Horseshoes are supposed to be lucky but you meet few people who can prove that. However, one such exception is William Cunningham who lives near Birr, Co Offaly.
About six years ago, one of William's children asked him to make something for a bring-and-buy sale in the local school and he cast around in desperation for a bit of creativity.
He found some old horseshoes and, using his skill as a steel fabricator, he made a candlestick from the metal. The next day the candlestick was the first thing sold at the school.
Earlier this year, William, from Garbally, near Birr, opened for business, calling his company Horseshoe Crafts. His designs are selling well in the craft market.
Uniquely, the business uses only horseshoes from the various stables and yards around the Republic to make the items he sells.
"It is a real recycling job and the horse-owners seem to be happy about having somewhere to get rid of the shoes because they are a potential danger to horses when they are thrown," he said.
He gets his raw material from farriers in the midlands and from stables in the area. This week, however, he is picking up the shoes from the Army Equestrian School in Dublin.
"People have been very good to me because I need a lot of the shoes to make the candlesticks and other pieces that I make up from them.
"The farriers in Glasson, Co Westmeath, and in Kildare town give me their old shoes and some of the stables, including Capt Swan's, who is Charlie Swan's father, keeps shoes for me," he said.
The most famous shoes he has worked on came from the wonder horse, Danoli. He fashioned one of his pieces of artwork for trainer Tom Foley, whom he described as a "decent man".
"I would like of course to make pieces from shoes of famous horses, but it is the ordinary horses which keep me in business. As a matter of fact, I am afraid of horses. I would not go near one unless I had to. However, I have put the odd bob or two on one but that is as close as I get," he said.
William's first job when getting the shoes is to clean them thoroughly and then bring them to his workshop to weave them into the designs he uses for his artwork.
"I then paint them and hope for the best. My wife, Olive, she is the boss, she does the marketing and to date it has been going very well," he said.
His work has already been sold in the US and in Germany but he is gearing up for the local market and for visitors to the area.
William has also come up with a bit of a puzzle about horseshoes and which way they should hang over doors to bring good luck.
"When some people see a horseshoe hanging over the door with the open end pointing upwards, they say that will bring bad luck but that is the way horseshoes are hung in this part of the country. But as far as I can tell, in different parts of the country there are different traditions about the horseshoe.
"Anyhow, as far as I am concerned, the horseshoe has brought me good luck," he concluded.