The Mad Prince- Harry Clarke Pin

The aim of the collaboration was to create a series of pins based on the National Gallery’s collection and Ireland’s rich cultural history.

Martha Hegarty, founder of Mink, chose James Barry’s The Death of Adonis (c.1775), Harry Clarke’s The Song of the Mad Prince (1917), James Joyce’s Ulysses and W.B. Yeats’ epitaph as the diverse subjects for the collection. The result is a series of four pins accompanied by a piece of writing on the history and meaning of each artefact.

Martha Hegarty is an Irish designer currently based in London. She holds an MA in Modern & Contemporary Art History and has worked in various creative fields across Ireland, Switzerland, Vietnam & the UK. Mink is a project that began in 2020 and combines a number of her mediums and interests: set design, graphic design and art history. 

“I was drawn to the idea of making something that people could wear and walk around with and tell stories about, and I had always bought pins. There’s something appealing about how solid they are; you can have the silliest idea but casting it in metal somehow gives it weight and gravitas. I’ve found that there’s actually a lot you can put into such an unassuming medium. It’s similar to how crafts that are historically seen as feminine or innocuous, like embroidery, can actually have a lot of subversive bite. My background is a mix of theatre design, graphic design and art history so I wanted to create a project that combined all of those things in one place, and something that was totally in my own voice.”

"This design is based on the central figure in The Song of the Mad Prince (1917) by Harry Clarke, a piece which is in turn based on the Walter de la Mare poem of the same name.

A key figure in the Celtic Revival of the 20th Century, Clarke was a master of stained glass and illustration. He was described by Irish writer George Russell as “one of the strangest geniuses of his time” who “might have incarnated here from the dark side of the moon.”

The Mad Prince pin recreates stained glass art using a transparent enamel technique. It comes in a bespoke box printed with words from the original poem in gold foil and lies a black velvet pillow (rather than the moss of the poem). The black box and matte black plating aim to make the colours pin glint in the dark like treasure."

• Soft enamel pin
• Black plating with stained glass enamel
• Screenprinted details
• 60mm high
• Embossed with logos
• Two gold clutches
• Gold foil box
• Guaranteed good time

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  Website: www.marthahegarty.com