Mark and I drove from Killarney to the Beara Peninsula yesterday. Our specific mission was to find the Cailleach Beara, and we did find and meet her. I’ll write more about that later. As we drove back along twisty, narrow, fuchsia-laden Ring of Beara road, we saw a sign that said, “Pottery”. We drove up the even narrower road to the studio. Just as we were rounding the corner onto the property, Mark said, “I hope she has her blues right”. He was referring to the Cailleach’s winter blue hue. And then we came upon the sight above: beautiful blue pottery gleaming in the sunlight.
It’s the studio of Marianne Klopp We met another potter there. I think her name is Barnett, or Burnett. I didn’t write it down, because I figured I’d google it later. Mistake. When I did google it, I got Marianne Klopp – not the person we met.
The woman we met asked what we were doing on Beara and when I told her we’d gone to meet the Cailleach we got to talking about storytelling. She had heard Liz Weir before and said she was planning on attending the Cape Clear Festival in September. I’m going to contact the studio to see if I can figure out who the potter we met is. We had a good visit about the Cailleach, and she also told me about a local artists’ retreat called Anam Cara.
