Author Archives: ShaneHollandDesign
Kerry Inspiring People Awards 2022
Wishing Kerry Group all the best in celebrating their inspiring people and teams in their operations round the globe on their 50th anniversary.
We were happy to provide these limited edition infinity spiral awards in bronze, silver, and brass to celebrate Kerry’s long and exciting path to their current success with their more than 150 manufacturing facilities in 38 countries and a staff of over 22,000.
All Ireland Marketing Awards 2022 by Shane Holland Design Workshops
Congratulations to all of the 22 recipients of this years All Ireland Marketing Awards, featuring companies such as; Irish Distillers,Energia, Lidl Ireland, Currys plc, Bank of Ireland, An Post , Bunratty Castle & Folk Park, SUPERVALU, TBWA\Dublin, Toyota Ireland, Diageo -James Lace, Expleo Group, Allianz, Horseware Ireland, and Woodie’s – Rebecca Stenson. We have designed and manufactured these awards for 15 years and wish to thank The Marketing Institute of Ireland for their continued support of our business.
These awards are made from stainless steel, timber and bronze.
#madelocal #irishmadeawards #aim2022 #themarketinginstitute #guaranteedirish #metalcraftsman #steel #timber #bronze #sculpturalaward #shanehollanddesign #irishdesign #irishmade
Who is Bringing the Van to France? Maison et Objet 2022 – Shane Holland Design Workshops
After 5 years of absence from international design shows, I decided to bring the van to France. I was supposed to go in January, to Maison & Objet, Paris (regarded as one of the world’s best interiors and design shows) but it was rescheduled and put back to March.
For every exhibition I take part in, months of planning and work goes on behind the scenes. However, it all boils down to the last few days as to when things have to be done and in my case, new sculptures and editions of lights are carefully packaged for the long journey and that inevitable, last-minute crisis. This time, it was reprints of cards that required my driving through Dublin City centre on my way to Rosslare, where I was, last of the vans packed into lane 16, behind some heavily laden Moldovan Sprinters, presumably heading for the homeland with important goods.
The crossing was calm and the Brittany Ferries’ Connemara was austere but comfortable for a good rest after days of running around. My hat and shades look did not pass for the truckers’ discount where checked shirts and the usual deep northern accent seemed to do the trick.
Going through the Police checkpoint and diligently handing in my ‘declaration d’honneur’ for covid and vaccination passport was met with ‘Nah covid is finished, what is this?’ despite the mask-wearing being strongly policed on the ferry.
On the road, through Normandy, the penchant for tree pruning was even more extreme in France, with even stumps being pruned aggressively.
With the clock ticking, my main concern, was the possibility of a breakdown, who to call and what to do should the situation arise, but the villages, ancient houses, and eclectic businesses on route made for a good 5 hours of ease. Hour 6, however, was utterly stressful, as I was met with the Paris rush-hour melee, the fear of missing a junction, and a phone battery that was draining fast.
Arriving for registration and assignment at gate L11 seemed like it would be easy, even jovial, with staff offering coffee, even at 7 pm, just the pick me up to get me through working until midnight. Finding gate L11 was akin to looking under every stone and asking every hi-vis guy ‘Ou est L onze?’ to a usual shrug of the shoulders or an unhelpful gesture (signaling that I was to go around again). Nearly an hour of wasted ramblings led to finding a barrier to an underground section, with a guy who said he was new and didn’t know what was beyond the barrier, made me think of Emmet Kane‘s advice that ‘You will be tortured in the car parks of this show’.
In the end, I found L11, like the Holy Grail, a sigh of relief was passed and operation –unload the van for Maison & Objet- was live.
Once finished, getting to my bed booked in an F1 Hotel just yards from the halls proved to be the Holy Grail no.2, with Google maps bringing me on a grand tour (on foot) of the entire complex only to arrive back where I started. I entered the hall again and recharged my phone only to try and get back to my van which was locked behind the L11 gate. Lost, with no one about, led to security radio banter and a final ‘Why is this guy still wandering around 1 hour after he left?’. I finally had charged my phone and hit the Paris Nord spaghetti junctions to do a 7km journey to a hotel that was just across the fence from the exhibition centre. I dragged myself into the F1 hotel at 1.30 am to plead for a quick ‘check in’ to my room only to get the full registration treatment routine from the concierge, who typed so slow I could not compose myself. In the end, sleep was assured but not delivered with the adrenaline of the day still pumping. The struggle with door entries, pins, and security barriers, just seems it’s, what keeps so many employed in this country.
