MARTINA HAMILTON FINDS INSPIRATION ON SLIGO’S SHORE
Award-winning goldsmith Martina Hamilton has launched a new collection — Croi Sliogan, which translates as Shell’s Heart or Shell’s Core. Martina describes how the collection came about while she was walking on a beach during a rainy summer’s day and spotted some beautiful shells.
As usual, the very generous landscape of Sligo gifted me. Something about those shells spoke to me and I started thinking about the core of the shell and how it related to our own core; our essence.
Something resonated with me when I looked into those shells and it was the start of a creative process that percolated within me for a year. I looked into the empty space inside the shell’s core and felt it resembled a heart and that is what I have tried to recreate in the collection. When you look into the core of the pieces, you see what appears to be a heart.
The fact that ‘shell’s core’ translated into Croi Sliogan, which is very close to the phrase ‘the heart of Sligo’ excited me as Sligo is part of my essence. Its meaning is very beautiful and poetic and, of course, is so close to the line in Sligo poet W.B Yeats’ The Lake Isle of Innisfree: ‘I hear it in the deep heart’s core.’ The way the collection has taken shape really speaks to a lot of things and, in a way, it’s quite sentimental. I am so proud of this collection.
Martina Hamilton has been designing distinctive jewellery collections for 30 years in her studio in Sligo. Working exclusively with hallmarked silver and gold, her award-winning designs are inspired by the ever-changing Atlantic coastal landscape and all her pieces are handmade in Ireland by studio craft makers.
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