The Connaught (connacht)Sculptural Workshop
Stone • Landscape • Material Tradition in the West of Ireland
The West of Ireland
Connaught is the western province of Ireland: a landscape of Atlantic weather, mountain passes, monastic ruins, pilgrimage roads, traditional music, mythology, poetry, and stone.
For long periods during the medieval era, Connaught was one of the intellectual and cultural centres of Europe. Romanesque carving, bardic poetry, sacred music, architecture, mythology, and craftsmanship were deeply connected here, shaped by landscape, rhythm, memory, and language.
On the western edge of Europe, facing directly into the Atlantic, many of these traditions survived longer than elsewhere. Their influence continues to shape the work taught within the workshop today.
The workshop is based in County Mayo within the historical landscape of Connaught.
For visitors travelling from London, Britain, Europe, and the Irish diaspora abroad, the west of Ireland remains one of the last places where these cultural relationships can still be encountered together within a living landscape.
The Workshop
Alongside private commissions, the workshop teaches traditional stone carving through small-group immersive formations rooted in western Irish material culture and the Romanesque carving traditions of Connaught.
Although the workshop is now based in Ireland, my own training began over forty years ago in London, where I was taught by master craftsmen formed within older Connaught and western Irish traditions.
What is taught here is not reconstruction or performance heritage, but a living continuation of a working craft lineage transmitted directly through practice.
The workshop explores:
- Traditional hand stone carving
- Irish Romanesque design
- Rhythm, structure, and proportion
- The relationship between carving, music, poetry, mythology, and landscape
- Direct practical work within a functioning workshop environment
This is not passive cultural tourism.
It is participation through making.
Why People Come
Many participants arrive from highly abstract or screen-based professional lives.
The workshop offers something increasingly rare: sustained attention directed towards physical material, rhythm, structure, and the movement of the hand.
Stone permits very little distraction.
The work demands concentration, patience, timing, and direct engagement with reality.
For some, this becomes a rare form of mental quietness: several days organised not around notifications, speed, or performance, but around material, landscape, conversation, rhythm, and making.
The west of Ireland contributes to this atmosphere naturally.
Atlantic weather, distance, music, landscape, and workshop practice combine to create conditions very different from contemporary urban life.
The experience is demanding, but deeply absorbing.
One and Two Day Studio Sessions
Small-group practical introductions to traditional western Irish stone carving.
Held in County Mayo, these sessions provide direct engagement with material, tools, rhythm, and form within the workshop itself.
Suitable for complete beginners as well as artists, musicians, architects, designers, writers, and craftspeople interested in Irish material culture.
2026 Dates
- Saturday 22 August 2026
- Saturday 19 September 2026
- Saturday 17 October 2026
Prices
- One-Day Studio Session — €350
- Two-Day Studio Session — €650
Maximum six participants.
Five- and Six-Day Seasonal Formations
£3,500 per participant
The flagship Connaught workshop experience.
Five- and six-day immersive formations combining direct stone carving with the wider cultural landscape of the west of Ireland: music, mythology, architecture, pilgrimage traditions, language, and Romanesque stonework.
Participants work directly within the workshop while also engaging with the landscapes and cultural traditions that shaped the carving traditions of western Ireland.
These formations are intentionally small in scale and limited in number each year.
Maximum six participants.
The Yearly Cycle
The work follows a seasonal structure rooted in the western Irish calendar, landscape, and cultural year.
Some formations stand close to the older seasonal points:
- Imbolc
- Bealtaine
- Lughnasadh
- Samhain
Others align with moments of cultural transmission and gathering:
- Seachtain Naomh Pádraig — St. Patrick’s Week
- An Clochán: Ceol na Cloiche — The Music of Stone
- Naomh Colm Cille — Saint Columba
- Na hUile Naomh — All Saints
Between these larger points sit:
Na Clocháin — The Stepping Stones
Smaller transitional formations allowing participants to continue the work across the year.
