I live not far from my shop, workshop and art gallery in Castle Street in Sligo, and I’m close to Streedagh Beach on the Wild Atlantic Way, which has been getting a lot of attention lately due to the filming of the TV show Normal People. Streedagh is simply beautiful and is my all-time favourite spot and go-to place for a walk at the weekend.
But I’m actually in Lissadell, and Lissadell House would be well-known to fans of W.B. Yeats. It’s been a treasure for me as I go down to the estate nearly every day and have a good long walk and enjoy the beautiful landscapes. The spring this year has been amazing.
I wouldn’t be a great academic in terms of the major Irish poets but Yeats loved the same landscapes that we all get to share now and there are just so many lines in his poetry that are visual. A couple do keep resonating with me. ‘A moon, worn as if it had been a shell/Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell – I mean, you can’t not think of jewellery when you hear that!
One of Yeats’ poems, ‘Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ is actually very relevant to Reflections, a collection that I’m doing at the minute. It’s a bespoke range of handcrafted pendants and earrings inspired by the shimmer of sunlight in rock pools and tidal eddies. In the middle of April we managed to launch Reflections online and the reaction to it has been incredible given that nobody has ever physically held or even touched this jewellery.
Normally I would try my ideas out locally, but we decided to go ahead online this time and people just seem to love the new collection already. We’ve sold all round the world – America, Germany, England, Canada – all over the place. So, through the Covid-19 crisis I’ve learned to treat the internet as a window to the world and to understand that my work is as global as it is local.