IN THE SMALL town of Newry, an hour and a half from Dublin, over the border into Northern Ireland, an omnipresent Eireann chill creeps off the Irish Sea. But here inside the factory of heritage furniture brand Orior, the warmth of the people — those who make the company’s handmade marvels — takes center stage.

Small businesses are often compared to families. At Orior, it’s literally true: The company was started by husband and wife Brian and Rosemary McGuigan in 1979, and their son, Ciaran, 33, is now creative director. Ciaran’s wife, Logann, leads sales. A total of eight McGuigans — aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings — work for Orior, and many of the workers who are not blood have known the family for 40 or 50 years. For example, Paddy, who handles deliveries, grew up down the street from Brian, regaling me with stories of their youth. And even if Ciaran is a boss now, at least three workers tell me tales about changing his nappy when he was a wee one.

Though Orior is a buzzy name, with a new showroom in New York City’s tony SoHo neighborhood, Ciaran insists that what matters most is this family factory. He is in no small way responsible for Orior’s recent rise, joining the company officially in 2013 and taking a forceful (if risky) chance in 2015 by first opening a design studio — and eventually the boutique — in New York City, where he lives when he’s not in Ireland. He has helped the brand embrace a cutting-edge perspective by thinking up items like the Onze Table, a sensuous wave of wood and bronze, and the Bianca Chair, which splays out like a velvet-and-leather oyster. “He carries his enthusiasm through everything,” his mom tells me. “It has been refreshing to see a new direction coming out of our factory. He opened a whole new world for Orior.” Ciaran has a near-spiritual sense of ambition and knew that coming to Manhattan would up his game. “If you want to compete with the big guys, you’re going to New York,” he says.

Still, he insists, you can come up with all the big-city ideas in the world and it won’t mean a thing without the commitment to create the furniture with care. “My grandmother used to say that a little bit of wisdom is better than a whole lot of knowledge,” he recounts. Overseen by his parents, every piece of furniture is shaped, built, and upholstered right here in Newry. Ciaran wants the product to be as sturdy as the company — so well made it can be passed down through generations. Back and forth between homey Northern Ireland and his house in Brooklyn, he exists between worlds. And it’s that blend that has come to define the company.

Orior debuted with wood and upholstery pieces. But it was Ciaran who introduced more glamorous materials, such as marble and bronze, into items like the Arctic, a smile-shaped credenza of walnut and aged brass, with drawers wrapped in leather, and the Easca Coffee Table, crafted from the thickest slab of crystal I’ve ever seen, hand poured in Cork, in the south of Ireland. To procure these materials, he collaborates with other small, family-led companies, including the nearby S McConnell & Sons stonemasons. Now in its third generation, S McConnell & Sons handles the delicate Irish Green marble — one of the oldest stones in the world — that has become an Orior signature.

Ciaran believes people buy his furniture not only for its beauty and quality but also for the story behind it. I soon discover he’s referring to both his family’s story and Ireland’s collective myths. On a morning ride in the Orior truck, Paddy stops to point out a fairy ring in the nearby woods, later warning me to “never enter a field with a fairy bush at dusk as you’ll not find your way out until the next morning.” Ciaran extends this type of yarn spinning to everything, telling me that even the stone he uses has folklore: It is said that the Irish Green marble used in the Orior pieces was discovered when someone saw a mystic glint of sparkling green in a river in Connemara, traced it up the mountain, and built himself a quarry. “You’re buying into a legacy,” Ciaran says, “the story of people who have been plying their craft for a long time.”

Indeed, after just a few days in Northern Ireland, I begin to feel inducted into the Orior mythology and family. One evening, after puttering around the factory and having coffee and scones with his kind Aunt Gertrude (who also works at Orior), Ciaran takes me to a pub for pints of Guinness. Then, after most of the restaurants have closed, we grab greasy takeaway fish and chips and eat them in his car. The next morning, he and Logann have me over to their home on Carlingford Lough fjord, where Logann cooks an Irish fry-up with eggs and soda bread. The house, an old fishing shed filled with Orior creations, opens onto the water.

There, sitting in the living room by a fire to fight the coastal cold, Ciaran talks to me less about products than he does about people, revealing an unshakeable belief that humans matter more than hardware. “Our people are everything,” he says. “Having those around who you know heart to heart and who are freaking talented … it’s incredibly special.” He pauses to look around, at the furniture he’s made, yes, but also just the hominess of it all, warmed by the satisfaction of building something beautiful right where he came from, and of narrating a new chapter in Orior history that future McGuigan generations will be proud to tell. “This company is going to be around for a long, long, long time,” he says with a rooted certainty. “I know what I’m doing for the next 40 years.”