MAKERS PROGRAMME

Iseult Law is an Irish designer based in County Kildare who works exclusively with fabrics woven by hand on a loom. Her current design inspirations include Khadi cotton from Gujarat, silk Ikat from Uzbekistan and indigo mud cloth from Mali.

These exceptional tweed cushions, which Iseult designed and sewed by hand at her Dublin studio, are made using vintage tweeds created in the 1970s and 80s by the legendary Irish weaver Noirin Kennedy – as part of a collaboration facilitated by the Killruddery Maker Programme.

Noirin founded The Weaver’s Shed in the late 1950s with her brother John O’Loughlin Kennedy. It started out in a small premises on Dublin’s Duke Lane before moving to Kilmainham, where Noirin ran a wool-to-fabric mill with seven hand-weavers. All the processes were done on site, from carding the wool, to dying it in enormous vats, to choosing colours to be woven together under Noirin’s artistic eye. Noirin’s fabrics were sold around the world and worn by personalities such as Jacqueline Kennedy, Sile de Valera and Sybil Connolly. Having closed The Weaver’s Shed in the 1980s, Noirin now lives in the hills above Tallaght where there is stored some rare and beautiful reels of her fabric, their colour combinations as vivid today as they were when they were first woven.

Working with these unique fabrics during the 2020 lockdown, Iseult was struck by the fact that no one piece of hand-woven material is the same, and that each carries a trace of the love that went into making the fabric. The cushions that result from this one-off collaboration can be scattered on any kind of soft furnishing, hall bench or kitchen chair. These cushions created from raw wool to finished item, tell a timeless story of rigor, exceptional quality and apparently effortless style. Now on sale in our Farm Shop open daily 9am – 5pm.