Simon O'Driscoll, Furniture Designer

Heading into the last quarter of our collaborators series, we stay in Dublin and look at the elements of Breac.House that have been designed and executed by Simon O'Driscoll. Each of his pieces, have become core to the guest experience here and reflect the textures and colours that surround us and the native materials we love.

Simon is an award-wining Irish furniture designer who has been designing furniture for both commercial and residential projects for over 20 years. In 2018, he had the honour of designing an armchair to be used by Pope Francis on his visit to Ireland in 2018. His designs are influenced by the mid-Century design movement, creating very elegant, classical yet very functional pieces. His work is a testament to his attention to detail and love of good design and quality materials – creating pieces that are made to last.

In creating Breac.House, we knew that a centre-piece sofa was required – for guests to relax in front of the fire looking out at the sea, mountains, fields and lake. We had seen Simon’s work and knew that his design aesthetic would match what we were trying to achieve. His DC range including sofas and armchairs seemed perfect, representing both simplicity but also generosity of space. The resulting collaboration is an oak sofa covered with Eddie Doherty Donegal tweed. This combination of timber and tweed has become a signature style for Simon and is a perfect collision of mid-century European design meeting traditional Irish heritage.

In an unintended twist, we developed a collaboration with Simon using his sleek oak nest-of-tables design topped with an offcut of local Fanad granite which we were using elsewhere in the house, in the kitchen and our fireplace. The specked grey, white and gold tinted granite was one of our signature materials to physically represent the concept of “breac”, meaning speckled, from which the house got it’s name. The result is a small functional table which is possibly the most used and talked about piece in the house – most popular for hosting pre-dinner drinks of local seaweed gin !

We have continued to work with Simon on additional projects and last year, he worked with us on grey tweed seating to be used on our sunken wooden seating area in the dining room. Like all of his work, once in situ, it looked like it was always so - the greatest compliment to additions to our home

To read more about the full range of Simon's work, see his website at Simon O'Driscoll Furniture