My Style: Minimal chic isn't for chef Lu Thornely and gilder Jane Williams, friends who share a small house in Ringsend with an eclectic mix. Eoin Lyons reports
Individually, Jane Williams and Lu Thornely are two of the most good-humoured people you could hope to meet. Put together, they can be simply hilarious. A sense of fun and a similar way of looking at life have created an enduring friendship that in recent years has seen the pair share a redbrick terraced house in Ringsend. Jane, a gilder from Tullamore in Co Offaly, bought it seven years ago.
"We're both self-taught at our trade," explains Lu, who is a chef from a village near Bristol in England. "I did an arts degree in Trinity, then went to Loughcrew, Co Meath.
"At the time it was a country house with paying guests and they needed someone to cook. Jane was working there and that's how we met."
A job in Greece followed and when she came back to Dublin, Lu worked in a few restaurants before setting up LaraLu Foods with Laragh Stuart, to whose son she is godmother.
Lu has since taken over this business (while Laragh went on to form her own company, Laragh Stuart Foods) and operates a food stall in the George's Street Arcade in Dublin. Most of her business comes from organising private parties for wealthy clients.
Jane, meanwhile, learnt to gild through various apprenticeships, first at the studio of Emily Napier at Loughcrew, and then in London and New York.
"In Manhattan I worked with a friend who does a lot of gilding for Sotheby's . . . really amazing stuff including blackamoors owned by Joan Collins, who was very charming by the way."
Jane started her own studio in Portobello a year ago and examples of her work in public spaces include the ceiling at Dublin's City Hall and the gates and railings of Powerscourt House in Wicklow.
"I consider myself so lucky because I have this little house," says Jane. Adds Lu: "It's a lovely community and you know what's going on in the street whether you want to or not! And there's an amazing little shop across the street that sells everything."
Lu and Jane with pet dog Eamon . . . "Minimalists, we are not," says Jane of the delightfully cluttered livingroom, where the decoration is a wholly eccentric mix. On the wall are paintings by Irish artists Gladys McCabe and Martin Mooney. The gilded ostrich egg on the writing desk was a birthday present from Jane to Lu and the retro-print lampshade was a gift from their mutual friend Hannah Moore, who works for the Temperley fashion label in London. Alice Temperley is a favourite designer.
"The twigs above the writing desk are old pieces of redwood," says Jane. "At Christmas we hang decorations from them because there's not enough space for a tree."
A small outdoor space is all you need in the city . . . "It's good for the mind to have a place to step outside, even if it's tiny," says Lu. "During the summer months we move the kitchen table out there in the evening."
A collections of practical things are displayed in the kitchen on a wall-mounted dresser. There are some pieces of old Waterford glass, silver mustard pots - including one with legs that look as if it might shuffle away at any moment - and quite a few jugs.
"We're mad about them but at least we've started to size down from large to small jugs," laughs Lu.
"We put flowers in them most of the time but I'm determined to keep milk in some so they get used."
Movies to watch and magazines to read . . . favourite films include Midnight Run with Robert de Niro, The Night of the Iguana with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and True Romance with Patricia Arquette and Christian Slater. All are on video. "I can't handle DVDs. I want to know where have all the videos gone?"asks Lu. "We're semi-Luddites in this house," says Jane. Jane worked for a time at The World of Interiors in London and so began a love of glossy magazines. "When I worked at Condé Nast I used to get all the magazines - Vogue, House & Garden, Tatler - and sneak into the post room to send them home to my mother."
A reminder of special places have been worked into household items. "I love India and for the past two years I went during miserable February," says Lu. Family connections to the country include a grandmother who spent most of her life there and a father who was born in Bombay. "I went for a year after Trinity but on the last trip I visited the south, which I really liked, particularly the food - it's more interesting and a little similar to Thai."
She bought a trim with a gold and turquoise elephant pattern on her last visit and "sewed it onto two pillowcases on my mother's lovely old Singer".
In the bathroom hangs a collage of old photographs. "My grandmother put it together - that's my mum in the top right. She really was a very good-looking girl. The frame was horrible so I gessoed the whole thing white."
Some tools of Lu's trade sit in the kitchen. She has worked for Superquinn and SuperValu as a food stylist and on the fridge is a collection of items that includes a dish with a lid to hold eggs; a bottle of wine from Claudio's Wine Shop on Drury Street; a glass cake stand filled with lemons and limes from Thornbury, the village where the Thornely family lives; a brass coffee grinder from Greece; a pot filled with basil and lastly, notes Lu, "a phallic grinder bought in India".
A running theme throughout the house are shells: some are exotic, hanging on walls, others from Connemara fill old goldfish bowls.
"When friends go away they're under instructions to bring back shells, but they're not allowed buy them - they must find them," says Jane.
On a window sill on the staircase is a piece of webbed seaweed that Lu found in Mexico and a large shell from Corsica. "Lu was doing a cooking job there and I went along as a femme de ménage - a cleaning woman basically," laughs Jane.
"When we were leaving, the client gave me a shell to say thank you and she bought Lu an ashtray. She really had us sussed."
Lu Thornely 087 9908003
Jane Williams 087 7819965
