Our parents viewed their own craft skills as well as their children’s as good but just hobbies; education and a good job was much more important. I knew from about the age of 13 that I wanted to be a silversmith. In my mind I saw beautiful vases with shapes growing up along them and beautiful organic jewellery, but I was firmly told that there was no money in that. When I left secondary school, having refused to go to university because I had found a small silversmith willing to take me on, I was told once again a firm "No". So, being bright enough, out of 200 applicants, I became 1 of 4 accepted into IBM to learn computer programming which at the time was a new and exciting career.
I did well and within 8 years was a very well paid, self-employed IT consultant, designing, programming, and implementing computer systems, but I grew more and more dissatisfied.
I knew I had to be true to myself sooner or later.
I couldn’t give up work as I had a family and all the usual commitments, so college was out, but being self-employed, I could work 4 days at IT and 1 day beginning to be me. It was fate really; I planned to buy some bits and pieces and start teaching myself from books. I didn’t know where to buy silver or stones, so I looked in the yellow pages to find a silversmith that might advise me. The number I chose was Brian Clarke Silversmith and when I finished telling him my story he said, "I teach, come over". At the same time, a lovely lady who worked in one of the IT companies that I was with had a niece that had just finished a 6-month evening course with a retired jeweller in the basics of jewellery making and stone setting! It’s so true what they say, "when you open the door, if it’s meant to be, it will all open up."
I started with a 6-month evening course, 3 hours - twice weekly in Dublin with Milo Fitzpatrick. He was such a lovely man and I learned so much. We made the usual rings, bangles, pendants. We learned stone setting and all the skills required to start by ourselves and, to finish up, we made two custom pieces for ourselves which he was very pleased with.
I got the affirmation I needed to continue. I contacted Brian and he suggested I start with a two-week course to see how I felt about bigger pieces. I loved it, it was like coming home to me. I knew I had to continue. I spoke to Brian and he agreed to have me over 1 day per week for as long as I wanted. Brian worked by making everything himself using the best techniques. No spinning or the like, everything had to be done properly by hand. I learned all the silversmithing techniques needed to make any item I had in mind. In addition, he ran courses given by visiting master craftspeople. Michael Good of anticlastic fame did 3, Eva Hoffelmeier did granulation, Lori Talcot did Norwegian filigree. Brian himself ran many chasing workshops and eventually an introduction to enamelling.
The 1 day per week became 2 and then 3. Early on I discovered that the Kilkenny Design workshops ran courses for the trade on weekends in stone setting, advanced stone setting, hand engraving, casting, introduction to gemmology and jewellery repair. It took a bit of persuading before the lady in charge, Jane Huston, finally allowed me into the courses but after the first piece was made, she said I could come to any course, so I must have proved my worth! I took them all and then some multiple times. I couldn’t get enough. I had a lot of time to make up for! Thank goodness I was earning well at the IT!
