A group of artists and craft workers whose aim is to make Limerick a centre of excellence in design have exhibited their work in an unusual setting in the city centre.
Their leader is a Welshman, Prof Evan Petty, who for 20 years was head of the Engineering Department of the University of Limerick. Since his retirement, he has turned an "obsession" with woodturning into a profitable hobby.
Others include ceramic artist Mr Thomas Wollen, who returned from South Africa and lives on a seven-acre holding in the Slieve Felim mountains.
Some 12 years ago he converted a cow barn into a workshop where he produces postRaku pottery. Mr Barney Sheehan, a horseman who once rode an elephant down O'Connell Street in Limerick, is displaying his Irish Families series in delicately-coloured leather work. Mr Pat O'Brien also produces jewellery and copper work.
Mr Philip Kenny, secretary of the Limerick Arts and Craft Association, believes craft workers should devote more structured time to design. The first exhibition was held in the White House, one of the city's oldest pubs. It is a traditional gathering place for artists and poets, and the owners recently held an "amnesty night" when artists who had been barred by the previous owner were invited back.
They were usually notified of their transgression by way of a sticker at the bottom of their glass which read "You may leave now". Portraits of customers on the walls include the American poet, Ezra Pound, and the romantic poet, Robert Graves, grandson of a former bishop of Limerick.
A Limerick poet, Mr John Liddy, who now lives in Madrid, once wrote in the Castle Poets (III) series of how the "erudite proprietor of the White House", Mr Eamon Gleeson, was warned to remove the photograph of Pound before "Robert Graves and his entourage of chosen literati entered the old-world White House in the thrice-sieged city of Limerick".
This he did, hiding it behind the picture of local poet Mr Gerard Ryan. Mr Graves autographed the photograph of himself for Mr Gleeson and, Mr Liddy adds, "today it hangs beside Mr Pound and still not a word between them".