Local Faces: Ray Moore

The Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th century was an extremely important artistic and political lobby in Ireland and Britain, writes Ken Doyle.

Led by figures like William Morris and Charles Rennie MacIntosh, it valued skill and craftsmanship over the mass-production techniques of the Industrial Revolution.

Whilst he’d baulk at the idea of calling himself anything more than a humble ‘quilter,’ Palmerstown man Ray Moore, who is 84 years old, is an exceptionally skilled and imaginative artist in the Arts and Crafts style.

To mark the occasion of his largest-ever exhibition, running in Ballyfermot Library through the month of July, it seemed only fitting to ask him to be the subject of our Faces of the Community feature.

We spent a very pleasant hour discussing his life, work and the extraordinary artistic abilities that he really only discovered that he had after his retirement.

Ray spent his early years in Drimnagh and then Rathfarnham before his father, in search of work during the economic hardship of 1950s Dublin, moved the Moore clan halfway across the world.

Ray takes up the story, “In those days there was very little work in the building trade in which my father had always worked, so he packed a bag and headed for Canada.

‘He eventually found proper employment in Winnipeg and sent for the family to come and join him. In fact, I’m the only one from the family who came back to Ireland, so I’ve got many more relatives in Canada than I do here.”

As we all know, behind every great man there’s a great woman and having met his now wife Breda at a dance when he was 17, before the big move, the smitten Ray knew where his destiny lay and it wasn’t in Canada.

“I was 20 when I came back and kept my relationship with Breda going whilst sleeping on my great aunt’s sofa in town.

‘Times were still hard and work was difficult to find but I had a routine that every morning I’d stand outside the GPO and get the morning paper before anyone else and ring any job that was advertised. It took a while but eventually I got lucky.”

He sure did, because he was taken on by the Irish Glass Bottle Company in Ringsend. There started a hugely fulfilling and successful 40 year career which by the time he retired, had become a labour of love.

“The more I worked with the glass I started to get interested in the product itself. The chemical composition of glass, how it’s made and how it’s worked.

‘It started to fascinate me, so in my own time I started to study the subject and I consumed every book on glasswork that I could get my hands on.”

“Soon enough it paid off and I became what’s known as a ‘Glass Chemist’ working in the laboratory at the Glass Bottle Company.

‘I was one of only two people in the country to achieve that title and I was quite proud that I qualified through my own work and study.

‘Eventually I’d start to visit glass companies all over Europe to teach the employees and find out about new techniques and innovations.”

The job itself was only part of the joy that Ray got from his time at the Ringsend firm. He speaks glowingly about the people he worked with and the friends he made.

“Unfortunately, due to my age (Ray is an extremely sharp 84 years young), a lot of the gang aren’t with us anymore. I do meet up with my old mate Herby outside Ballyfermot Church regularly and we’ll have a grand chat and a laugh about the old times. It was a sad day when the company closed its doors.”

When it comes to all things stitching, Ray got into the art form quite by accident, at the tender age of 70.

“My wife and eldest daughter Karen (Gwen and Rosanna are his other two daughters) both did a bit of sewing and became members of an organisation called the Irish Patchwork Association which was based in Clontarf.”

Ray of course, then did the most Ray thing possible. He studied the craft, had a go himself, and soon became a prodigious producer of Patchwork, joining the Association himself.

“There were two hundred members of the association. Me, another fellow and 198 women,” he says with a laugh.

Before too long, his work had started to be recognised as of a special standard and he organised his first exhibition on the mezzanine floor of Naas Library. It was an unqualified success and when it was over, he auctioned off the pieces to raise money for a charity very close to his heart.

“For many years, I’ve been a supporter of a charity called the Nepal Leprosy Trust. We tend to think in the west that Leprosy is a long extinct disease from biblical times. I’ve seen first-hand that in Nepal and places like it it’s still a huge problem, claiming many, many lives each year.”

Ray recalls a hike to the charity’s hospital through the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal where he met the patients and extremely dedicated staff, describing it as a life-changing experience.

You won’t be surprised to learn that, ever the auto-didact, Ray is also a self-taught flautist and he tells a story of playing the flute and the notes echoing through the valleys of the Himalayan trail.

If you should decide to visit Ray’s exhibition, and I suggest you do, you must experience his art properly. You’ll see the extraordinary care he takes to make the most beautiful and precise pieces and he encourages visitors to touch the work to get the full sensory effect.

I could honestly go on all day about Ray’s achievements, he’s an amateur genealogist and has published two books, one on his wife’s family and one on his own, tracing them back to the 1500s and can turn his talented hands to just about anything he puts his mind to.

Most of all, he’s a family man, and enjoys his life with Breda, his daughters and grandchildren. He’s just become a great-grandfather for the first time and after suffering poor health for the last few years, he’s making a Lazarus-like comeback into the world at large.

Daughter Gwen probably summed Ray up best when she put a sign on the door of his shed that says ‘If Dad can’t fix it, no-one can.’

Ray Moore’s Patchwork Exhibition is on now at Ballyfermot Library and continues to the end of July. I urge you not to miss it.