The big book of Ballagh

At €2,500, the Robert Ballagh Monograph sounds like a very expensive book. For your money, though, you get a handmade, meticulously crafted, limited-edition work that includes 24 original gicleéprints – collector's items in themselves. Artist and designer Paul Rattigan directed the design and production of the two-volume monograph. The project harnessed the talents of a number of specialist craftspeople, nearly all of them based in the Netherlands.

“We were disappointed that we just couldn’t get it done in Ireland,” Rattigan says, “but here those crafts are more or less gone.” He trained as a graphic artist – “it was called commercial art at the time” – and he points out that most of the people who taught contemporary graphics in Ireland were Dutch. “It’s very striking that in Holland there is a huge love of books.” In the midst of technological change they have retained the traditional skills of book production. And it’s not as if those involved in the monograph were representatives of a dying breed – they were often, he points out, young people learning and carrying on the skills.

He and Ballagh have known each other for a long time (they have both been involved in design aspects of Riverdance), and they have been keen to do a monograph for some time. That relatively conventional monograph will appear at some stage in the future. In the meantime, businessman Dermot Desmond, a collector of Ballagh’s work, became involved and proposed making a book that was in itself an artwork, eventually committing himself to taking 200 copies of the edition of 350.

Ciaran Carty wrote a second instalment of his existing text on the artist, bringing the story up to date. Rattigan set to work, tracking down the specialists needed to bring it all together. “It was great fun, really,” he says. “These are people who love what they do. They want to do things well.” Among others they include bookbinder Wim Kamsteeg, printers Bernard Ruijgrok and case-makers Judith van Daal and Pau Groenendijk. The monograph is, essentially, a handmade product involving a range of linked craft skills, from the typography to the embroidery on the canvas bag that contains it.

“More than anything, I see it as a classically made book,” Rattigan explains, “and that’s what I really like about it. I love books. I should be Dutch.”

The Robert Ballagh Monograph is available from, and can be viewed at, the Gorry Gallery, 20 Molesworth Street, Dublin (Mon-Fri 11.30am-5.30pm), 01-6795319