Natasha’s career is showing real sparkle

Lifestyle –  Judy Murphy meets Galway jewellery designer Natasha Heaslip whose work has adorned both royalty and film stars

For a young person, meeting the right teacher at the right time can change their path in life. That was certainly the case for Galway jewellery designer Natasha Heaslip, whose award-winning work is currently sold in galleries and craft shops from Westport to Warsaw, including Selfridge’s in London and Dublin’s Design Yard.

In her 15-year career as a jewellery designer Natasha has been commissioned to make pieces for clients worldwide, with some of the wealthiest being members of the Kuwaiti Royal family, and the most high profile being a necklace and earring for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. She works in gold, silver and oxidised silver, using precious and semi-precious stones and her pieces, which include earrings, rings, bracelets and neckpieces, are beautiful.

But Natasha’s talent wasn’t always so apparent. As a teenager in Galway she was unhappy at school and wanted a fresh start. She opted to go to Sligo Grammar boarding school and today she says “it was the best thing for me”.

Natasha’s creative talent, which hadn’t been nurtured at her Galway school, was given free rein in Sligo and to this day she remembers her art teacher, Kate McDonagh, as someone who was enormously influential. Natasha’s mother, Michele, runs an interior design business so she was always surrounded by creativity and beautiful items, but until she went to Sligo, Natasha never realised she, too, was gifted in this area.

It took several more years before she realised where her real passion lay.

Between 1989 and 1992 Natasha studied Arts the then RTC in Galway and did a course in craft and design in Kilkenny with the Irish Crafts Council.

She then focused on sculpture, which had been her specialist subject in college. Here in Galway, she also worked part-time for Hartman Jewellers in Galway City’s William Street.

“I was in sales, but I realised when I was there I wanted to make jewellery,” she recalls. Coincidentally there was a six-month FÁS course in jewellery making in, of all places, Knock which she attended. The students worked mostly in silver, and it was brilliant training, she says, adding that there is nothing like it now.

“It was almost like I knew it already,” she says of the process.

 When Gary Hartman of Hartman Jewellers realised how committed she was, he did some research to find the best possible college from which Natasha could get formal jewellery-making qualifications.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.