Only a year old, steady on its feet and running away with enterprising initiatives, the Islay Slate Company is looking to floor the competition in an almost dizzying series of confident developments.

Launching its website and online shop and preparing for an appearance at the 2010 Spring Trade Fair at Glasgow’s SECC, the company is also launching a range of ornamental and functional slate-based items designed by artist Nicola Stein.

Ms Stein’s contemporary Celtic designs feature on table furniture like placemats, coasters, cheeseboards and sweetmeat platters; as well as on ornamental wall pieces whose designs call back icons from Islay’s history – the Kildalton Cross and the Finlaggan Sword – both seen on the left.

A texturally intriguing piece is a clock, top, made from a piec of reclaimed Ballachulish slate, the west Highland slate that traditionally roofed so much of the country. The hole once punched in this reclaimed piece to fix it to the sarking boards on a roof somewhere, probably on Islay, can still be seen above the minute hand of the clock.

In a parallel initiative the company has cleverly been integrating its own product development in association with some of the island’s major businesses – the malt whisky distillers, linking its new brand to their long-standing commercial identities. This is knowledgeable thinking on the business and marketing fronts.

Distilleries like Bruichladdich, Lagavulin and Laphroaig are already stocking Islay Slate Company products featuring their own customised designs, offering whisky lovers and collectors the complete ’Earth, Fire and Water’ experience.

Individual items can also be personalised on commission and in this Year of Homecoming, slate items with clan crests have been popular and portable gifts for visitors to take away from the island.

As well as testifying to the commercial savvy of the Islay Slate Company, the collaboration with the distilleries in the production of customised items for sale in their gift shops is evidence of communal supportiveness in these elder statesmen in Islay’s business world.

This says a lot for Islay.

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