These formations provide continuity through changing conditions, rhythms, landscapes, and forms of attention.
2026–2027 Seasonal Formations
An Clochán: Ceol na Cloiche
The Music of Stone
Week commencing Monday 10 August 2026
Held following Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann.
The August formation acts as a point of transition.
What is encountered in music — rhythm, phrasing, structure, timing — is carried directly into material.
Participants are received at the close of the Fleadh and brought west into the workshop landscape of Connaught.
From rhythm in the ear to rhythm in the hand.
The work begins before arrival.
Samhain
Threshold & Completion
Week commencing Monday 26 October 2026
Week commencing Monday 25 October 2027
A formation exploring threshold traditions, reduction, completion, memory, and the mythological atmosphere of the western year.
Imbolc
Emergence & Structure
Week commencing Monday 1 February 2027
A winter-to-spring formation centred on emergence, restraint, rhythm, and the first movement towards form.
Seachtain Naomh Pádraig
St. Patrick’s Week
Week commencing Monday 15 March 2027
A formation aligned with the cultural landscape surrounding St. Patrick’s Day, exploring pilgrimage traditions, sacred geometry, monastic culture, and western Irish carving forms.
Bealtaine
Growth & Transformation
Week commencing Monday 3 May 2027
Landscape, movement, rhythm, transformation, and the expansion of form within the western seasonal cycle.
Lughnasadh
Harvest & Assembly
Week commencing Monday 2 August 2027
A formation connected to harvest, gathering, assembly traditions, and the height of the western Irish cultural calendar.
Individual Formations
Each formation is self-contained, but not identical.
The emphasis shifts depending on its place within the cycle.
One may focus on initiation and control.
Another on rhythm and repetition.
Another on precision and proportion.
Another on reduction and completion.
Participants who move through multiple stages gradually encounter the wider structure of the work.
Eight-Week & Sixteen-Week Residencies
Advanced long-form residencies for artists, architects, designers, collectors, craftspeople, and individuals seeking deeper immersion within the craft tradition.
Eight-Week Residency
£48,000
An extended immersion within the workshop intended for those seeking deeper engagement with western Irish material tradition, rhythm, structure, and long-form making.
The residency combines:
- Daily workshop practice
- Advanced carving instruction
- Design and proportion studies
- Cultural landscape engagement
- Individual project development
- Direct participation in workshop commissions
Sixteen-Week Private Residency
£150,000
A highly selective long-form residency limited to a very small number of participants.
This residency combines:
- Advanced private instruction
- Long-duration workshop practice
- Cultural and architectural travel
- Direct participation in live commissions
- Structural and material training
- Individual project development
Residencies may take place across Ireland and selected European locations connected to the historical carving tradition.
Commissions
Alongside teaching, the workshop undertakes private commissions informed by western Irish and Romanesque carving traditions.
This includes:
- Architectural carving
- Sculptural commissions
- Sacred and symbolic carving
- Restoration-informed work
- Long-term private projects
The workshop operates both as a working studio and as a place of transmission: a living continuation of western Irish craft culture through contemporary practice.
Conditions
- Maximum six participants per formation
- Five or six days of sustained structured work
- Direct engagement with material
- No observational attendance
Travel & Accommodation
Participants arrange their own travel, accommodation, and meals.
The workshop can provide guidance regarding nearby places to stay within County Mayo and County Galway, including Westport, Cong, and surrounding areas of the western Irish coast.
Many participants choose to extend their visit in order to spend additional time within the landscape, music, and cultural life of the west of Ireland.
Position
These formations are not passive cultural tourism.
They are direct encounters with a living western Irish craft tradition through material practice.
Access
Participation is limited.
Selection takes place through direct conversation.
If you would like to understand the structure in more detail, or to be considered for an upcoming formation, you are welcome to make contact.
Closing
The language, the poetry, the music, the landscape, and the material share a structure.
This work attempts to bring that structure into form.
To enquire about any of the above please email