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Celtic jewelry glows in Irish renaissance

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Harry keaney

Mention the current Irish renaissance and most people immediately think of music, literature, dance, or theater. But what about jewelry, one of the most ancient of Irish arts?

“Claddagh jewelry was always a favorite, but successes such as ‘Riverdance’ and ‘Lord of the Dance’ have made Celtic jewelry hip and I am finding more and more sales in Celtic,” Sean Moynagh, director of Una O’Neill Designs International, based in Waldwick, N.J., said.

“When I first came to the U.S., you couldn’t give Celtic jewelry away. If it didn’t have a Claddagh or a shamrock, it sat on the shelves.”

Moynagh pointed out that Celtic incorporates designs that originated in middle Europe and, he said, there was now a greater appreciation of Celtic design. “Nothing proves that more than sales,” he added.

Moynagh’s business is primarily that of a jewelry wholesaler with almost all of his products manufactured in Ireland. But he is also a jeweler in the traditional sense in that he designs and makes his own pieces.

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“I do commission jobs,” he said. “They tend mostly to be wedding related, engagement rings that people may want to look Celtic, bridesmaids’ and grooms’ gifts, and I also do corporate orders. A major part of the business is designing stuff, coming up with new items every year.”

His best sellers at present are a pendant bearing a Celtic love knot, which he said is just a basic knot with a heart, and a ring with a shamrock garland filigree design that, he pointed out, is part of the Blarney Woollen Mills’ Castle Collection. He also sells heraldic coats of arms rings, seal rings, bracelets, ear rings, brooches, cuff-links and Claddagh watches which have a Claddagh on the face and a band embroidered with Claddaghs. His stock ranges from costume jewelry to items in precious metals, but he points out that only the pieces in precious metals carry the Una O’Neill hallmark.

Moynagh, 37, a native of Blackrock, Dublin, came to the jewelry business by a circuitous route. After receiving his secondary education in Newbridge College, in Kildare, which he attended as a boarder, he began working in Jury’s Hotel, in Dublin. “The hotel business was in the family blood, so that’s why I pursued it,” he said. “The family owned a hotel and guesthouse in the Isle of Man, it was called ‘The Wellington.’ ”

However, after having spent years in boarding school, Moynagh found the hours involved in the hotel business didn’t appeal to him and, after two years, he left Jury’s. He then went into sales with the Yellow Pages, in Dublin. He came to the U.S. in 1982.

“I figured I would come out for a year — I had a job in Tommy Makem’s Irish Pavilion,” he said, referring to the pub and restaurant on East 57 Street in Manhattan that recently closed after almost 20 years.

“I was in the restaurant business until about 1986 and then I decided to go into my mother’s business, which was wholesaling handknit sweaters. She sent the wool out to different knitters in the area and picked it up when it was finished.”

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