A Chat With Our Founder

Fáilte go dtí My Irish Jeweler innú - welcome to My Irish Jewler today! As part of our Notes from Home series, I thought it might be nice to sit down with Ciarán because August is his birthday month. Go a little bit more behind the scenes, and share this with our customers and friends around the world.

Ciarán: The Early Years.

Vicky: So, Ciarán, I was going to go right back in time and start at the very beginning. Will you share a little bit about your early life with us, please?

Ciarán: Well, I was born up in Belfast. And I lived there till I was five. And then my mam and dad moved the family down to Dublin, to what was a little town at the time, Swords, in the north of Dublin. It's now a big, big town, out near the airport. I grew up there, and stayed there until going to university in Dublin, and I've pretty much been in Dublin ever since.

V: Tell me about school-age Ciarán. What did you love? What were your favourite subjects?

C: I loved school. So, I did like maths. And I came from an Irish-speaking family, so I did all my schooling in Irish. I was in the first bunscoil* that was set up in Belfast; my parents were involved in setting that school up. And when we moved to Dublin, they found the only Irish language primary school at that time in the north side of Dublin, Scoil an tSeachtar Laoch, which means ‘School Of The Seven Heroes.’ And I continued on to Scoil Caitríona for secondary school.

* (Note: A bunscoil - pronounced ‘bun-skull’ is Irish for a primary school for children between the ages of four and twelve. Scoil an tSeachtar Laoch - pronounced skull un choc-ter lay-ock - is named after the seven signatories of the 1916 Proclamation of Independence.)

V: Okay, and then you went to university. Tell me then about what you did in college because it's a long way from jewellery you came, isn't it?

C: Yeah, that's right. I was interested in creative pursuits, but I also had a bit of a mathematical brain. So I was attracted to multimedia, which was a new course at the time, computer-based, but also allowed you to indulge your creative side. So that's where I ended up.

My Irish Jeweler: How It Happened, And What Comes Next.

V: That sounds like a very good mix! Tell us about how you met Peter.

C: Oh yeah, thank you. So, that would have been in the mid-noughties when I met Peter. I was working in town, and I walked into his jewellery shop, College House Jewellers. And I was building websites at the time. Peter was really keen to explore setting up a website for his shop because he had people in shopping with him all the time from overseas. The particular jewellery he sold in there was a lot of Celtic designs, a lot of traditional Irish designs that people wanted to keep as souvenirs or bring home to share with their families. And in fact, he was the only shop that sold a design called the History of Ireland.

So yeah, he'd been doing that for a long time, and he'd made a lot of friends from around the world, and he used to love doing mail order. So yeah, it was a nice happenstance that I walked in, and we had that conversation.

V: And it's lovely because we know that we still hear from people today who shopped with Peter and College House Jewellers, and it's lovely to have that continuity - you helped that happen!

C: Yeah, thank you.

V: I’m going to ask you next about your ambitions for My Irish Jeweler. I would love to know your vision for the future.

C: Absolutely. Well, I really enjoyed working with Peter and Dennise for so long, and since he retired last year, my ambition for this year and the coming years is really to continue to do what Peter did for so long. To continue connecting our customers with Ireland, and its culture and history through our jewellery and through what we do.

And, you know, myself and Gemma, and Jane, and the rest of the team were thinking of different ways to do that. And some of them may be through technology, different ways of communicating with our customers rather than through our website.

Maybe there are other things that we can do through live-streaming or things like that. And then also maybe there's room for us to go back to our roots at some point and open another store here in Dublin. I mean, it's a long time now since College House Jewellers closed. So, we've no firm plans to do that, but it's something that's in the back of our minds.

The Irish Passions: Music and Sport!

V: You’ve said in the past that your love of the Irish language comes from your maternal grandfather who was a school principal, a school headmaster. And I'm curious to know, those who have read bits and pieces that we've written or who've seen videos will know you're also a very musical person, so I'm wondering where your musicality comes from. Is that part of your family background?

C: Yes. Well, it probably came from the other side of the maternal line. My mother's family were from County Monaghan. And my mam has really great memories of spending her summers and holidays in County Monaghan. And that was a very musical household. My uncle was a drummer in show bands in the 70s. And myself and my brother had our own bands during the nineties and the noughties.

