Cleo’s in Kildare Street, a Dublin landmark for more than half a century, and one of the best places to find inimitable handknits and hand-woven tweeds, is the focus of a research project currently underway by Hilary O’Kelly, a lecturer in history of design in NCAD.

O’Kelly is this year’s winner of the Golden Fleece Award, established as a charitable bequest by the late Lilias Mitchell who was a weaver, painter and teacher and who founded the Irish Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers. The award will enable O’Kelly to complete her study of Cleo’s, which was founded by the present owner Kitty Joyce’s mother in 1936 and has been selling Aran ganseys, shawls and bawneens from Galway since the 1940s. “I would like to record and celebrate the work of Cleo in promoting handknitting and hand-weaving over a period of time when very few in Ireland saw its merits,” says O’Kelly, who hopes to have an illustrated book published when her work is complete. Irish textile art at its best.