CRAFT-A-PALOOZA!

Two days in bucolic Ireland to debate art and design? Follow us. By INGRID ABRAMOVITCH

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Walsh's Elm Sculptural Bench, made with the wood of a 100-year-old fallen tree.

Architect Shigeru Ban, fashion designer Iris van Herpen, and actor Jeremy Irons walk into a farm. They are there, in southwestern Ireland, it turns out, for an annual gathering devoted to craft and design called Making In, the brainchild of Joseph Walsh, a furniture designer whose family has cultivated this pastoral property in County Cork since the 18th century.

The self-taught woodworker started making furniture here two decades ago, when he was in his early twenties. Before long his sculptural designs in wood and resin caught the eye of collectors like the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, who in 2017 commissioned two dozen of Walsh’s Enignum chairs for their home at Chatsworth House.

Irish designer and furniture maker Joseph Walsh in his workshop, on his family's farm in Fartha in County Cork.