The 3rd day on the road was calmer, having vented to some French guests, who discussed at speed the intricacies of our location. The difficulties of getting a wire into the ceiling of my stand required hordes of officials, a helpful but rolling up and down the pecking order of one boss, to the other boss, and then the guy on the ground who decides to do something different from what you asked for in the first place. The fact that they had a canvas ceiling for me to hang lights was not explained to me on the midnight shift so now I was in the bad books with the organizer who said that he would fine me for drilling holes, when we had been assured that we were fine to do so before we left. Now that things were being discussed ad infinitum I decided to drill a final hole and be fully disowned. They kept coming over with different crews looking at the work and marvelling at the holes with no rips, no damage to canvas, and all tidy. Finally, the mood softened.
Dinner later was with a French biker, a robotic engineer from Alsace who described his job whilst being interrupted by a boisterous English sales agent who also lives in France and who wanted to talk about rugby (he was told to pipe down by the guests in the hotel restaurant).
All in all, a shock treatment of getting to pace with the push and pull of French metro life.
Day 2 of the build involved another long day and lots of interaction with my neighbours. First was Hubert, the wood and Damascus steel man who with his wife had a mini-disaster when his disc pieces broke and I helped him fix them. Daniel Cavey (USA) and his fiancé Sylvia, (who live in Italy) make voluptuous ceramics, in blue, yellow, and green. Stefanie in her stand, next to me is German, based in the Ardeche, and does amazing feather work. On the other side of my wall were Maurizio and his team from Calabria at OVO who provided lots of warmth and fun including copious offers of Mescal spirit from Mexico via his friend Ivan who had flown in from Manhattan to provide moral support. Maurizio would wear different jackets, red one day and a velvet jacket of silver embroidered rats, complete with tails and communist symbols on the labels. I joked about the Brigade Rosso, and his attire. He introduced his son Edouardo, who at 16 was wearing a similar red jacket and was as strong-willed as his father. Communists at a capitalist fair, who’d have thought. I didn’t really know what the code was or how to work it out.
As the show started the constant staring of French visitors freaked me out at first, no contact, no engagement after all this work! As always the mood was lightened by an Irish Interior designer, Laura from Birr who showed me how to do ‘live’ on social media and gave lots of advice and encouragement.
Going around the Craft section which contained 132 stands of the ‘Ateliers d’Art France’, the competition is still fierce and having a stand in the section seemed the equivalent of having gained a ‘Michelin star’. Only about 10 percent of ‘étrangers’ are let into ‘Craft, les Métiers d’Art’. 4 or 5 from Italy, 1 from Portugal, 1 Spanish, 1 Korean, 1 Turkish, 1 Ukrainian, 1 from Martinique, and little ol’ me from the ‘auld sod’.
There are French-based people like Kartini Thomas who I met at the restaurant, who grew up in NZ then USA and now lives in France and does amazing ceramic sea monsters, which all subsequently sold out.
I got a chance to see the other halls when Chloe (who travelled up on the train from Toulouse to help me out) arrived. In April, Chloe will join me in the workshop for an internship. She allowed me to do a few ‘sorties’ and I got to see; amazing blue sculptures, digital-styled grids in cement by Francois Charles Gennolli, some skate fish mobiles by Hyunjin-Seoul, and the sweeping spherical stainless work of Guillaume Roche who I had admired on my previous visit.
In the end, the more forthcoming visitors were from further away. Japan, Kazakhstan, Qatar, North Macedonia, and Turkey all got conversations going but I was still trying to understand the French who were just walking past. Kartini, who I mentioned earlier, advised that you have to do the ‘Bon Jour’ with vigour to extract a response, and if they are on your stand they may be obliged to answer. I didn’t like this approach but at 6.30 pm we pulled out our secret weapon, ‘Hollands Irish Bar’ which my friend Gary Quinn said he would do on my stand and had organized the booze and glasses. Gary knows a lot about whiskey having authored the ‘Collins Book of Irish Whiskey’. He was my secret weapon. However, when Gary texted to say he had covid and couldn’t come, I just had to roll with it and use his tasting notes. In the end with our ‘exponants‘ friends, the show curator, and organizers, everybody had a rare time checking their ‘3 Swallows Powers’ from their Irishman and our finest First Release Dingle. We all videoed a message to thank Gary and sang happy 22nd birthday to Chloe, this had surely broken the ice.
Having originally planned to be in the CCI (Centre Culturel Irlandais) with Gary, now I stuck to my spartan F1 motorway hotel where I met my previously mentioned, English linen agent.
