Waterford
Crystal
Chief
of
Design
Jim
O'Leary
Veery: Is your after hour life tightly linked to glass, glass design?
James O’Leary: My whole life is linked to glass design. I was born in Waterford, and I joined the company in 1960 at sixteen years old. And I have spent the last thirty-two years in this company. The whole city, the whole economic life of the city evolves around the factory, and many of my cousins and relations are working in the factory; therefore, it’s more than a factory to me. There is a wonderful family atmosphere pervading within the four walls of this building. Therefore, I would suggest, Waterford is very much a way of life to me just as it is for our consumers.
Veery: Glass and social/political concerns. Does one have business with the other?
James O’Leary: No, I don’t have any problem in separating the two. Crystal is absolutely timeless. It’s probably the oldest art form known to man. It was there long before painting as an art form became popular - people were experimenting with and making beautiful things from glass.
Veery: When you started in the glass world, what did you think of it? What do you think of it now?
James O’Leary: I must say that I am still as enthusiastic and excited today as I was the first day that I walked through the factory gates. It’s a wonderful wonderful company to work with; it’s a wonderful medium to work with; I have never seen anybody who didn’t buy a piece of crystal and be very emotionally involved with that piece of crystal, just looking at it, picking it up in the hands, stroking it, holding it to the light, and enjoying it for its own pure, simple beauty. Therefore, I can say, with hand on heart,that if I were starting out again, and this were 1960, I could ask for no better walk through life than to have taken this one with the crystal world.
Veery: Of your glass, what is your favorite?
James O’Leary: We at Waterford have had wonderfully great success down through the years, and that was the Lismore pattern which was designed by my predecessor Mr. Havel; this pattern is probably the best known pattern in the United States or indeed the whole world in the crystal business. In 1985, I was asked to design a pattern that would someday reach the same heights as this particular pattern, and I designed Araglin. I’m very happy to say six years later that Araglin is now the number two pattern in the world. I hope to one day emulate Lismore.
Veery: Who are your favorite artists and why?
James O’Leary: My tastes in art are very broad but the ones that have given me the most pleasure through my life, and the ones that I have found at various times of my life, and have had periods of my life when they were the most important painters to me, are, namely, Caravaggio, Monet, Van Gogh, Andrew Wyeth. I think those four are the ones that have given me the most pleasure in my life. Monet is also a great romantic; I love the romance in his work. That’s part of the whole imagery of crystal with me. It’s very much, especially at Waterford, a romance product: there’s wonderful romance and emotional happenings within buying a piece of Waterford.
Veery, 1992