Sitting on the table in Louise Kennedy's Merrion Square salon is a trinket box. Not just any jewellery box; this is a prince among jewellery boxes. Formed like the Petit Trianon in Versailles, complete with marquetry wings, pillars and tiny hand-turned balustrades, it has five secret drawers that glide in and out with high-class motion. But then the man who made it is hardly your average carpenter. If not quite a prince among carpenters, he is a carpenter who is the grandson of a queen.
In a family hardly known for doing the nine-to-five thing, Viscount David Linley is an exception. Since 1985 he has built a highly successful furniture company specialising in commissioned pieces, one-offs and accessories (which he was in Ireland to promote as they are now stocked by Louise Kennedy).
While we may have our own kind of royalty in Ireland we don't actually have any real royalty and there is something fascinating about meeting one in the flesh and blue blood. David Linley is extremely nice in a way that is a disappointment to my socialist heart and although he refers to "we" and "us" throughout, it doesn't take long to work out that he means "we, the team behind David Linley Furniture Ltd" or "we, my wife Serena and me" and not the royal "we" beloved of his aunt, Queen Elizabeth II.
For himself, he feels his royal connections were both a help and a hindrance in making his business the stg£4 million success story it is today. "It was definitely both. I think it was a hindrance in that I couldn't be as outrageous as I possibly could have been. It also puts people off coming into the shop as they assume that it's going to be very expensive or that I'm not ever really going to be there. In a sense we have a real job trying to persuade people that we are reasonable and we make good things.
"But of course one does have the benefit of publicity and being in a position where one can promote craftsmanship and excellence. It's not just my company I'm promoting; I like to think I'm promoting the whole idea of commissioning something, whether it's a cabinet or a candelabra. It's a wonderful experience and in this day and age it's wonderful that it can still be done."
Although he's ambiguous about his royal connections, his actual family earns nothing but praise. His parents, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon, were "hugely supportive": "It was and still is a very creative environment." While he received his professional training during three years spent at the Parnham House School for Craftsmen in Wood, he first got the bug for making things while messing about in his father's workshop.
"He was always making mad things. I would say that I was a cabinet maker rather than a craftsman and I would say that he's an inventor. He makes up fabulous things - he's just finished a pond for his garden in London which is right on the street. People peer into it and see a lobster in the bottom, not a real one, plastic. He always makes people take a second look and I was always taught to be observant, to enquire, and to try and find out how something's made."
Every member of the Royal Family now owns a piece of Linley furniture, with the Queen Mother the proud possessor of one of Linley's first pieces - a cigar box in walnut made while he was still at school. Still, as he talks, it becomes apparent that his major concerns are not courting the rich and famous or making sure that everybody knows what an elite craftsman he is.
In fact there is a kind of humility to his description of his talents ("I'm a maker not a designer") and his trade: "We are basically a service industry. We're like a tailor - if somebody asks us to make a shiny suit we'll make it, but it's our job to try to persuade them that a shiny suit isn't as nice to wear as one made out of 10 oz quality cloth." Still it is worth keeping in mind that the cheapest Linley accessory at Louise Kennedy's is a simple doorstop for £7-£15, while the jewellery box would set you back £21,000 - Linley Furniture may be more accessible than you'd think, but owning a noteworthy piece is only for those with a fairly healthy bank balance.
His great passion is promoting and supporting dying skills and crafts such as turning, gilding, carving and marquetry (his firm sub-contracts to over 85 cabinet makers and craftspeople, actively supports a return to the apprenticeship system, and sponsors an annual student scholarship).
"People are more keen to get a qualification or a degree these days but I consider it just as important to be able to make something. Whether you're a wood-turner, a carver, or a carpenter, that is a wonderful profession to have, and it's just as important as a piece of paper saying you've got a degree."
While his preservation of old skills is universally admired, others have questioned his reliance on classical styles, many of them architectural in origin, rather than creating a more innovative design style. Linley is unrepentant: "I don't see any harm in using inspiration from the past, because that's what everybody has always done. Car manufacturers always make a car that is better than the one before but vaguely similar in shape, and that's what we're doing. We're making what an 18th-century craftsman would make only we're making it with better glues, better finishes and hopefully, with more practical uses for 20th century living."
Linley's next aim is to create a truly international status for his furniture - an aim that is nearer to realisation with a contract to supply Neiman Marcus stores around the United States. In his personal life, Linley is also about to undergo expansion plans as a family is currently "in the making".
It's not bad progress for someone who's always had to labour under the misapprehension that he couldn't possibly be any good because he's royalty. "To be honest, I think it's sometimes been a bit of a spur. I'm very obstinate so I won't give up. Hopefully I'll still be doing this in 30 years. I'm not doing this to pass time, I'm doing it because I'm passionate about it. I truly believe in what we've done, and that we'll leave behind something I'm deeply proud of."