The son of a Church of Ireland rector, Rory Conner has come a long way since he encountered a group of people who arrived in a beaten up old ambulance at his West Cork family home when he was growing up.
Carol Gilbert writing in The Southern Star states: Rory’s father was a Church of Ireland rector who had welcomed the influx of young people arriving in West Cork during the 1970s and 1980s. Many of these newcomers were crafts people and others who came turned their skills to creative works. Attracted to Ireland and West Cork in particular for its green, clean image, these founders of a new Irish arts and craft culture saw an escape to a safer and better way of life for themselves and their children in the beautiful and inspiring landscapes and seascapes.
‘Lots of these people had third level education and were thinkers as well as doers,’ explains Rory. ‘For me it was a sign of how the creative climate of West Cork was going to change and the first indication that West Cork was going to turn into something pretty unique. Many of these people who came to live here at that time are still living here today.’
Rory Conner is a master cutler, still West Cork based, but with a reputation that has now spread world wide, his hand-crafted knives sought-after items. He’s won the RDS Craft competition and been Cork Craftsman of the Year, but when Rory first started to learn his craft, sourcing good quality steel for knife-making presented serious difficulties.
His early knives were made of steel reclaimed from car springs or from cheap imported knives which he redesigned and reshaped. Following his Royal Dublin Society Crafts competition win in the early 1980s, Rory set out to learn new techniques. He bought and borrowed books about knife making but realised he would need to leave the country in order to learn new techniques. He was lucky enough to secure a four-month training position with the world famous American knife maker, Robert Loveless, in California.
Although he works by himself in his Ballylickey workshop, Rory sources a lot of his materials locally, for instance getting the wooden boxes for his cheese knives made in West Cork. He says, ‘I try to keep everything as local a possible. My emphasis these days is on commissions and on cheese knives, butter knives and oyster knives which have all been very popular gifts for Christmas.’
Over the years Rory Conner has been featured on RTE Nationwide and his skills regularly written about. He is one of the 22 artists featured in Alison Ospina’s latest book, West Cork Inspires.
More at:
http://www.southernstar.ie/article.php?id=3166
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