Trade Names: In the wild Goose Studio in Kinsale they produce a unique line in Celtic artifacts, interpretations of old Ireland's mythology, legend, poetry and history aimed at a 21st century nation.

They're clever pieces too. "Strength and Unity", for instance, a stylised and clean-of-line interpretation of St Brendan and his monks en route to America, carries the clear message that pulling together works better than lone voyaging.

Wild Goose pieces sell well too, both at home and abroad, a popularity which helps ensure the wisdoms of that older, sometimes even wiser, Ireland continue to make their point.

The Wild Goose Studio has kept faith with the spirit which moved the founders to drift gently into business in 1965, to formally set up in 1969, to break the mould and introduce a new way of thinking about Irish souvenirs to the market. What began as a cottage industry has long since become a professional industry but has never left Kinsale, the town in which it grew up.

In the beginning there were the late Brian Scott-McCarthy and Kathleen Smyth, friends with poles-apart lives but who pulled together, pooling ideas, expertise and dreams to get Wild Goose Studios up and going.

Brian Scott-McCarthy was born in London in the mid-1920s. He could trace his forebears to the McCarthys of Munster and to Justin McCarthy, Lord Mountcashel, one of the Wild Geese who founded a regiment in France. He grew up identifying with Ireland, with a sense he'd somehow been displaced from his homeplace. He'd a formidable intelligence too, along with creative talent and a restless urge which made for a fascinating life - a story in itself.

When the second World War interrupted his aeronautical engineering studies in Cambridge he headed for Chicago and pilot training, thence to flying RAF cargo planes to India. The second World War over, and 1940s Chicago having exposed him to poetry and music, he returned to Cambridge to study English literature.

In between times his and Kathleen Smyth's lives had crossed and a friendship which would last a lifetime was up and going.

Kathleen, working in England as a radiographer, returned home to work in Bantry hospital in 1962. This was pre-Whiddy Island oil terminal and Bantry a town in which land lines were in short supply, mobile phones and bleepers unknown. Kathleen, as a consequence, found herself with a lot of "sitting and waiting" on-call time.

Fate conspired and, given her long-time passion for stone and old carvings, she was encouraged "to try my hand at carving" by local monument sculptor John Murphy. Using a wood chisel on Bath stone cut-offs she copied "whimsical looking Celtic figures carved on the Cross of Moone".

Brian came visiting, they pooled ideas and Kathleen began modelling other figures, sending them to Brian to make and send back rubber moulds which she cast in terracotta and sold.

So it was, in the mid-1960s and accidentally, that the Wild Goose Studio had its beginnings.

Jamie McCarthy-Fisher, the company's MD, puts the rest of the story together. In another life he was a young English journalist who innocently met and married Brian McCarthy's daughter, Miranda, and came to the business via a conspiracy of fate and timing. He's in for the long haul, even hopes he and Miranda may have ensured a third generation in one of their four young children - Isaac, Noah, Hesta and month-old Ruby.

"While Kathleen was making her figures in Bantry Brian was living in Kent," he takes up the tale, "married (to Diana Steen) and on the way to having four daughters - Clare, Miranda, Joanna and Justine. As the work sold (notably through Matilda O'Keefe's craft shop in Schull), Kathleen took the search for business further afield. The newly formed Crafts Council was supportive and, when Kathleen met with Shannon Airport's gift-buyer in 1969 and got an order for pieces in 10s rather than the usual single items, she phoned Brian. They decided to formally set up Wild Goose Studio."

Together they bought and set up the business in an old coach-house behind Acton's Hotel in Kinsale. Brian, from the UK, looked after the business and ordering end, Kathleen took charge of model-making, invoices and sales trips - all in her spare time from work as a radiologist; "on half-days, evenings, at weekends. Occasionally I would drive from Bantry after working at the hospital, do the invoices, sleep in Kinsale and drive back to Bantry in the morning to be ready for work."

Elizabeth O'Leary, one of the first craft-workers, joined the company in 1970. "She helped with everything, retired in 2005 and was as much part of things as Brian and Kathleen," Jamie says, adding that Kathleen's meticulously-kept ledger was in use until 1998 when computerisation took over.

Brian, who had by now added jewellery studies and a psychotherapy degree to his qualifications, made weekend trips to Kinsale and brought the family over every summer. The Scott-McCarthy girls grew up with the business, Jamie says, "packing, selling, ordering. The workshop was on the ground floor, packing took place on the second floor and the third floor, with a hole through which orders were shouted down to the craft workers. Gradually, through the 1970s, Wild Goose Studios grew, started exporting to Chicago when Peter Farrelly from Chicago saw our pieces at Shannon Airport, then showing at trade fairs in the US. Brian, who had divorced and remarried, moved to live in Schull with his new family - wife Jeralyn and daughter Paget, in the mid-1980s. Things expanded in Ireland during the 1980s and 1990s. Brian's passion was for 'gifts for the imagination' and each piece came with thoughts and a background written by him."

Success brought complications and by the mid-1990s the Kinsale coach-house had become too residential a location for a fully-fledged business. Between 1996-98 Brian had a purpose-built, horse-shoe shaped premises with court-yard erected in the IDA complex above Kinsale. Now in his 70s, Brian began, Jamie says, "looking to who would take on the company's management in the future. He put the question to his daughters."

Jamie had by now met and married Miranda - "who brought me over to Ireland almost as soon as we met" - and they were living with Isaac, their first born, in one room. "When Brian said come over and try running the business and freelancing from here we decided to give it a try. I did both jobs for a couple of years but found I was working more and more with the company. The point came when I was happy to give up journalism and be here full-time.

"Brian saw I was managing the place and made me MD. He was very generous about this because Wild Goose was like another daughter to him and a very real presence in his life. He came to board meetings but gave me space to find my feet and learn the business."

The new millennium, the years of SARS, foot and mouth and 9/11, hit Wild Goose Studio and tourism generally. "It was a tricky time for me to come in," Jamie admits, "albeit we'd reserves from the good years. In 2003 Brian became ill and died. He'd been very busy, lived a full life, active and alert. We were very lucky to have someone from Enterprise Ireland with us. She suggested a strategic review, that I take ownership, a hard look at things and a way forward."

The hard look revealed they couldn't rely on tourism and would have to develop the product's appeal to the home market. So they did. "We needed a pared-back design and fresh ideas and titles for a modern, more secular Ireland. We developed along these lines through 2004-05 and by 2006 turnover was up 20 per cent. We've held onto the essence of Wild Goose. Kathleen's still involved and has been enthusiastic and generous, as was Brian, in allowing the company grow in new directions. Brian's daughters all contribute ideas. "

He's positive he's "done the right thing", is in "the right place" and hopeful there will be a third generation to take over in time.