Inside the glittering Dublin home of jewellery designer, Chupi Sweetman-Durney
Jewellery may be what she spends her days thinking about, but Chupi Sweetman-Durney has added her signature love of shine and decadence to her Dublin home.
photography Ruth Maria Murphy
“It wasn’t love at first sight,” says Chupi Sweetman-Durney of the first time she laid eyes on her home. “Everyone describes finding their house like love affairs, it’s like a proposal story where it was this perfect moment – a deer leaping across the lawn, a diamond sparkling at midnight. But because I loved our previous house so much, it was like leaving the perfect relationship and starting dating again. Nothing was good enough.”
As the CEO of her eponymous jewellery brand, which is celebrating ten years, Chupi has heard her fair share of engagement stories. Her and husband Brian were house hunting, despite how much they loved their first home, as during the pandemic Chupi’s mum, Rosita Sweetman, sold the family home in Wicklow. This, coupled with the arrival of their daughter Aya, made them realise they wanted somewhere they all could live, which led them to this Victorian home, where Rosita has the ground floor, and Chupi, Brian and Aya live upstairs.
Despite Chupi’s initial apprehension, it’s now a home that she has totally fallen in love with. “It’s wonderful,” she says. “It just suits us so well.” Having done extensive renovations on their first house, she explains that it was a great opportunity to learn from some of their mistakes, and they decided to work with designer Po McNamee to make sure everything was perfect. “I love designing, and Brian is the chief technology officer of Chupi so designs human-digital experiences. But what we found last time was we really both struggled to imagine space at scale. I’m good until about one inch, and then after that I’m a bit lost,” she laughs.
While in their previous home the kitchen was located in an extension at basement level, with the living space upstairs, here they wanted the spaces to be connected. “We throw lots of dinner parties, which I always caveat by saying quite frequently, Deliveroo does the catering,” Chupi laughs.
“It used to be 9pm dinners, and it’s now more likely to be 3pm lunches with the kiddos. But we’re real kitchen people, it’s where we love to hang out, and we can be chatting in there while the kids are turning the sitting room upside down. I never imagined buying a period house that we’d get open plan living – it just didn’t seem like an achievable goal. But this house is made for it.”
While in their last house they spent the most money on their bathrooms, this time around, it was the kitchen that became their focus. “It was wonderful having a bougie bathroom, but actually, you don’t spend much time in them,” Chupi says. As a jeweller, she is no stranger to shiny things, and they decided to go all-out with the brass kitchen, especially as it feels very much part of their living space.
