The Five-Star Westbury Hotel is one of the few institutions whose million euro collection of Irish art can rival that of The Merrion Hotel. 

It's amongst this collection of sublime pieces by Sir John Lavery, Michael Scott, Louis Le Brocquy and other important Irish artists in the Westbury's timelessly elegant open-plan drawing rooms that you can make the best possible first impression on your future mother-in-law by taking her for afternoon tea, looking out over all the goings-ons of Grafton Street. It's somehow both low-key and discretely opulent.

Ireland's reputation for craft extends back for over a thousand years to the days of the Tara Brooch & the Ardagh Chalice, a heritage that we can be immensely proud of, and our incredible light & landscape has provided inspiration to generations of artists, designers & makers, myself included. The explosion of interest in Irish linen & lace in the 19th Century took us once again onto a world stage, a presence renewed in the 1930s with the Arran Sweater, and from the 1950s our unique ceramics were finding homes in Japan & the far east along with our traditional music.