Kilkenny: extending the frontiers

Abstract

Last November a shop opened in New Bond Street, London, stocked with 'the best of Irish workmanship and design' - carefully selected products from over a hundred studios, workshops and small factories in Ireland north and south.

Not in itself, perhaps, an unusual event, for it is the rule rather than the exception for foreign countries to have a West End outlet for their better products but the Kilkenny shop is the visible part of an organisation that has been operating not 500 miles from London over the past quarter-century, applying ideas in many cases new to Britain and previously untried in the promotion of design and craft work; an organisation whose uniquely practical methods and success are not widely known outside Ireland.