“I’ve a little piece written in the window ‘Ireland’s smallest Sam Maguire,’ which I’ve no doubt it is,” says Annette Lappin. The fine jeweller is talking about a very unusual piece she has on display in the window of her shop in Monaghan. It’s a little silver box with an orange and white enamelled lid.
On top of this sits a tiny replica of the iconic All-Ireland winners’ trophy, the Sam Maguire, which she says is “not even an inch high”. Always an artistic child and teen, she says that when she went to the National College of Art and Design in Dublin she knew that jewellery was her passion. Close up of Annette's mini Sam Maguire “I first saw they had a metalwork department and it intrigued me, the whole layout and the ambience of it.
I got a really good feeling and I thought this is what I wanted to do, craft metal jewellery.” Annette has been based at her shop in Monaghan since 2005 and while she does sell pieces, she says, “I would say 80-85pc of my business is commission work.” Working with all kinds of fine metals is her passion and while inspired by jewellery of the past, in particular that of the Art Nouveau period, creating the unique is something she says she’s always striving for, saying: “There’s a lot of sentiment in what we do.
” It makes sense then that when it came to a project she was assigned as a student, she decided to make something a little different. An Armagh woman, Annette decided to make the miniature Sam Maguire 2.