Christmas. For me January whizzes by in the blink of an eye. As soon as the RDS Christmas Craft Fair is over in early December I am straight into making samples for the January trade shows. This year we tried Top Drawer in London, which was a week before Showcase in Dublin. That meant two sets of samples! Top Drawer was quiet but still worth doing, we picked up new accounts and received good orders from existing customers. The same could be said for Showcase. The economy here and in Europe and America definitely had an effect. But, overall we were happy with the level of orders. The only slight problem was that everyone wanted delivery by Easter, which, of course is hideously early this year.

Without a doubt the best part of Showcase was winning our 5th Index Award. We were listed as one of the Top 50 Products of the show for our new weekend bag and matching dog lead and collar (well, one has to travel in style!). It was a great endorsement of our work.
Whilst at the show we also received a rather exciting phone call. We had been accepted as one of the chosen design companies to sell in the exciting new shop at the London Fashion and Textile Museum in Bermondsey. This will be an amazing showcase for us and the PR alone should be great.

Perhaps the most exciting part of January was the surprise call from RTE’s Nationwide asking if they could film here! “Yes, no problem I said, when?” it turned out to be the day before I left for Showcase - argghhh! Never mind, it will excellent publicity when it is aired on February 13th.

So, sample making, filming and trade shows over it is down to serious production and no rest until Easter. January, quiet and boring? Not for me.

Angela Hope