Scottish Serenade - 3
Chris Bancroft, above, is quite a guy. Hotel kid grows up to win all kinds of UK awards and scholarships, Cornell and The Newt in Somerset, when he moved north of the border to what is arguably the most charmingly eccentric hotel in Scotland, if not Europe. The Fife Arms, in the centre of Braemar, famously belongs to gallerists Hauser&Wirth. It’s a Russell Sage-designed art gallery with 46 bedrooms and more.
Girlahead arrived. The grey and softest squashed-strawberry stone building – typically mid-Victorian Scotland – seemed to rise up out of a pavement solid with nice-type tourists, predominantly American, well-kept and well travelled. Either side of the main door were several occupied wrought-iron seating sets, painted like the hotel’s drainpipes and the like, in rich milk chocolate colour. Go down four steps from the pavement and into the hall, past whole boxes of water bottles (generosity overflows at the Fife Arms).
Of course all visitors expect art here, and be assured that after a stay here you now don’t need to trek to The Tate, ancient or Modern. The lobby has Richard Jackson’s 1.5m-diameter circular kaleidoscopic chandelier hanging precariously over the head of the plus-foured ghillie, a concierge by any other name . There’s a Lucien Freud on one wall. The adjacent withdrawing room, boasting an over-the-top carved mediaeval fireplace, has a modern ceiling that evokes ripples of slimy sand (artist Zhang Enli). There’s also a Picasso.
It’s incessant, this art gallery of a hotel that gallerists Iwan and Manuela Wirth have assembled. They’ve stuck valuables atop strongly-patterned wallpaper – viz a Pieter Brueghel the Younger in the Dining Room, where Guillermo Kuitca’s hand-painted geometric wallpaper is themed for the Clunie River outside. Elsewhere, there are random portraits of today’s locals, sketches by Gordon Summerfield. An Indian named Subadh Gupta shows, by contrast, considerable torment in his fantasy chandelier in the Fire Room. Elsewhere, Gerhard Richter’s contributed an eagle in his usual sombre style (remember his piece in the lobby of Park Hyatt Chicago when it re-opened?).
Girlahead found it a bit overwhelming but totally absorbing. She recovered after her arrival – chauffeured by a Special Branch officer, obviously moonlighting – with lunch in the integral alehouse, The Flying Stag. This is how one imagines a traditional Scottish drinking place to be. Some long shared tables, others for couples, all solid oak, like most of the seating. Colour comes from the occasional orange leather chair, added interest from cases of stuffed animals – and simply good food (the cup of chips was scrumptiously addictive)…...
