Did you know that "Claddagh" is an anagram of "glad Chad"? Coincidence? Perhaps.

Best,

JF

I'll have some nice knotwork, thank you very much.

Don't most people think of shamrocks first? I mean, look a' the Aer Lingus logo.

Personally I think Claddaghs are cheesy, due to heavy-handed symbolism (clonk! Ow, I've been hit on the head with a Thematic Element!), but butt-ugly? Naw. Not interesting enough for that. Besides, it's been popular for a long time...I guess h.h.s. sells, eh?

Or as my friend David likes to say, usually when watching a Z movie in fascinated horror, "Behold the power of cheese!"

While the page is in fact butt-ugly, I have to admit I kind of like it. If there's such a thing as primitivist outsider art web design, that page is it.

As for the hostility, my insupportable blue-sky guess is that the person who created that page is an artist who's gotten tired of watching claddagh-decorated tat outsell everything else in the crafts market, including original work of superior quality.

You hear these rants from artists who work in the front-line trenches. Where I grew up, the equivalent emblem was roadrunners. Tourists loved them. If you made three of some craft object, one with a roadrunner and the other two decorated with any other design under the sun, the roadrunner piece is that one that would sell.

Moralists and goody-two-shoes reformers fret when people display a taste for art they think is bad. What drives artists crazy is watching people pass up good work to buy the bad.

MKK