Luke Irwin: rugs to riches

In March, an ingenious rug was presented to Barack Obama at the White House by the Irish Foreign Secretary, as part of the annual shamrock presentation. This year's gift to the President of the United States was handknotted in the foothills of the Himalayas, overlooking Nepal's Kathmandu Valley. It is called Doves and Stripes, and rumour has it that this take on the American flag will adorn the floor of the Oval Office. It was designed by an Irishman, Luke Irwin.

Jemima Khan recently acquired an Irwin rug and Alex Michaelis, David Cameron's favourite architect, has apparently commissioned one. The Prince of Wales 'really and truly loves the rugs'. (Luke's designs are, after all, largely inspired by plants and flowers, with whom Charles has long been on speaking terms.)

(Right) the Doves and Stripes rug given to Obama

Luke has furnished all the Alfred Dunhill shops and clubs worldwide with rugs, as well as Aspinalls Casino, Bovey Castle, Bergdorf Goodman and, in an uncharacteristic piece of mass production, Center Parcs. They range from a couple of hundred pounds to many thousands each and he confidently expects them to last a lifetime.

As well as an eye for pattern, this Dublinborn Old Etonian possesses a happy blend of polish and warmth, which no doubt helps when he's dealing with the great and good. Also helpful is the fact that Luke, 41, is married to the Duchess of Cornwall's niece, Alice Elliot. His maternal grandfather Peter Rawlinson, later created Baron Rawlinson of Ewell, was a renowned barrister (in 1980 he defended the Daily Mail against a libel action brought by the Unification Church, better known as the Moonies) and an MP.

Luke's father, Jonathan, started his career working for the British Bloodstock Agency and went on to run Goffs, a thoroughbred horse sales company, for many years. 'He was very caught up in the whole Shergar disappearance,' says Luke, who was one of four boys. 'He was involved in the negotiation to get him back.' Luke's father and mother, Michaela, split up in the mid-Eighties.

Michaela has not remarried, but Jonathan went on to marry Marianne O'Brien (owner of the chocolate company Lily O'Briens) and had four more children. The third, a boy called Jack, was born healthy but stopped breathing for a few minutes in the maternity ward and, as a result, was profoundly disabled and died at the age of two. 'My father discovered that, in Ireland, there was no government help for families with disabled children under five. He set up the Jack and Jill Foundation and they now give families 24-hour nursing, as much to look after the parents as the child. That is his whole life now.'

Luke has, in fact, lost two brothers - one small and sick, and the other almost adult and vigorously healthy. His youngest brother, Sam, died in an accident in 2000. 'He was 18,' says Luke. 'He'd left Bryanston the week before and was staying with friends. It was an outside nightclub and it was two in the morning and someone had jumped into the swimming pool, so Sam stood up on this low wall to see what was going on. What he didn't realise was that on the other side of the wall was a 30ft drop and below, around the bottom of a tree, was a stone bench. So where it could have been a couple of broken legs...' Luke was 32 when Sam died and the tragedy galvanised him to give up drinking, get engaged and start his rug company.

Luke was brought up in Kildare but educated in England. His prep school was St Ronan's in Kent, which his uncle-in-law, Mark Shand, had coincidentally also attended over ten years earlier. 'It was like the school out of Decline and Fall,' Luke says. 'Totally shambolic. We'd be playing cricket and the headmaster would say, "If you hit a four now, I'll give the whole school a day's holiday tomorrow." It was so cosy and magical and odd.' He later followed in his father's footsteps by going to Eton, but left at 16 with one A level in drama and, after a genteel gap year studying history of art in Paris, Venice and London, got a job as an assistant stage manager at The Abbey Theatre, Ireland's National Theatre, in Dublin.

'By the time I was 21 I was the assistant artistic director and I should have stuck with it,' he says. 'But there was a degree of immaturity which meant I believed that, having got to this hallowed position at such a young age, I could go to London. Back then, in the Eighties, Dublin was like Bucharest. In Western European terms it was a third world place.'

He moved to London but failed to get a job in theatre, so worked for Christie's as a porter in the picture department, only to be sacked for failing to turn up for work. He went back to stage managing but found himself working on the Derek Nimmo tour of the Middle East, which didn't fit with his vision of how a theatrical career ought to pan out.

He had arrived at a crossroads with no qualifications and decided to have a go at PR. 'I thought I could do it because I'm Irish and I can talk.' He handled PR for the Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair and worked for Cowan Symes, a music and film PR company, but had a problem with presenteeism. His employers expected him to be in the office; he tended to charm all the results he needed out of press and clients by midday and then perhaps have a boozy lunch and a snooze. It all went rather wrong and he found himself, aged 30, unemployed, confused and in a problematic relationship with alcohol.