Archive News
Crafty types put sparkle into design showcase
Date Published: 17-Jan-2013
There’s something about Lynsey de Burca’s jewellery that makes you want to pick it up and touch it. The Kinvara native, who now lives in Moycullen, works with sterling silver gemstones, as well as locally-sourced stones and driftwood to create elegant accessories that are simply beautiful.
A graduate of the National College of Arts and Design who has diploma in gemmology from NUIG, Lynsey grew up by the seashore and takes her inspiration from fishing paraphernalia including ropes, lobster pots and nets as well as seaweed.
More recently she has branched into creating wire drawings with the material she has left over from soldering jewellery. These drawings range from teapots and jackets to simple human figures and prices start at €30 while it’s €40 upwards for the jewellery.
Lynsey is one of a group of six Galway craftworkers who are being supported by Galway County and City Enterprise Board as they travel to Dublin this weekend to take part in Showcase, the Expo fair at the RDS. Showcase, now in its 37th year, is run by the Crafts Council of Ireland and gives over 350 craftworkers a chance to present their work to national and international buyers, explains Lynsey, adding that the Galway group will be joining such highly regarded craftspeople as jeweller Alan Ardiff and potter Nicholas Mosse.
“The idea is to show off Galway craft so we can get it into retailers in Ireland and export it to Europe and especially the States. Taking part will give us exposure, because this is a huge platform.”
While other individuals from Galway are also taking part, this six have the extra bonus of being supported by the Enterprise Board, both financially and with training on how to market their work at Showcase.
The crafts from the six are hugely varied and include a range of postcards, calendars, t-shirts, mugs and cotton bags, with quirky designs from city company Olyart. Its designs are created using modern computer technology and are geared at both the tourist market and special events.
What’s unusual about Olyart is that the images – many of them depicting Ireland – are created by two Polish women who have made Galway their home. Alex Kieldanowicz is an architect by training while Joanna is a teacher, editor and librarian. They set up Olyart about a year ago and it’s going in the right direction, they say.
“It’s starting to be that people are coming to us rather than us going to them. Also it’s provoked an interest in our broader design work.”
They started off with postcards and cards, which depict quirky Irish scenes – rain and wind feature a lot! – and then moved on to events such as birthdays and hen parties.
“We try to show Ireland as we see it, as foreigners,” they explain. Their designs are available in shops in Galway City and Spiddal as well as at as in the Cliff of Moher Visitor Centre and Croagh Patrick. They have received a special Showcase boost as their 2012 calendar was selected by the event’s judging panel to be exhibited in the main area of the RDS.
Fergal Costello’s business, TouchWood was born from his years as a champion Irish dancer, who has toured the world with shows including Lord of the Dance.
He started his crafts career as a furniture designer, studying first in the GMIT college in Lettfrack and later continuing in England. Over the years he had won many medals for his fancy footwork and those inspired his idea for display plaques for medals.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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