And the love of Irish certainly came from my grandfather. He was raised on a farm in County Limerick. The family didn't speak Irish down there, but he was always very interested in it. And as I was growing up, he would pepper his conversation with phrases here and there, as my mother does now. And I've ended up with three Irish teachers now in my family, all of my siblings!

V: That's an excellent recommendation as a way to encourage children and the wider family to use Irish just a little bit, your cúpla focal here and there. That's definitely a testament to it, I think. Good job!

(Note: Cúpla focal - pronounced koopla fok-ull - means a few words in Irish.)

V: You're also a big football fan. Do you still play? I know there was a while there when you'd be heading off to soccer on an evening. Is that still something you have time for?

C: Absolutely. And I'm playing in an amateur final tomorrow. Yeah, just to clarify now, I actually play the English game: soccer. So, in Dublin, when we say football, it can refer to either. If you're outside Dublin in Ireland, and you say football, typically you mean Gaelic football. I never had the physique for Gaelic football. You need to be large. And powerful! It's pretty unforgiving as a game. A lot of the games are very intense and very fast. It certainly helps to be physically imposing or else to have a really quick turn of pace when you're playing Gaelic football.

I played hurling more so in school. Our primary school was big into hurling. And I enjoyed that. I was never good enough to make the first 15, though, but I'd usually come on for a few minutes. And I did get to play in Croke Park on a couple of occasions - our national stadium - because our little team got to the local final - that was tremendous! But my love growing up was soccer, and I used to play for hours and hours every day, and it was just... Home from school, straight out to play!

V: So who's your team? Who do you support?

C: I support Arsenal in the English league, yeah. Big Arsenal fan, along with my brother. I'm very impressed with a local team, Bohemians, in Dublin, who I know Gemma is involved with.

V: Gemma would be delighted to hear that!

C: Yeah, I really like what they're doing in terms of community. The Irish Soccer League is... Very, kind of, local in nature. Doesn't have the the big names that the English League has. And I really like what Bohemians is doing in involving the local community. And yeah, some really positive stuff going on there.

V: And, of course, there was a lot of excitement recently for the Irish women's football team as well - lots of talk in the office over their matches!

C: That's right, yes. First time at the World Cup! And we enjoyed watching that. I brought my daughter along to one of their qualifying games. And I'll definitely be doing that again in the future because they've got a bit of talent in their ranks that, unfortunately, the men's side is missing at the moment!

V: If you want to learn how to do something, you ask a woman! Okay, so I'm going to have some quick questions for you now.

A Few Quick Questions

V: What are you currently reading, or have you most recently read?

C: Oh, I like that. I have young children at the moment, and my reading is almost entirely limited to bedtime stories. We love Oliver Jeffers picture books. Stuck is my favourite. And he was raised in Belfast too!

V: And the best film or series that you've seen recently? Again, time constraints accepted.

C: Well, we loved The Bear set in Chicago—very tense, half-hour episodes based in a sandwich shop. And we're watching the second season of that at the moment. Fantastic show!

V: I'll make a note of it! What's your bad day song? What's the song that, that, y’know, makes you happy? That gets you back on your feet again?

C: The Plains of Kildare! I love listening to it in the car and the kids have started asking for it too. It's a great tune and story, and builds to a tremendous excitement. You can hear the hooves in it.

V: Interesting, okay. What would be your personal recommendation for somebody coming to Ireland? Not necessarily the touristy things that we know, the Book of Kells and the Guinness Brewery and all those good things that people go to see. What's your must-see bit of Ireland?

C: The Atlantic Sea. Yeah. We took a family holiday to County Kerry a couple of weeks ago. We were a short drive from Tralee, and in the house we were staying in, we could see the sea. It was a quick walk to the beach, and standing there in the waves... A magnificent sight and well worth the three-hour trip from Dublin!

V: That sounds like a good shout. And finally, what's Ireland's greatest export? Now, this can be a person, a drink, a food, or a thing. What, for you, is up there as our greatest export as a country?

C: I would say the attitude that we bring with us when we go abroad ourselves. I spent a few years in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam. And... I always enjoyed meeting Irish people abroad. And I think we bring energy, optimism, and determination to enjoy ourselves. So, yeah, won't look past the people!

V: Absolutely. Listen, thank you for sitting down to have a chat with me - I’m so pleased we got to do it. And Happy Almost Birthday!

C: Sláinte!