Maya Grisham: The Pint, The Packet and The Craft Behind Them

The pint is the one that gets you.

It stands about sixteen centimetres, jet black, the body worked over entirely in crystal so it catches light the way stout catches it in a good glass — and then, at the top, a head of luminous pearl foam. A harp on the side in gold. A fine gold chain. It costs €850, takes weeks to make, and every single stone was placed by hand with tweezers.

It is very funny and it is beautifully made, and the second of those is why it works. Maya Grisham has spent three years building the strangest and most quietly disciplined proposition in Irish accessories: a canon of ordinary Irish things, rebuilt as evening pieces.

One correction before we go further, because the Irish press keeps getting it wrong. Maya Grisham is not a person. It is a brand, named for the founder's daughter Maya, with a surname she borrowed from an author she spotted on a library shelf. The designer is Kimberly Tinotenda Mushayabasa, who works as Kimberly Tino.

The pieces

The range runs from a €65 crystal strawberry key charm to the €3,000 Tayto packet, with the bags clustering between €350 and €1,400.

The Kerrygold clutch at €750 is the piece that made the brand: a block of butter, 20cm by 11cm by 4cm, hand-finished in Austrian lead-free crystals over a vegan leather lining, with a detachable metal chain. It holds an iPhone 16 Pro, which is a genuinely useful detail on an object this silly.

Brennans Bread is €950 and gets the red, white and blue exactly right. Barry's Tea is €625. The Guinness can is €650, the Pepsi Max can €600, and there is a Cadbury Roses and a Quality Street tin at €575 apiece. The Tayto at €3,000 is the most expensive thing in the shop and the clearest statement of intent in the whole range.

Away from the supermarket shelf, the work is more varied than the viral pieces suggest. There is an Irish Harp bag at €650 and a Claddagh brooch at €190. The GAA Ball Clutch and the Sliotar are €725 each. A crystal swan is €1,200, a champagne bottle €1,400, a hot air balloon €680, a tennis racket €650. The Swarovski Cat at €2,900 is the technical showpiece.

The bridal line is the quietly commercial part of the business — a custom Mrs at €650, Mrs Initial at €700, Eternal Engravings at €950 — alongside full monogram commissions at €1,350. For anyone put off by three-figure prices, the brooches and charms start at €65.

The crystal pint, on Maya Grisham's own Instagram.

Born in Zimbabwe, raised on Brennans

Tino was born in Zimbabwe and came to Ireland at three. She grew up in Phibsborough, then Clonee, then Kells in Co. Meath. She has no fashion training — she did a PLC, interned at Google, went back to education as a mature student to study optometry, and somewhere along the way took a leather-making course. She funded the start by selling her own wardrobe on Depop.

Her explanation of why these objects is the most revealing thing she has said in print:

Every weekend when I was growing up we'd have the full breakfast with Brennan's bread, Kerrygold, Barry's Tea and Denny Sausages so they are just staples.

That is a specific and under-told version of Irish nostalgia — the objects a child who arrived at three absorbed as the texture of belonging. Not the round tower or the harp, though she makes those too, but the weekly shop. It is a warmer idea than the joke lets on.

The craft, which is the real story

Watch her work and the comedy falls away. Crystals go on one at a time, with tweezers, and a piece takes weeks to months depending on complexity — the Kerrygold that CMAT carried held over 5,000 of them by RTÉ's count. The Jameson commission, shown at the Bow Street Distillery from 15 April, is reported at over 12,000.

The finish is described as Austrian lead-free crystal over vegan leather. Lead times are honest and published: three to four weeks for the Kerrygold, roughly six for the Tayto, and the pint is made to order. Everything bespoke is final sale, which is the correct policy for work like this.

The most persuasive thing on the whole site is the repairs page. €75 to have a bag repaired within Europe, €125 from outside it. A brand that will fix the thing it sold you is making a longer argument about value than any sustainability statement.

"True craftsmanship can't be rushed" — the pint bag being made, crystal by crystal.

The collaborations are the business

The genuinely unusual thing here is that Tino has made herself the commissioned artist of choice for Irish consumer brands. The published list runs Jameson, the GAA, Kerrygold, Brennans (for Seachtain na Gaeilge, in Irish-language branding), Keelings (a crystal strawberry for its centenary), Johnnie Walker, Pepsi, Aldi, BuzzBallz and — per the Irish Farmers Journal — Domino's.

The Jameson project went furthest: alongside the bottle bag, she ran her first public workshop at the distillery on World Art Day, teaching guests to make miniature crystal keychains. That is a designer building an audience rather than just a following.

CMAT, and the best review it has had

The brand went properly public in October 2025 when CMAT carried the Kerrygold clutch onto the Mercury Prize red carpet, commissioned by Kerrygold for her to wear.

Her verdict has not been bettered:

It's just so stupid, isn't it? I love it so much.

She is right on both counts, and the order matters. The pieces are absurd, they know they are absurd, and the craft underneath is entirely serious — which is precisely what makes the joke land. A gag executed carelessly is just a gag.

From sketch to finished piece: the studio process.

Where it goes next

Maya Grisham is one of 30 brands selected for Ireland Fashion Week's Irish Edit showcase, announced in May and running this October — the new interactive showroom for accessories in IFW's second edition. She exhibited at an Irish Embassy showcase in Paris in September 2025, and there is a limited-edition collection stocked at Avoca.

For a self-taught designer who started by selling her own clothes online, arriving at fashion week without ever passing through a fashion school is not a small thing.

What we could not confirm

A few honest gaps, none of them disqualifying. The site does not state where the pieces are physically manufactured and no coverage establishes it — there is no "made in Ireland" claim on the site, and we are not making one on its behalf. The About page refers to "ethical production practices" without defining them.

The founding date is unresolved: RTÉ says November 2023, the site says nothing, and the limited company was only incorporated on 5 February 2026. Sources also disagree on the Kerrygold crystal count — RTÉ says over 5,000, the Farmers Journal over 7,000. And several product titles say Swarovski while the copy says "Austrian lead free crystals," which at these prices is worth clarifying.

The verdict

Start with a brooch at €190 if you want in cheaply, the Kerrygold if you want the icon, and the pint if you want the best-made thing she does. Tino has found the one gap nobody else was standing in — where luxury craft, national in-joke and brand commission all meet — and she got there by hand, one crystal at a time.

Hero photograph: Maya Grisham. Additional product images shown via the brand's own Instagram.