Paint the Town Bed
Oh yeah baby. Bring. It. On. It’s the five star hotel with a museum standard art collection. Peter van Lint’s Pool of Bethesda; Sir John Lavery’s Portrait of Eileen Lavery; Louis le Brocquy’s Woman in White: you name it. Dublin’s finest. Then some. The one and only Merrion. Lustre between the canals. Architectural Digest raves about it. The Merrion’s frontage is unmistakably Dublin Georgian. Architectural historian Jeremy Musson once observed, “Irish Palladian houses somehow seem more perfect that many of their English contemporaries.” He was referring to country houses but the same could be said of their urban counterparts: Georgian Dublin. A vigorous typology, the pure geometry of their window to brick gaps ratio and half umbrella fanlights reads perfection. Easy to architecturally digest. Step aside inside.
Architectural historian Mark Girouard once observed, “There tends to be something impersonal about English plasterwork of the Adam period; Irish work of the same date, though often less sophisticated, has at its best a certain gaiety and freshness that has survived from the rococo period.” There is nothing staid about stuccadore Robert West’s birds and baskets made from lime and crushed marble. Below the 18th century drawing room plasterwork ceilings, a 21st century social carousel whirls in finite graceful circles. Smashing. Slip away. And so to bed. Yup, 400 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets. Colourway inspired by a Paul Henry painting in the staircase hall. Italian Carrara marble bathroom. Got it.
