‘Making someone redundant is heartbreaking’ — Jeweller Chupi Sweetman on owning failure and the supports that keep her going

February 14 is especially significant for Chupi Sweetman this year as it marks her 40th birthday. She’ll celebrate together with her Valentines — husband Brian and their much longed-for daughter Aya. The other big love of her life, her eponymous jewellery business, has hit a rough patch of late, but she insists that her heart is 100pc in continuing its success in the long term

CEO and jewellery designer Chupi Sweetman

Liadán Hynes

Chupi Sweetman’s husband Brian Durney knew almost immediately after they first met that this was the woman he would marry. He waited two weeks to tell her this, three to say “I love you”, she laughs now, explaining that he didn’t want to scare her. They were 16, “babies”, and had met at a confirmation ceremony where they were set up by his cousin. This week, Sweetman turns 40, appropriately — for one whose eponymous jewellery business revolves around love — on Valentine’s Day.

She scoffs at the idea that she herself might have shared such certainty after meeting Durney initially. In part it was the fact that she was 16, but also, she points out, she is the child of divorced parents. Her father John Pell, an economist, and mother Rosita Sweetman, a journalist, had separated when she was five, and divorced when she was 10. She and her younger brother, Luke, were raised by her mother.

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