A house with a Wilde side
One fashionable couple’s Dublin home has an intimate connection with the city’s most famous son
Saturday February 21 2015,
The Dublin house where Oscar Wilde’s mother, Lady Jane Wilde, lived 170 years ago still stands there today, a few steps away from St Stephen’s Green. Called “Speranza”, after Lady Jane’s pen name, it is every bit as colourful inside as the woman it was named for. An early champion of women’s rights, a poet and an Irish nationalist, she also appreciated good taste. No doubt she would have approved of the house’s transformation nearly two centuries later.
Today’s owners are Conor Roche, a native Dubliner who works as a financier in renewable energy, and his Australian wife, Pippa Holt, a stylist, fashion editor and designer who has worked for Vogue and The Times. They met in London, before Roche lured Holt across the water to live in the house he had bought a couple of years earlier as a bachelor after a decade working in New York and London.
“It’s ironic, because this was actually a family home when Conor bought it,” explains Holt. “He spent just over a year stripping it right back to white walls and hanging his art everywhere so that it resembled a gallery space. He had pipes plumbed in, because he was going to convert one room into a bar so that he could have Guinness on tap, and even soundproofed what is now the guest room so he could play his drums.” She eye-rolls:
“He also turned two kids’ bedrooms into his own enormous bedroom.” The couple have since had to turn the whole lot back to accommodate their three children: three-year-old daughter Bay, son Balthazar, two, and the latest edition to the family, month-old Oscar. (Holt was still pregnant with him when The Times came to visit.)
“So much of this house is my husband’s taste,” she says. “He has such a keen sense of what works – the furniture he picked up while working abroad and nearly all the art. He has this restraint and appreciates the beauty of simple things like wood, brass, concrete … And then I come in, throw pink pillows everywhere and mess it all up.” Modesty aside, it is an inviting interior that is filled with bold splashes of colour, an interesting mix of contemporary art and exquisitely chosen mid-century pieces.
The two sitting rooms with their high ceilings and wide windows are flooded with light even on an overcast, drab day. Despite the formality of these rooms, it is where Holt insists the family spends time together at the weekend. “We light the fire and read the papers and the kids play here with their Lego.” Is she ever worried that the Ellsworth Kelly (bought by Roche at auction in New York) is going to get pelted with Play-Doh? “You can’t be when you have small kids,” she says. “When you live in a house like this, it’s tempting just to live on the top floor, where the bedrooms are, or the kitchen downstairs, so it’s important to make the reception rooms as warm as possible so that you inhabit the entire house.”
Warmth comes via the yellow Max Rollitt sofa, the brightly patterned ikat cushions from Madeline Weinrib or Arasta bazaar in Istanbul, and the Liam Gillick installation, which is suspended from the ceiling. Above the sofa hangs a painting by Lena Dunham’s father, the painter Carroll Dunham, which Roche brought during his time in New York. Subtitled Healthy Tree, it seems a fitting choice for someone who works in renewable energy. Stacked-up side tables, picked up for a song in a Brussels flea market, contrast with the original Eames cabinet that was won at auction in New York.
Holt also added bits of furniture found at Irish auctions during the recession: in one instance, she stumbled on a 100-euro antique cabinet, reupholstered it in chartreuse velvet and then filled it with Hermès china. Colour and print are very much apparent, from the mint de Gournay wallpaper that adorns Holt’s first-floor study (a surprise present from Roche when Holt first came to live here) to the “I Love You” Jürgen Dahlmanns rug and Serge Mouille lights in the children’s playroom.
It is the grand entrance hall, however, that remains Holt’s favourite part of the house. “I love how traditional it is with its tall arch, the beautiful black and white tiles from Italy and the side table from Conor’s grandfather. But then we’ve gone and added a Rick Owens floor lamp, a concrete square piece of art with records built into it by Jim Lambie, and the bright, 3-D wall installation by Nathan Carter. It’s those bits that always add some sunshine to the grey Dublin days.”