EGS - Three Letters, Three Wells

‘Three Letters, Three Wells – A Pilgrimage in Glass’ premieres at Irish Design Week 2025

This autumn, Finnish graffiti and contemporary artist EGS embarked on a creative journey through Kilkenny, Ireland tracing the footsteps of Finnish designer Kaj Franck, who travelled to Ireland in 1961.

Over the years, graffiti has taken EGS from Helsinki to Stockholm, Copenhagen and across Europe, painting trains and walls, building networks and learning through travel. Now, in Three Letters, Three Wells – A Pilgrimage in Glass, EGS brings that same spirit of exploration to Ireland.
More than 60 years later, EGS follows a different kind of map: one that values detours, collaboration and getting a little lost along the way.

Blending graffiti, glass sculpture, storytelling and sacred sites, the project reimagines what a design pilgrimage might look like today. Developed in collaboration with the Design & Crafts Council Ireland and the Finnish Cultural Institute in the UK and Ireland, it explores how two seemingly separate traditions, graffiti and craft, share deep connections through skill, patience and trust.

Working alongside photographer Marko Rantanen and glassblower Rory Leadbetter of Jerpoint Glass, EGS visited three holy wells in Kilkenny: St. Moling’s, Kenny’s, and St. Augustine’s, using each as inspiration for a unique glass vessel. Created with Finnish birch ash, the works hold water from the wells, becoming containers of memory, mythology and movement.

“Travelling has always been central to my practice. As a graffiti writer, I learned to navigate through letters and movement. For this project, I wanted to create a new kind of map—one drawn in glass, air, and light, ” EGS concludes.

The resulting installation combines glass works, drawings, photographs, film and a zine, forming an archive of collaboration between land, craft and contemporary art. The sculptures are not functional in the usual sense, though they do hold water drawn from the holy wells.
They are containers for memory, mythology, and movement—three letters in another language.