Emerging designers get new category at National Craft Awards

For the first time the National Craft Awards presented at the RDS yesterday were divided into separate categories of emerging and established makers.

The top two Awards of Excellence, worth €5,000 each, were won by Cork jeweller Paula O'Callaghan and Joe Hogan, a Connemara-based basket maker. Hogan's large basket "Ebb and Flow" was made with found pieces of pine from a lake in Co Mayo with soaked and steamed willows.

“I wanted it to be more about surface finish and not take attention away from the flow and the shape,” said Hogan, whose pioneering work has transformed the craft of traditional basket-making into more innovative and sculptural forms.

The winning salt and pepper shaker set by O’Callaghan was made from silver and 22ct gold plating, its shape drawn from industrial architecture.

O’Callaghan, who has a degree in French and archaeology from UCC, only recently came to jewellery making. She has just graduated from the jewellery and goldsmithing skills and design course in Kilkenny.

The intensive two-year apprenticeship course, based on traditional goldsmithing and watchmaking, has a 12 to one student-teacher ratio, which may help explain the high calibre of its graduates.

Furniture, jewellery and ceramics dominated the awards. The new €5,000 Irish Design 2015 Award was won by John Lee for a solid ash coffee table, bleached, whitened and with a carved textured surface inspired by Newgrange.

A walnut side table hand- shaped with traditional tools by emerging maker Ryan Connolly took the €2,000 Muriel Gahan award.

China’s culture

In ceramics, Andrew Whitelaw won the €2,000 RDS Graduate Award for "Shanghai", a ceramic and glass piece referencing China's rich ceramic culture, while Chloë Dowd's porcelain tea set won the National Crafts and Design Fair award.

The last of the top seven awards, the RDS William Smith O'Brien Perpetual Challenge Cup was won by Nicola Henley, who is based in Scariff, for her hand-made, hand-painted, embroidered and screen-printed wall hanging called "Gulls Roaring, Rovigno" .

The exhibition is open to the public from today until Friday at the RDS Concert Hall and during the Dublin Horse Show from August 5th to August 9th.

Prizewinners will be shown at the National Crafts and Design Fair at the RDS in December.