Through his company Sisko Design, O’Sullivan supplies goods to Roche-Bobois, one of the biggest furniture retailers in Europe; Brennan has worked with Terence Conran and designed ranges for Richard Lewis, the fashion guru.
O’Sullivan left Dublin in 1973 and worked in banking for 19 years, becoming manager of an American bank in Paris. However, it was not dollars but his heart that originally drew him to France. “This is a fantastic city for design, but it wasn’t design that brought me to Paris, nor banking — it was love,” he says. Married to Beatrice Englert, a French artist, O’Sullivan began to realise that banking failed to give him “enough of a buzz”, so in 1992 he abandoned his lucrative career and started to design furniture.
“I hadn’t a clue about the design world,” he says. “I started off with some sculptures. Then I realised nobody was going to buy them, so I turned them into lamps. I was so clueless that I built up a collection of 200, of which I sold about 12! I learnt the hard way that if something doesn’t work, you have to change it.”
In 1994 O’Sullivan established Sisko Design, and his breakthrough came two years later when he presented a series of lamps with mirrors at Maison et Objet, the French design fair: the range was sold to Roche-Bobois.
“I really look around for brand new ideas,” he says. “In 1996 I started making wooden furniture with leather handles. Nobody else was using leather then, but it’s everywhere now. If you do something that works well it soon becomes ubiquitous, so maybe it’s not as original as you thought . . .”
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The leather handles were followed by a witty series of ceramic lamps (€150-€200) made to look exactly like handbags. The fashion metaphor carried over into a sofa decorated in a distinctive dogtooth check, with a big black button in the middle of each cushion.
O’Sullivan has just released the prototype for his Venus standard lamp. In the shape of a dress, with pleated fabric on the front and sides, it is internally lit and dispenses with a lampshade.
O’Sullivan has gradually become one of the top French designers for the wholesale market. “I design everything, but because I don’t do retail nobody has heard of me,” he says. “Two years ago Peter Johnson [from Peter Johnson Interiors] came to my stand at Maison et Objet and bought nearly everything to sell in his shop in Dublin — and he didn’t even know I was Irish.”
Lorraine Brennan, meanwhile, has just made the move to Paris. “It’s a great city for design and I felt I needed to see what was going on internationally. But love did come into it too,” she admits.
Since she travels for work purposes, Brennan was inspired to design a coffee table based on a paper aeroplane. “It’s made out of two sheets of steel, folded and welded, but I call it the A4 Steel Plane because it’s made to the same proportions as the planes we made in school,” she says. “It’s a functional coffee table with inbuilt magazine storage, but it’s also very tongue-in-cheek.”
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Brennan mostly designs items for other companies to produce. She has just finished a range of lighting for an as-yet-unnamed UK retailer. “They’ll launch it when the clocks go back, that’s the high season for lighting. I had the bases handcarved and then I took a mould and had them cast in Corian [a solid material commonly used for worksurfaces]. They’ll have a dusty finish in charcoal grey and white. I always have white products — I love purity.”
She is also designing a new range of accessories that will be available through Fifty-eight b in Dublin (€60-€180). “They have a Japanese look, white and simple with tiny splashes of bold colour. You might have a lamp that’s totally white but with a toggle in fluorescent green, or a sculptural white bowl with a bright yellow base.”
Brennan is also currently working with a number of small Irish craft companies. “I’m part of a project called Avantcraft, which links Irish makers with external designers,” she says.
“Some produce a traditional product, but with a little adjustment their skills can create something much more contemporary that will appeal to younger buyers.”