Laragh Stuart's Georgian apartment is filled with pieces linked to historical Irish figures, writes Eoin Lyons.
Chef Laragh Stuart and her art-dealer husband John Heather live in an apartment that most city-centre dwellers would envy. Home for the couple is the top two floors of a 1780 Georgian building on Molesworth Street, Dublin.
While by no means palatial, the rooms are graceful and almost entirely lined in original wood panelling. It's a light and airy place, with fresh white walls and a pale biscuit carpet acting as a backdrop for a collection of paintings, antique furniture and treasured artefacts.
The apartment was used as offices before it was converted by John Heather. The result is charming and a little higgledy-piggledy, with odd corners that add character. The livingroom, diningroom and kitchen are on one level, with the bedrooms above. The home is also suitable for their children: Lucien (2) and Milo (12).
Several pieces in the apartment came from their lives before they were married. Others were picked up on travels and some, such as a contemporary painting above the livingroom sofa, were part of the apartment when they moved in.
Stuart, who sells her soups and sauces in a number of supermarkets and delis, loves their home, but might decorate it differently in the future. "My ideal would be sleek modern with some good antiques and Chinese furniture. But I mean classic modern as opposed to new modern; I don't like anything harsh or soulless."
She adds: "There's a very fine line between clutter and uncluttered. When we moved here first, I started going to a lot of house sales and furniture auctions - it's very easy to like everything and you've got to be selective. We now have an attic full of stuff . . . what I call Georgian junk."
But the rooms are stimulating rather than cluttered. In the livingroom, there are sofas slip-covered in white cotton. "If we had sofa with a coloured or printed fabric, your eyes would be drawn to that . . . white keeps things neutral and lets everything else come to the fore."
Stuart is a great grand-daughter of Maud Gonne. On a side table in the livingroom is a sculpture modelled on the gun used by Pádraig Pearse during the 1916 Rising. It was made by artist Laurent Mellet, who studied the original at the Museum of Decorative Arts and History at Collins Barracks. "The idea came about because it was the 90th anniversary of the Rising," she says.
Stuart's father is sculptor Ian Stuart, so she has a particular affinity with the medium. On the mantel are some shells and two silver sculptures by Edward Delaney. "These are of an eagle and a dancing figure; they're very detailed although tiny," she says. Delaney also created the famine figures opposite the Shelbourne Hotel at the corner of St Stephen's Green, as well as the sculpture of Thomas Davis on Dame Street.