Shanakee was not created in isolation.
It was shaped by generations of storytellers, craftsmen and keepers of memory.
In a modest shop on Wine Street, wood and word became one.
The Workshop on Wine Street
In the heart of Sligo Town, on Wine Street, stood a butcher’s shop that carried more than the scent of timber and trade.
It was here that Michael Quirke inherited his father’s craft — and slowly transformed it into something deeper.
What began as quiet whittling in spare moments became intricate carvings of Celtic knots, warrior figures and symbols drawn from Ireland’s oldest myths.
By the 1980s, the butcher’s apron was set aside.
The cleaver gave way to the chisel.
And the shop became a workshop of story and craft.
Visitors arrived looking for a keepsake.
They often left with something far more lasting.
The Keeper Of The Old Ways
Michael did not see wood as inert material.
He saw it as a living archive.
Each grain carried time.
Each knot held memory.
His philosophy was rooted in an older Gaelic understanding of the world — one in which land, story and spirit are inseparable.
Time was not a straight line but a turning wheel.
The past was never fully gone.
The landscape was not backdrop, but participant.
As he carved, he told stories — not rehearsed performances, but living narratives shaped by the person standing before him.
In that small workshop, mythology was not nostalgia.
It was presence.
Passing The Torch
For his nephew, Samuel Brett, the workshop was a second home.
It was there that a carving tool was first placed in his hand.
There that he learned patience. There that he learned to listen.
Michael did not teach storytelling as performance. He taught it as responsibility.
“Where is wisdom to be found?” he would say.
“You look within yourself, and there the knower can be known.”
Those words took root.
Years later, after travelling the world and returning home to train as a national tour guide, Samuel carried that inheritance forward.
Shanakee was born from that realisation.
“Where is wisdom to be found?
You look within yourself, and there the knower can be known.”
— Michael Quirke
A Living Tradition
Today, that inheritance continues.
Through private journeys across Ireland’s sacred landscapes.
Through stories shared on windswept hills and quiet stone circles.
Through wood carved by hand in Sligo.
The legacy is not preserved behind glass.
It is lived.
It is spoken.
It is carried forward.
Hand-carved pieces inspired by Ireland’s mythic past are available in our collection.