This body of work is how Anna Smyth responds to the current interest in the Irish linen heritage.
Anna Smyth sensitively uses her own family history, stories, and memories of work in local mills. She has created a collection of porcelain, hand thrown, bobbin shaped figures, each one representing a mill worker. The decoration worn by each worker symbolises their relationship to the mill, their work and each other.
The scene set here is one of a group of workers who have just finished a long, exhausting shift and are gratefully heading home. In this way, she acknowledges and celebrates the workers in mills all over Ireland, whose combined skills created the once great linen industry.
In 2017 Anna Smyth gained her BA Hons Degree with First Class Honours in Contemporary Applied Arts – Ceramics. She has been Artist in Residence at the Belfast School of Art over 2017/2018. She also had a placement at the well -known Belleek Pottery in Fermanagh in 2016.
