"Group of market-bound women pose with baskets slung over head to free hands for knitting" (detail), Claddagh, County Galway, Ireland. Alexander Robert Hogg. National Museums NI.
"All her life, she has worked closely with women from Conamara and the Aran Islands, west Clare and from north Mayo, who still knit in the original style and who provide the shop with all its clothing to this day. Anne believes the traditional style of knitting is dying out. When these women are gone, she says, that will be the last of a great artform. Anne says she has begged their daughters to learn the skills of the old knitters so that the knowledge is not lost forever, but they have no interest."
Stone walls are one of Ireland’s most distinctive landscape features and it is estimated that the Irish countryside is a patchwork of over 250,000 miles of stone wall.
The dry stone walls are mortarless and are made by carefully selecting stones that will balance and ‘sit’ into the wall as they are built. To date the oldest known example of dry stone walls in Ireland are at the ‘The Ceide…