Page 8 - Patrick Scott Scrapbooks

BY SELLING *candles in
FRANI(
Highest
ATURALLY, the demand is highest around that festive time. But there is a
year-round design with a solar decoration. One and all, they look very attractive.
Mr. McCormick has been preceded on his American trip by a giant candle measuring six feet long and weighing one
hundred and one pounds. This outsize taper would burn steadily for over a month if left unquenched.
The complexities of interna- tional trade are illustrated by the following statistics: the candle cost about two pounds to manufacture, over sixty
p o u n d s to dispatch. For- tunately it is not being offered for sale. Its purpose is to light Mr. McCormick's way, so
to speak.
It Is not Intended for the dining table. But lit with due
ceremony at strategical points and times during Mr. McCor· rnick's tour It will strikingly demonstrate. that when It co rn es to manufacturing candles nobody can
candle to Ireland.
a, I thought, was
Americ
like bringing coals to a New- castle that had dispensed with coal. Boulder Dam, Tennessee Valley Authority and all that.
N
Coing places '·" . T' and going up, too !
T H E otiices of the Managing- Director of Coras Trachtala Liam Morrissey, in Earlsfort
Terrace are, !I.';! they ought to be,' noteworthy In themselves. ·
The oyster, cream and pale tan of Barney Heron's leaither chairs and Louis le Brocquy's three hundred pound carpet pro- voke the first interested ques- tions which lead to later contracts.
The place looked rather out of season, or rather, a.s if the E.S.B. had a power-f.ailure when we called. Jolly, chunky candles short and fat, whlch burn fo; twenty-four hours, were lit all along the sideboard.
But Mr. H. E. McCormick, Managing Director of John G. Rathborne, is setting out for the States with courage
Road, in England and the con· Unent of America.
And tbe meaeure of his is marked by the fact that there are fifty more people now working in the factory than there were last year.
" But, for the sales drive I am about to make. 1 called In the si:rvices of an expert designer," E1mar McCormick said. " It's all very well making Uiem and selling them and so on, but when it came to design ..... I called in Pat Scott and there they are."
They looked channtng, gay,
attractive, or, a.s in some designs
g high and heart aglow. His
mission, to sell candles. This, s

I felt, was worth looking into. In America, it seems, as soon
That's the way it is with candles. Twelve million pounds' worth are sold annually in the United States, Mr. McCormick says. And Rathborne's captured nearly twenty thousand pounds'
worth of that business last year.
Gracious
THE bulk of the American demand, apart from altar candles, I learned was for
table illumination. They ap- pear to be going in for gracious living.
At any rate, a large demand for decorative table candles exists in America. It is in this field that Mr. McCormick hopes to do business.
Rathborne's oommissioned an Irish artist, Mr. Patrick Scott, to create a series of designs to decorate their export product. The finished articles are squat, rectangular wax blocks de-
corated on each side with " Christmassy " motifs,
black, some coloured.
At the Coras
Director, Liam Morrisey (left), introduced Eimar McCormick (right) of Rathborne's the candle makers, who will leave for a sales trip to America with the new designs
· made by Patrick Scott (centre).
These are some Of Elmar for churches, gentle and evoca- McCormick's brain children, the tive.
man who for years has been We ralsed an eyebrow 1when probing away at the candle we were told tha.t the United
export market on ht.s own States burns twelve millions
selling the candles made by pound$ sterling of candles per Rathborne's of the East Wall year . . Eimar McComuck and
Coras Thrachta.la would some percenttge of that.
like
(.