Collection: The Sheela Collection

Ireland is The Land of the Sheela. This Sheela Collection pays homage to the icon of the Sheela na Gig. The pagan ways & tradtions of pre-colonial Ireland were embodied by the form of the Irish Sheela. The Sheela na Gig collection speaks to my love of Irish culture, to the power of life brought forth by women, and to the parts of our history that have been lost and re-discovered.

There’s a strong artistic movement in Ireland to reclaim and revive Celtic art and iconography and this inspired me to create the Sheela na Gig collection. Silver smithing is an art that keeps pulling me in deeper and every time I created one design for the Sheela, another would come to me, and so the collection was born.

Sheela na Gigs are sacred carvings dating from Medieval times, found mostly in Ireland. There are over 130 Sheelas in Ireland, approx 30 in Britain, less than 10 throughout the rest of Europe. The Sheelas are naked women holding their vulva with one or 2 hands, usually bald, and with a primitive face. They are found at boundaries; church entrances, castle gates, town walls and other liminal spaces.

The historical meaning of the Sheela na Gigs are still (for now) a mystery. The certainty of their original meaning was lost to colonialism, emigration, body shame, and social structures which sought to erase the worship of female divinity.However, the research has been making strong strides over the last decade, and we are honing in on what the Sheelas meant to the Medieval Irish. The previous patriarchal assumption that Sheelas were a “warning against lust & exhibitionism”, has lost credibility with the accumulation of data from other such carvings, local lore, and the diaspora. The current leading theories range from Sheelas representing pagan Ireland’s place alongside the Church to fertility goddesses, to a Cailleach-like figure embodying birth, death, and re-birth.