An unassuming Tipperary woodturner is making a name for himself in the Irish art world

Martin Ryan is an award-winning segmented woodturner based out of Clonboo, between the villages of Clonmore and Templetuohy. Here in his workshop, Martin is creating some of the most celebrated pieces of art in Ireland today.

In February of this year, Martin was one of just 14 artists nationally who were selected by Design & Crafts Council Ireland to showcase their work as part of Collect 2025, the leading international fair for contemporary craft and design taking place in Somerset House, London.

Martin invited me out to his workshop last week for a chat about the unlikely journey that led to this amazing and inspiring point in his life.

He began: “About 10 years ago somebody asked me would I like to do a woodturning course and I said I’d give it a go. The course was supposed to last three months but actually ended up only being about six nights but I’d gotten the gist of it at that stage. I’d made a lamp and I said to my wife I’m thinking of buying a lathe and I might start doing a bit more myself and it went on from there.

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“I started doing a few little bits, nothing major and then somewhere along the line I did a piece of segmented work and it blew my mind. I looked into it a bit further and read about the mathematics involved and all the detail involved but it ended up staying in the back of my mind, so one Saturday evening I said I’d give it a go and came up here and started working on a piece and I’ve been working on them since.”

Martin went on to explain exactly how woodturning works, using some of the many projects stored in his workshop to demonstrate what he was explaining: “A full circle is 360 degrees and that’s the only figure that doesn’t change but what does change is how many segments you want to put into it. You want to put in segments so that you can get a contrast so you can build up your design. Generally, when I make a ring, I use 16 segments and I try to have bright and dark and so on and these are cut at 11 and a quarter degrees.”

Martin showed me an example of some notes he was using on a recent project, there were so many equations written on the page it looked like it could have been taken from a maths textbook.

He went on to show me just how tight the segments are pressed together. To the naked eye, only a small line is just about visible and that’s mainly down to the contrast in colour. It’s certain that a large part of the praise for Martin’s work is down to the fact that his measurements are so well-calculated and his detail so precise that it really makes it hard to believe that so many individual pieces can go into his designs.

“I’m very very choosy about my wood,” he says.

“I’ll tell you why, it’s because you can get wood with two completely different colours in it.” He points to a piece of walnut wood that has a slight variance in the colouring of it’s surface: “I wouldn’t put that piece into the pattern because it messes up the detail of the pattern I’m doing myself.”

He explains a bit more about his process: “People ask me do I work on computers or do I use computers to create my design. No I don’t, I work form my mind’s eye.” Beside his notepad full of equations, Martin also has pages full of drawings of different designs that he wants to try out. He explains that he could be lying awake at night thinking about what designs are possible and different ways he could execute the designs he’s after.

He tells me about how the singer Johnny Cash inspired one of his pieces: “One night Johnny Cash came out and he was playing away on the guitar and singing I Walk the Line and the camera stopped on a shot of his guitar strap. I asked my wife to pause the television so I could take a picture and so the design here on this piece is taken from Johnny’s guitar strap during that performance and I put two black lines across the top to represent the song I Walk the Line.”

Many of Martin’s pieces are inspired by images he has seen in his day to day life. Three of the pieces he has most pride in are influenced by the Rock of Cashel, The Giant’s Causeway and Holycross Abbey. He showed me each of these pieces and explained how he was able to achieve their complicated designs.

His Rock of Cashel piece is a vase that is 17 inches high and ten inches wide and is comprised of a total of 1,490 pieces. On the vase is a depiction of the Rock of Cashel which on initial inspection looks like it may be penciled on but is actually also created using tiny individual pieces of wood. Several windows are visible on the piece and each window is made of several pieces of thin wood stacked together and added into the circles that make up the vase. As with all of his pieces, the design is visible both on the outside and the inside. One point of particular note on the piece is a shadow effect on the right side of the castle where Martin has used a different type of wood that is darker in colour to make it look like a shadow is being cast. The level of detail and thought gone into it is truly breathtaking.

Martin’s ‘Holycross Abbey’ is another vase, made from Beech, Maple Cherry and Black Veneers. It’s 9.5 inches wide and 14 inches high and is comprised of a total of a massive 2,465 pieces. When showing me this piece Martin showed me the illustration he drew himself whilst visiting Holycross Abbey and the resulting wood-design is almost identical.

His third landmark piece, ‘The Giant’s Causeway’, isn’t actually a depiction of the location but is named so because of the effect created on the bowl which resembles the pillars seen at The Giant’s Causeway. The piece is almost an optical illusion in how Martin has been able to use different types of wood to create a 3D effect. The bowl is made from Maple, Walnut and Beech and is comprised of 250 pieces.

All three pieces are available to see on Martin’s website clonboowoodart.com alongside the rest of his hugely impressive portfolio.

Before leaving I talked to Martin about what it was like to exhibit in London. He is understandably very proud to have been selected to go over by Design & Crafts Council Ireland and sings their praises for helping him to get his work over there and be seen at such a prestigious event. He tells me that he hopes to be exhibiting with them again soon in Kilkenny and Cashel, which he says has all been made possible with the help of his mentor in the council who has helped him at every step of the way.

His other credentials include membership of the Irish Woodturning Guild and the American Association of Woodturners.

Martin is hoping to exhibit his work in Templemore Library in June of this year where people will be able to view and purchase some of his pieces. From seeing what he’s created first hand I can say for certain that every single piece Martin creates has been done with absolute care and passion and he reiterated to me several times that he does not create the same piece twice, so any of these works would make for fantastic collector’s pieces.

Visit clonboowoodart.com to see more of his work and to contact Martin about purchasing or commissioning a piece.