An Irish craftsman makes a walnut box lined with centuries-old stained oak for a watchmaker client.
In his workshop in rural County Mayo, Neville O’Farrell creates a walnut box with a stained oak veneer for special timepieces.
He runs Neville O’Farrell Designs, which he founded in 2010 with his wife Trish. He creates handcrafted boxes from local and exotic hardwoods, priced from €1,800 ($2,020), with finishing work and business details done by Ms. O’Farrell.
Most of their clients are located in the US and the Middle East. “People in New York and California are ordering jewelry and watch boxes,” Mr. O’Farrell said. “Texans are ordering humidors and boxes for their guns,” he added, and the Saudis are ordering ornate humidors.
The walnut box was designed for Mr O’Farrell’s only Irish client: Stephen McGonigle, watchmaker and owner of the Swiss company McGonigle Watches.
Mr. McGonigle commissioned them in May to make a Ceol Minute Repeater for a San Francisco collector (prices start at 280,000 Swiss francs, or $326,155 plus tax). Ceol, the Irish word for music, refers to the striking of a clock, a device that chimes the hours, quarter hours and minutes on demand.
The collector was not of Irish descent, but liked the typical Celtic decoration on Mr. McGonigle’s watch and chose the abstract bird design that the watchmaker engraved on the watch’s dial and bridges. This term is used to refer to the plate that holds the internal mechanism. through the back of the case.
The pattern was designed by Frances McGonigle, the elder sister of the artist and watchmaker, who was inspired by the art created by medieval monks for the Books of Kells and Darrow. “Ancient manuscripts are full of mythical birds whose songs tell of the ‘Keol’ of the hours,” she said. “I love how the watch bridge mimics the long beak of a bird.”
The client wanted a box measuring 111mm high, 350mm wide and 250mm deep (approximately 4.5 x 14 x 10 inches) to be made from dark colored bog oak found in the Irish peat bogs thousands of years ago. , tree. . But Mr O’Farrell, 56, said swamp oaks were “clumpy” and unstable. He replaced it with walnut and bog oak veneer.
Craftsman Ciaran McGill of specialist shop The Veneerist in Donegal created the marquetry using stained oak and a piece of light figured sycamore (commonly used as a veneer for stringed instruments). “It’s kind of like a jigsaw puzzle,” he said.
It took him two days to inlay the McGonigle logo on the lid and add bird designs to the lid and sides. Inside, he wrote “McGonigle” on the left edge and “Ireland” on the right edge in the Ogham alphabet, which was used to write the earliest forms of the Irish language, dating back to the fourth century.
Mr O’Farrell said he hoped to have the box completed by the end of this month; in most cases it will take six to eight weeks, depending on the size.
The biggest challenge, he says, was getting the box’s polyester glaze to have a high-gloss shine. Ms O’Farrell sanded for two days and then buffed with an abrasive compound on a cotton cloth for 90 minutes, repeating the process 20 times.
Everything can go wrong. “If a speck of dust gets on the rag,” Mr. O’Farrell said, “it can scratch the wood.” Then the box must be disassembled and the process repeated. “That’s when you hear screaming and swearing!” – he said with a laugh.
Post time: Nov-11-2023