JEWELLERY DESIGNER AND FOUNDER of Chupi, Chupi Sweetman-Durney talks to Ruth O’Connor about generational living, making mistakes in her first home and why gold accents bring her joy.
My favourite place in my home is the gold kitchen. We rescued the kitchen in our first house for €500 on Adverts. We took it out of someone else’s kitchen and our dear friends at Ballyshane retro-fitted it into ours. My husband Brian and I then laid the wooden floors ourselves, so in this house we really wanted our kitchen to be a space that would feel amazing.
We made lots of mistakes in our first house and had a separate kitchen and living room which doesn’t really work for us because we want to be able to play and hang out with our daughter while cooking and chatting. It was an incredible gift this time to be able to have an open plan area with the two interconnecting rooms.
I love the idea that ‘family are the people you feed’. We do a lot of entertaining and a lot of hanging out – nothing fancy – just having dinner at home with family and friends. It was important to us to have a warm, comforting space that feels really ‘us’. I made quite conservative choices in our last house so to have a gold kitchen makes me feel so lucky every time I walk through the door.
I love that idea of the little red string – that idea of things flowing together. We worked with the incredible designer Po McNamee, who also happens to be my sister-in-law, to design the house. It was wonderful to have someone to guide our decisions. For me, it had to be all about gold, unsurprisingly. The rooms are warm neutrals – nothing too dark or too colourful – and we use gold and greenery as the accents.
Our house is 200 years old – I feel that we are simply minding it for the next generation. I have tried to bring in a lot of what we’ve done at home into our store in Powerscourt too – which is of course a beautiful old building too. I want people to walk in and feel warm and welcome. I really love old things and things that are beautiful enough to be passed down. My most treasured possessions are the pieces of furniture I’ve inherited from my granny including a chair that I can still remember her sitting in.
We chose to stay in Ireland to make a home and build a business so it’s important to me to keep friends and family close. ‘Hosting’ sounds fancy when you have a four year old – it’s more like having lots of friends around and having kids running around everywhere. Things have changed a lot in the past few years – we used to have a supper club that started at 9pm and ended at 2am – now it starts at 2pm and ends at 9pm!
When it comes to inspiration I am obsessed with Instagram and Pinterest. We did a really cool Ikea hack for Mum – building built-in shelves in the alcoves. I follow lots of people with drool-worthy homes on Instagram and try to see how I can adapt some of their ideas to our own house. It’s not possible to have everything absolutely perfect and manicured – especially when you have a four-year-old. For me it’s about celebrating imperfect beauty.
What makes me happiest about our house is having people around – whether that is having dinner with my Mum, who lives with us, on a Tuesday evening or having a whole gang of friends over. My mum threw a lot of parties when we were kids so I love the idea that your home is about celebration and joy. Equally I love curling up on my own couch and lighting the fire. We rented for 17 years and the rental market in Ireland is extremely challenging so it is a privilege to now have a place we can call our own.
This season Chupi is partnering with The Irish Heart Foundation and releasing an exclusive and limited edition of their much-loved Chupi solid gold heart ring. €100 from every sale will be donated to the Irish Heart Foundation to support their vital work. Find the Chupi flagship store in the Powerscourt Townhouse Centre, Clarendon Street, Dublin 2. Find Chupi on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook and at www.chupi.com.
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