Carolina Irving’s apartment in the comme il faut 16th arrondissement of Paris is filled with a lifetime of finds. Crowded among them are her evocative collections of ‘art-inspired homeware’ for Carolina Irving & Daughters, which she set up in 2018 with her offspring, Olympia and Ariadne, and her line of textiles (established long since), massed in high Troisième République style. (It’s a rented flat, so old wine velvet curtains have been repurposed to lend a certain drama to the humdrum doors, against the rich yellow of the entrance hall.)
Among the many wonders, there is one thing she would take with her, come what may. She found it folded in a paper bag at Sotheby’s. ‘I unrolled it and I immediately knew that it was the Venezuelan crest, the coat of arms made with all the elements,’ she relates. The crest was introduced on 28 March 1864, marking a new constitution, and this one is brilliantly constructed out of feathers, showing two cornucopias; a wheat sheaf; a collection of tools, weapons and flags; a galloping grey horse; and branches of laurel and palm tied up with a ribbon. ‘We have the biggest variety of birds in the world,’ says Carolina (WoI Sept 2007), who was born to Venezuelan parents and raised largely here in Paris.
The flag is framed in an octagon of soft green wood, and it sings on the wall. A plethora of treasures answers its call, for the walls and surfaces of Carolina’s home are encrusted with a trove of paintings and textiles, of ceramics and glass, like an Ottoman pasha’s yali. The place is filled with tulips of every shade – real mixed in with china, glass and paper specimens – to complete the effect.
Once, the dining room and the sitting room could be united by opening a central double door, but Carolina decided to block this with a table covered in crimson velvet; she then placed a sofa in the sitting room against it, which is a convivial touch. She originally contemplated floor-to-ceiling bookcases all around the dining room, but realised that would deny space for all her delicious accoutrements. So she devised ‘half bookcases’ and atop them she placed her treasury of objects. ‘I change the books according to what I’m interested in at the moment,’ she says. Of her current interests, she says: ‘I’m more and more obsessed with antiquity… Then there is always my Ottoman, Middle Eastern things. Then here it’s all my grand houses of Russia, of Poland. Travel writing and historical biographies. And gardens are on the other side in the sitting room.’ The rest of her collection is kept in the basement, fodder for what she describes as her ‘rotating library’.
She has filled the room with more ‘obsessions’, among them an array of dishes ‘exactly done like the old Iznik ones’. Further plates on the walls were created by a sect in 17th-century Hungary, when the country had strong ties to Turkey. They are decorated with tulips. Elsewhere one can spy a Mughal dish covered in mother-of-pearl, tiles from Córdoba embellished with bold stars on deep, clear blue, and others with exquisite flowers (copied in Portugal from ancient Syrian originals), a 17th-century tankard in silver gilt, and bone lamps from India with craft paper folded to create shades. ‘I have an obsession with lighting,’ Carolina says, but she hadn’t been able to find lampshades that really worked, so she copied the photographer François Halard (WoI May 2018), who did the same thing with white paper.
A fragment of colourful flowers painted on wood is from Carolina’s ‘favourite shop in Athens – this woman called Martinos: she has this wonderful gallery where everything costs a bloody fortune!’ At the Benaki Museum, the designer points out, you can find several chests like it.
‘This beautiful Turkish lady,’ she says, looking at an enchanting picture nested by one of the bone lamps, ‘which honestly, looks like a [Jean-Etienne] Liotard. The little girl is so beautifully painted. I found that at Boubker [Temli] 30 years ago,’ she adds, referring to the great Tangier antique dealer of Galerie Tindouf fame.
All along the shelves are Ottoman vases and phials for tulips, in Optrex-blue glass, which are painted with small daisies, or fresh green pottery. And above the fireplace is a collection of porphyry and onyx, and pebbles in wondrous colours found on an island lashed by the waves near to Patmos in the Greek Dodecanese.
On the floor of the dining room is a prized 19th-century Russian carpet with ‘leopard-skin’ border, and looking beyond the rolled-up Indian chik blind that screens the dining-room opening, one sees the sitting room, crowded with sofas and 19th-century armchairs, upholstered in her delightful deep-red floral sprigs. Dotted about are opaline glasses that the owner found in Prague, and some Portuguese green pottery candlesticks from Carolina Irving & Daughters.
Of the flight of bird portraits on the entrance wall, she says: ‘Every time I go to India, I buy one.’ Here too are Egyptian plates and Parme Baratier pieces (WoI July 2026): photographed elements of foliage, found at Tristram Hoare, which Carolina finds ‘moody and mysterious’.
The bedroom, painted like a ripe apricot, has a sofa upholstered in Iznik needlework, which stands out against the deep-red velvet bed. Carolina found the length of 18th-century rose embroidery that hangs above it at Gordon Watson in Tangier. The collection of early 20th-century pictures of Algiers was amassed by her husband, documentary producer Bertrand Deveaud (who was born there), and there’s a 17th-century plate with a trout on it – ‘Bertie’s favourite fish!’ she says, laughing. And on the walls hang her daughters, Olympia and Ariadne, captured in their infancy by Elliott Puckette.
Stepping back into the sitting room, she looks wistfully around the apartment. ‘I am endlessly nostalgic. I don’t like the modern world,’ she says, ‘I feel I am being sucked back to the past, constantly’.
Carolina Irving & Daughters. Visit ci-daughters.com. Carolina Irving Textiles. Visit carolinairvingtextiles.com
A version of this article also appears in the October 2026 issue of The World of Interiors. Learn about our subscription offers
Sign up for our weekly newsletter, and be the first to receive archive culture stories like this one, direct to your inbox
