Our Story
We are Anke and Eugene McKernan, and we have been making scarves for over forty years. What started with a couple of handlooms has grown into something neither of us could have predicted, and we are glad every day that we followed it.
We grew up in very different places, Anke near Hannover and Eugene in Dublin's Liberties but what we had in common was a love of making things. We met in the Brazen Head in Dublin in 1984, and spent a year together living and working in North Donegal. Ireland was a very different country then and work was hard to come by, so we moved to Germany, started building a life together and, alongside it, a handweaving business.
By the early nineties we had three small children and a strong feeling that it was time to move back to Ireland. In July 1991 we packed up everything we owned and drove around the West of Ireland, looking for somewhere to land.
We found it in the village of Tuamgraney, in East Clare, on the shores of Lough Derg: a ruin, which we bought and renovated into a house for ourselves; later we added a workshop. Over the years the business developed and grew, and in recent years became successful enough that we were able to buy the site next door and build on it.
A bigger workshop, shop, and the new Weaver's Café are a very recent addition. We hope it will bring a lot of people here to see for themselves just how beautiful East Clare is.
The business has grown into something we are genuinely proud of, and we love the daily rhythm of the workshop, the looms, the people, the place. Tuamgraney has been very good to us, and we hope we have been good to it in return.
We are at retirement age now, though retiring is not really on our minds, and part of what we were building towards all along was something bigger than the two of us: a business that can stand on its own, and carry on well into the future.
What started as two people and a pair of handlooms grew steadily over the years into something neither of us had fully planned for. Scarves turned out to be the right focus: a simple product that gives us the creative freedom we needed while also keeping the business alive.
As the years went on the workshop grew, the team grew, and McKernan became established as one of Ireland's most recognised scarf designers and manufacturers.
Today our designs are sold in select boutiques, concept stores and museum shops throughout Ireland, Europe and North America, and we employ a team of people who share our belief that things are worth making well. Just a few of them are East Clare natives, most have come from all corners of Ireland and the world, just like we did.
We love working with our hands and hearts, and it gives us great satisfaction to pass our knowledge on so that the art of textile manufacturing stays alive in Ireland.