Belleek Pottery

Belleek Pottery has made fine parian china on the River Erne at Belleek since 1857, which makes it Ireland's oldest working fine-china pottery — the pale, translucent, basket-woven ware that carries the village's name around the world. It is still a working factory: more than a hundred thousand pieces a year pass, as the pottery likes to say, through sixteen pairs of hands, and visitors can tour the workshop, see the museum, and buy from the source. The Neo-Georgian building on the border is a destination in its own right. For a craft this old to be not preserved behind glass but genuinely still made, by hand, in the same place, is uncommon anywhere.