The daily drudgery of finding a solution to parking and getting the van into gate L11 in time was now my priority. Fred at the helpdesk said I needed to park inside the exhibition park on the last day and get a 1-day ticket (€48) and it would work so that I could get to the ferry home in time. Diplomatic runs to the office were had each day but Fred was the guy to talk to and rather unfortunately, he was off.
In the end, I got to meet Patrizia Italiano from Palermo who was a veteran of Maison & Objet and we chatted about how business was done in Italy and France, now I had more Italian friends than ever. Maurizio had decided to come to Ireland in the summer and I suggested he take up currach rowing, trips away from the aisle led to good chats with Joau who did excellent art in Portugal. We compared trips (1500kms for him) and he confirmed the French were difficult to crack but it brought him much work now in his 9th year on the fair.
Getting over to Signature to see the ‘baby seal seat’ and some more of the giant stands in hall 6 again makes the mind boggle as to the scale and money required for these 100- square meter stands which are appointed like palaces for the 5 show days. I guess a Rolls Royce is required as seen in the car park. The Renault 4 at the entrance, rekindled my love of French cars and the fact that a Monsieur and Madame Renault expressed an interest in exhibiting my sculptures at their place outside Paris made my day.
As the afterglow and camaraderie grew with my colleagues after day 2 of ‘Holland’s Bar’, I also got to see the 2 winners of the annual competition, one of the impossible sculptures and drawings of Toru Kurokawa and the almost ice lolly laminated glass of Johnathan Austeresse was a symbol of how guarded and respected the specific crafts of France are and the word ‘Eboniste‘ came up more than 4 times in my stay. Including a visit from an ‘eboniste‘ and top man in Ateliers de France checking out my stuff. I get nervous of people in suits with no name badge but this was one of those visits. I was been checked out and it seems to have been OK.
The morning of takedown (after much planning), I had managed to get my van as far as the 2nd last barrier. After a chat at the barrier the guys said ‘yes’ and I was a go, but no, he dropped the red and white pole nearly on my bonnet and said ‘non Chef ma dit no!’ Here we go again. Later Paul Le Hen a nice guy from the west coast who had been on our mini bar said to come with me I’ll get you in. He walked out, talked to exactly the same guy and they said ‘go get your van’ and we were in. Paul hopped in my van, we came to barrier no.2, the security guy came out with a wad of sheets and checked every name, on every page and finally found me on the list and we were in. Now the stress was off.
It came to the end, Chloe had to get her train down south and I had begun the strip out, it had not really been a successful show but I knew it was just the start. Driving out of the Paris suburbs, onto the motorway, and into the country, I just wanted to get home. Low on fuel, low on food, and driving in the middle of the night with all villages closed, I came through Evreaux only to miss a turn, just to see a chicken place open. They were turning the tables and it was a regular halal takeaway run by Bangladeshis. In the chat I asked for a cheeseburger and chips, he asked ‘sauce?’ yes, barbecue, he said ‘where do you come from?’ I told him, and he said ‘when I get my naturalization and French passport I’m coming to Ireland’. I thought this sounds like a threat but a nice one. A scooter guy arrived and dropped my food on the counter as if out of nowhere, the main guy popped some free chicken into my bag and I was off. So many on my trip had said they wanted to come to Ireland.
I got back on route and pulled into a layby around 1 am to try my prepared narrow bed in the van which was OK. I got up around 7 and drove to Maux the next town for a fresh baguette, water, and a pain au chocolate in a real boulangerie for the first time in France. I got to the Ferryport in Cherbourg to be 3rd in the queue compared to last in Rosslare. Things were looking up, looking forward to a shower and a snooze.
The moral is, I, as usual thought I knew all that there was to know about France, but I have only scratched a tiny bit into a thick and complicated skin.
To see more photos from my trip to Maison et Objet, 2022 and my current work, visit my instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/shanehollanddesignworkshops/
or visit my art and sculpture website: https://www.shanehollandart.com/
As I am preparing to head back to France, to exhibit at Maison Objet, March 24th – 28th in Paris, I have been remembering my last trip there in 2015, the ‘Year of Irish Design’. For this show, I brought my Wilde Cage lights, alongside, items from 5 or 6 other Irish designers to complete the Irish selection for this exhibition. It was my first exhibiting experience of this prestigious show and there was an overwhelming sense of pride in being selected alongside other designer-makers, such as; Molloy and Son’s fabrics, stools by Snug, the Carvel chair by Andrew Clancy, marble whiskey stones by Hennessy, and Byrne, pot trivets by Superfolk and mitered boxes by Cillian O’Suilleabháin.
