Ireland is a place where tradition and innovation are thriving side by side. The craft heritage of this island is well known and today it inspires a vast array of unique contemporary fashion and giftware products.
The giftware sector in Ireland is diverse and truly creative. Whether hand made or machine-made, indigenous or cosmopolitan in flavour, drawing on the past or rooted firmly in the present, the variety of objects available from Ireland share an emphasis on quality.
The sector is characterised by some large companies and a far greater number of individual craft workers making an enormously varied range of products such as glassware, pottery, jewellery, tapestry and woodcarvings, all revealing their Irish roots for international marketplaces. Some are deeply traditional while others are very modernistic and high tech.
In jewellery for example, Ireland offers the discerning buyer everything from traditional Claddagh and Celtic designs, fine gold and silver ornaments, fun accessories through to the very latest in contemporary pieces.
Pottery has been made in Ireland since the Celtic Iron Age and today ceramics of all types are produced from fine bone china to bright contemporary glazes. Some of the pottery manufacturing operations are large, such as Louis Mulcahy's pottery at Ballyferriter on the Dingle peninsula; Stephen Pearce’s pottery at Shanagarry in east Cork and Nicholas Mosse’s pottery near Kilkenny city. In addition, dozens more smaller pottery workshops, each run by one or two individual craftworkers, produce a dazzling array of products.
Irish glassmakers today offer a breathtaking range of products. In addition to traditional shapes and patterns, glassware is now being produced in sharp, contemporary shapes and clean minimalist lines. The largest glassware manufacturer in Ireland is Waterford Crystal making glassware that’s a collectible item the world over. The company uses the services of such noted designers as John Rocha.
One of the most ambitious recent marketing developments for Irish giftware took place in early 2003 when Enterprise Ireland and 11 ambitious consumer products manufacturers opened a permanent Irish showroom in America’s leading marketplace, AmericasMart in Atlanta. AmericasMart is considered the number one gift and home furnishing showplace in the US, with more than four million square feet of display space. Each year, it hosts more than 300,000 retailers from each State in the US and 70 countries around the world.