It’s not hard to find shamrocks in Ireland but to find silver shamrocks you need to go to Galway.
Maura Dickerson grows them in her backyard and each and everyone is individual, like a snowflake, she likes to say. Maura talks to her shamrocks, sometimes she even plays them music. She always encourages them along before she picks the ones ready to become part of the week’s offering of silver shamrocks at the Galway Market.
“I tell the big ones they have done their job and need to make room for the babies to grow. I pick the ones I need for the jewelry and just talk to the rest. I know it sounds crazy but I do think it makes a difference,” she says.
Owner of Ocean Moon Designs, she has been selling her jewelry at the Galway Market for years now but it’s only the past half dozen years or so that she’s made a name for herself with her silver shamrocks. She impresses a single shamrock into silver that looks like putty, bakes it in a kiln where the shamrock burns out and leaves an imprint in the silver. Those silver shamrocks become necklaces and earrings that fascinate people from around the world.
She keeps track of where they go in a book she carries with her and so far she knows they have been taken back to every state in America, and have landed on every continent worldwide. That is a lot of silver shamrocks!
“Most people think they are made with a stamp,” she tells me. “When I explain that each one is a real shamrock and that no two are ever alike, like snowflakes, they really take interest and spend some time picking out the perfect one for them.”
You can find Maura and Ocean Moon Designs weekends at the Galway Market, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Etsy.
And you can hear Maura explain how she makes them by clicking on this link to episode #33 of Erin’s Isle.
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