"It takes time and confidence to come up with your own vision, but your eyes must be wide open enough to see how it could be realised commercially," says jewellery designer Martina Hamilton.

YOU would never think that in the space above the rather beautifully appointed Kilkenny Design Centre is a restaurant that has quite likely one of the longest floor plans in Ireland (it was, centuries ago, a series of grain stores for horses belonging to the Earl of Ormonde, which accounts for the length of the building).

I REMEMBER the excitement in the Midlands in the early 1960s when the news filtered through that we were to have a design centre in Kilkenny.