The Flower House

The first craftsperson to arrive in West Cork, from Germany via London and Northern Ireland, was potter and sculptor Christa Reichel. In 1962 she bought a house for £200 and subsequently opened a craft shop in Ballydehob. With the assistance of her partner and friend Nora Golden, she painted the front of the shop with large multi-coloured flowers and then invited students friends and artists to help with the pottery.

In this way, Ballydehob became the cultural epicentre of West Cork in just a few years.

As captured by Alison Ospina in her new book, West Cork Inspires, due for launch this year (2011), we might find it hard to recognise West Cork as it was fifty years ago, when the first artists began to arrive. For decades young people had been moving away from the area, looking for better work and educational opportunities abroad. The1950s had been a difficult decade for Ireland economically and West Cork was then a particularly impoverished part of the country. As the movement of people had generally been away from West Cork, a large number of houses stood empty or derelict, most without electricity, telephone or running water, consequently property prices were low.

At that time, the old traditional crafts such as weaving, basketry and shoe making had all but disappeared. Handmade crafts were becoming fashionable in the more prosperous and urbanised parts of Europe but the studio craft movement had not yet made an impact in Ireland. Consequently young people, many with degrees from Art Colleges and most with very little money saw West Cork as a place where they might thrive and prosper, particularly because there was no competition from indigenous contemporary craft practitioners.

Between 1962 and 2000 a West Cork aesthetic emerged that was inspired by the landscape and created by the artists who settled here. From the earliest days, the movement has been nurtured by the local population who seemed to understand and appreciate it quite instinctively, despite being very different from anything seen here before. Because of that acceptance and recognition, the artistic community has thrived and and prospered in West Cork and excellent, innovative craft has become an important part of the region’s cultural heritage.