Contemporary crafts

Craftelling: Irish Design Shop, Dublin

20/11/2015

By Paola Tartaglino

One week ago Gaia and I were in Dublin for our Craftelling project, and exactly at this time (10:30) we had just stepped in the Irish Design Shop.

We met there Clare Grennan and Laura Caffrey: they are really nice and we had a lot of fun with our new friends!

Their story is original, interesting and inspiring: Laura and Clare have met when both attended the metalwork class at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. Once graduated, they started to create jewelry together and sell them in local craft markets, which were ten years ago the only way of promotion for young crafters, as there were no independent stores in Dublin: a very different city if compared to the one we visited now, full of small nice shops and bars.

Clare and Laura opened firstly an online store, then a pop-up space in the Powerscourt Centre, then their first owned independent shop far from the city centre, and finally, in early 2013 at the one we visited in Drury Street, in a central and very fashionable neighborhood.

Today at the Irish Design Shop you can buy items created by over 50 Irish crafters, some presented exclusively here, as the wall calendar, designed this year in collaboration with Alex Synge: each sheet has a pre-cut side to easily remove the calendar section and obtain a 30×30 cm print ready to be framed.

Oh, I’ve almost forgotten: Laura and Clare have continued to work metals in their own workshop on the first floor, above the shop, and they launched this year a breathtaking, elegant, contemporary and very geometric jewelry collection. It will be soon featured on the blog in a special post, here is a little preview: