event : Design Week ‘09

Design week got under way at Irish design shop with the installation of a fantastic window display courtesy of Gearoid Muldowney from Superfolk in order to entice passers by down the lane way. Gearoid also donated some of his handmade stools for our temporary cinema screening the classic ‘hands’ series on Irish crafts. These proved to be very popular and as a result, we will be stocking them in the near future. The ‘Hands’ series is also now available as a box set or individually through the shop. The set of 37 episodes costs 150 euro and individual episodes cost 25 euro each. After working hard in preparation for design week we were only too happy to attend the launch night & indulge in a few Bombay sapphire cocktails at the CHQ building. Acclaimed international designer,Thomas Heatherwick gave a fascinating insight into his work which include buildings, bridges and large scale works of art. He kept his talk short and sweet so we could get back to the bar for last orders. On Wednesday, we welcomed designers/makers to our studio for an ideas exchange evening which proved helpful to all who attended. Topics covered included marketing, funding, suppliers and general woes of making it as a designer today. We would love to host such an event again, and perhaps make it more of a regular thing. Anyone interested in becoming involved should contact us by email. The main event of our week was on Friday with the opening of our metalwork exhibition which will remain open to the public for the rest of the month. Featured makers include Cianán Doyle, Eoin M Lyons, Mette O’Connor, Justyna Truchanowska, Sadhbh McCormack and of course ourselves. The opening night coincided with our first birthday, and we were expecting to celebrate over a couple of bottles of Bombay Sapphire but all hope were dashed with an email confirming ‘there is no more gin’. We settled for cheap booze instead from Dunnes. However, our saviour came in the form of Mr. Dave Comiskey who arrived from the ‘offset’ event in Liberty hall brandishing a 5cl bottle of the blue gin. Perhaps we will keep it for the Christmas party.