The piece represents Knowledge, Strength, and Compassion. This is a handmade piece, made in County Clare, Ireland. Made from white and black clay and hand-painted.

It’s based on the story of St. Brendan. The boat was made for transatlantic voyages by medieval Irish monks is a reasonable one.

We know that Ireland was the center of a vigorous culture during the fifth and sixth centuries CE, preserving Christian civilization in Northern Europe after the decline and collapse of the Roman Empire. During this period, Irish monks ventured out into the North Atlantic in pursuit of some kind of spiritual or divine mission. They reached the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Faeroe Islands. The Norse sagas suggest that Irish monks were even in Iceland when the Norse settled there after about 870 CE (though no archaeological evidence has yet confirmed this).

Such accomplishments add authenticity to the story of St. Brendan, who was born in Ireland about 489 and founded a monastery at Clonfert, Galway. According to legend, he was in his seventies when he and 17 other monks set out on a westward voyage in a curragh, a wood-framed boat covered in sewn ox-hides. The monks sailed about the North Atlantic for seven years, according to details set down in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis in the tenth century.