Its been a busy week, hence the dearth of posts.

We had a job on in the workshop due for delivery on Wednesday.

A simple wardrobe under construction in the workshop

The brief here was to supply a wardrobe to fit within a specific space that would compliment other items already installed in the room.
The selection of white oak, the shaped foot and the simple scotia detail of the cornice achieved the requirement.

The completed item in position

All parties were pleased with the outcome though it was impossible to get a decent shot of it as bright sunlight was pouring in the window.

Wednesday's delivery was preceded by the last of the course of nine evening classes on Tuesday night.
Some of the participants had not quite completed their projects so we arranged a day in my workshop on Saturday for them to finish them off.
It was a great day and by its end we had a white oak hall table; a cherry coffee table; an Irish ash kitchen table and a white oak shelving unit all brought to a stage where their makers can complete them on their own.
There is also a wooden camera under construction which yet has a little way to go!

Photos will follow.

And on Thursday I accompanied Sue to a dinner, for upwards of a hundred journalists, held by the inimitable J. P McManus in Adare Manor to promote his Pro/Am golf tournament later in the year which raises astonishing sums of money that he disburses within his Limerick community.

It was a great night. I had not previously seen Adare Manor - formerly the seat of Earls of Dunraven - a Gothic pile built between 1832 and 1836.

We were bedded in the excellent Dunraven Arms and thus found ourselves, on Friday morning, on the main street of Adare which was a perfect spring morning.

Adare is just up the road from Rathkeale which, back in the 1970's and 80's, I used to visit regularly to meet with the significant traveller population that overwinters there.
The Rathkeale traveller is a man apart, both within his own traveller community and the wider Irish population.
Many are men of great wealth - yes, the traveller's is a male dominated, though not misogynistic, society - and in Rathkeale they have built estates of vast houses, many with warehouses alongside, in which to store the products they trade when on the road.
At that time they dealt extensively in antiques and old furniture, in particular, Irish country furniture, in which, as regular readers will know, I had, and retain, a great interest.

So, as I have advanced plans to revisit that part of my life and my interest in vernacular Irish furniture, Sue and I decide to go and have a look at Rathkeale to see if things remained as they were more than twenty five years ago.
And indeed they had.
But, unfortunately, being April, the birds had flown: they were back on the road since Easter leaving behind them ghost estates of houses - many of which resemble wedding cakes - whose windows were barricaded by reinforced steel grilles similar to those on police and military installations in Northern Ireland during the 'troubles'.

Stupidly I had forgotten my camera, but I will be returning.