Irish Design 2015 showcased many designers at home and abroad to an audience of apparently more than 1.4 million people, through 600+ projects (not too sure about that figure). I was lucky to have some of my products on show in New York, Beijing, and the Liminal show in Dublin, as well as at Maison et Objet in Paris.
Arriving in Paris for the show on a cold January day, I was greeted by strange plastic tunnels set outdoors to shield visitors from the elements; creating something of the surreal atmosphere, which would encapsulate my experience over the next 3 days. I perused the halls, discovering massive LED installations by Blackbody, whilst bumping into my old London (100% Design) colleague Jake Phipps with his incredible fractal chrome cabinet with gold barnacles. I also came upon the effervescent Susie Zelouf and partner Michael Bell exhibiting their excellent ‘Fish’ and ‘Bombay Saphire’ cabinets.
Our Irish stand was designed by Stephen McNamara and manned, very capably by, Annie Dack and Nicola Doran for DCCI, so I was able to run off and look at the halls whilst also being on hand for stand duties.
The abundance of creativity alongside the absolute wealth of certain brands and the massive investment placed in this show made me feel that my offering, was so modest in comparison to the exclusive brands like Fendi, who offered, concierge services, security, and private meetings.
During the networking occasion at the Irish Embassy, I got to meet artists, Connolly Cleary (who we later worked with on the Marconi station in Clifden) with their strange and beautifully realised headpiece periscopes, and Irish architect Patrick Mellet who showed me around and offered great hospitality. He also taught me how business gets done in Paris, definitely more assertive and verbally dramatic than at home, with full vocal barrages for simple dealings with taxis or hotels. It was humorous to be asked to refurbish some of the door fixtures in the embassy by Ambassadors’ Geraldine Byrne Nason’s husband, once he found out I was a metal worker and when she found out I was based in Duleek and her a Drogheda woman, a local bond was made.
In the end, our show in France taught me that you must go again and again to gain traction in France. You also must also make an effort with your French. And so we are off again, 7 years later, now preparing to get back on the French horse and re-engage with Les Francais.
Now, I must get out my old school phrasebook!
Tidy Towns Medals and holders for 2021 – Rethinking Packaging and Moving with the times.
While working on the Tidy Towns awards 2021 we were asked to rethink how the awards are presented.With restrictions, there is no longer a large public ceremony. So now the awards are now sent by courier or post to the recipients. Our challenge was to create a simple package, that was light but rugged enough, yet attractive, had simple external disc markings for Gold, Silver, and Bronze, and be made from environmentally responsible materials with less plastics.
The packaging comprises of paper envelopes, pulp packaging. cardboard, paper, printed Tidy Towns branding, and string box closers.
The medal holders are styled on 6th-century monastic beehive huts from Co. Kerry. The holders and each medal bear etched Tidy Town motifs of Water, Plant life, Heritage, and Architecture, all etched into the cherry or walnut veneered plywood beehive.
Congratulations to all who should soon receive their hard-fought medals for 2021 from the Tidy Towns organisers. We are delighted to bring our new design and make ideas to our clients at the Tidy Towns competition since 2006. Should your organisation require a new look at your awards or design and making requirements contact us now!
Late Late Show St. Patrick’s Day Award
The inaugural Late Late Show St. Patrick’s Day Award. I was delighted to be asked (at short notice) to produce the Late Late Show St. Patrick’s Day Award.
Our ‘Infinity Spiral’ which was presented by Ryan Tubridy to Dr. Sammar Ali. Dr. Ali is the daughter of Dr. Syed Waqqar Ali the Mater Hospital Dr who was one of the 8 HSE staff to die of Covid. Dr. Sammar Ali received this special award on behalf of her own work also in the Mater and that of her father as acknowledgement of the wider heroic work done by health workers all over Ireland.
The Infinity Spiral is a continuous strip of brass which goes through a turbulent knot and exits upwards to infinity and the sky. Its base is made from Kilkenny marble. We are always open to awards or sculptural comissions if you have a project in mind. Hope some of you stayed up late enough to see it on the telly.
Irish Times Innovation Awards 2020 – New Design
Great to see the #IrishTimes Innovation Awards winners getting these awards yesterday (27th January 2021). These are the new design commissioned for the 2020 awards, 7 of which were delivered around the country. The overall went to Galway based founder Suzanne Moloney of HidraMed Solutions for their skin treatment solution.
Thanks to The Irish Times and Promocraft for the commission.
#innovation #awards #madeinireland #madelocal #trophydesigners #designermakers #laser #fabrication #innovators