Makers of Ireland
The people still making things by hand, and how to visit them properly.
Ireland sells a great deal of craft. Very little of it is still made the way the label implies. This series is about the exceptions: the workshops where the loom, the wheel or the bench is not a demonstration piece but the means of production, and where the person across the counter can tell you which hillside the colour came from.
Each profile is written the same way. Who is actually doing the work, what to ask for when you walk in, what a fair price looks like, and how to fold the visit into a wider trip without turning it into an errand. Nothing here is a souvenir stop. These are working trades, and the purchases you make in them are the ones you will still own in twenty years.
We begin in south west Donegal, where hand-weaving nearly disappeared and a handful of families decided it would not.
Published
- The hand-weavers of Ardara and Kilcar
Donegal tweed is not a souvenir category. In Ardara and Kilcar it is still a working trade, and the looms you can stand beside are the ones the cloth on the rail came off that morning.
Read the profile - The potters of West Cork
West Cork's potters work within sight of the sea that colours their glazes. The studios are small, the order books are long, and the mugs you bring home will outlast most of your kitchen.
Read the profile - The knitters of Inis Meáin
The Aran sweater was working clothing long before it was a souvenir. On Inis Meáin, the middle island, one company has spent fifty years proving that the real thing can also be the finest thing.
Read the profile - Kilkenny: clay, glass and silver
Kilkenny became Ireland's craft county by design, not accident. Fifty years on, the workshops that made its reputation are still working, and you can stand at the bench in all three.
Read the profile - The mill at Avoca
The whitewashed mill on the banks of the Avoca has been weaving since 1723, which makes it the oldest working woollen mill in Ireland. The throws on the beds of half the hotels we recommend began here.
Read the profile - The crystal cutters of Waterford
Waterford's name travels the world on the bottom of a glass, but the cutting still happens here, by hand, by people who served an eight year apprenticeship to learn it.
Read the profile
Profiles are published as they are reported, not on a schedule. Each one is verified against the maker's own words before it appears here.