There are very few hotel suites in London that could be described as unique. But the King’s Lodge is one of them. That’s not just because the compact 45 sq m room, tucked beneath the sloping eaves on the fifth floor of the Connaught, took 18 months to build. Or because it has had the eyes of our monarch upon it, having been created by artisans from Turquoise Mountain, the NGO that King Charles, then Prince of Wales, founded in 2006. But because it was made in five countries and took five years to plan, a process, the Turquoise Mountain creative adviser Guy Oliver says, “that was like making the most complicated jigsaw puzzle you could imagine — only in 3D”.
The result is more like a jewel box than a hotel bedroom. Laid out as one long single space, with a bed at one end, lobby in the middle and sitting room and bathroom at the other, the Lodge has been decorated in Mogul style to reference Kabul, the Afghan city in which Turquoise Mountain began.
This is not the first Mogul-themed room that Oliver, whose company Oliver Laws designed the state rooms at Downing Street and the heritage suites of the Connaught, has created. In 2010 he put together the Prince’s Lodge, just over the corridor from this one, featuring some crafts from Turquoise Mountain. It was so popular that the hotel’s owners, the Qatari-owned Maybourne hotel group, suggested he did another.
As in a Mogul palace, the walls in the King’s Lodge have been adorned with intricately patterned wooden panelling, into which 900 hand-cut and faceted mirrors have been placed. The result is that when you walk into the room, sunlight bounces from mirror to mirror, twinkling and illuminating the beautifully rich textures and colours of the suite — sumptuous red and pink velvets and silks in the living space, mustard and yellow bolsters in the central area, and soft, soothing creams around the bed — and, at each end, portraits of a Mogul man and woman looking at each other.
The location meant that getting light in was “pretty challenging”, Oliver says. So he removed the ceilings to open the room into the attic above. He also moved the front door to create symmetrical spaces either side of a central hall area and linked the whole together with hand-carved architectural woodwork. And then, he says, “when the mirrors were added at the end suddenly it all came together, with the light bouncing around”.
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The space is romantic and foreign-feeling, comfortable yet totally transporting. Walk from the Connaught’s grand English passageways into the Lodge and you suddenly feel as if you’re in another country, another era. It’s like walking into a scene from The Arabian Nights — albeit one with air conditioning, TVs and a white marble bathroom. Plus there are the incredible Turquoise Mountain crafts: carpets and miniature paintings from Afghanistan, marble from India, velvets from along the Silk Route.
Turquoise Mountain was founded to support traditional craftsmanship in Afghanistan, where war had decimated the buildings and left artisans without work. Since the NGO launched its first project, rebuilding more than 150 mud-and-wood homes in the historic market area of Kabul, it has become one of the key employers of craftspeople in the country, helping to ensure their heritage and skills are passed on to a new generation while providing them with a sustainable income. And under the leadership of the charismatic Shoshana Stewart, who met her husband, the politician Rory Stewart, while volunteering in Afghanistan, the organisation has expanded to Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan and Palestine, and exported crafts worth more than £13 million to international companies from ABC Carpet & Home in New York and Christopher Farr in London to the Four Seasons in Dubai.
The web of people that the organisation has nurtured is reflected by the diverse range of crafts and materials within the room, Oliver points out. The Mogul empire, he explains, encompassed “many of the ‘stans’, as well as India, in the 16th century”. And all the countries whose workmen made bits of this room would have been part of that empire.
The patterns of the wood on the walls, for instance, were inspired by a mosque in Kabul where the Mogul emperor Shah Jahan, who created the Taj Mahal in India, is buried (and the white marble in the bathroom came from the same quarry as that used for the Taj Mahal). The carpets are made in Afghanistan: one using designs by Ziegler, the other a Mori Bokhara pattern, rewoven in Helmand province. The furniture is hewn by Syrian refugees in Jordan and the fabrics crafted in Myanmar. Even the little miniature paintings are original Afghan replicas of ancient illuminated paintings from books depicting the gardens of Emperor Babur in Kabul and are framed to fit precisely within the complex geometry of the carved patterns on the walls.
Every inch of the design, Oliver says, references the principle of sacred geometry, often used in Islamic architecture, which he learnt while studying at the Prince’s Foundation. It explains the natural flow of spaces into each other, the mirroring of the patterns on the walls and in the carpets, and the repetition of floral motifs on the hand-cast brass handles and the elaborately carved four-poster bed. As with a mosque, every detail is related to another to create a seamless whole. “My adage is that you can see bad design,” Oliver adds. “But good design is seamless. It just works.”
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Even pieces that aren’t from the Middle East have been carefully picked for their connections. The desk, for instance, is an English antique from the Connaught’s collection and mirrors the style of furnishing used by the British in India. And the historic-looking stained-glass windows — featuring the hotel’s emblem, a hound — were made by York-based Helen Whittaker, who also studied at the Prince’s Foundation. “I’m not sure she thanked me for that commission,” Oliver says with a laugh. “She told me the geometry of the designs [which mirror those in a nearby Jali screen] meant it was the most complicated leading they’d ever done. But it was worth it — look how special it is.”
The King sadly hasn’t seen the Lodge, Oliver says, because of his illness. But he has been shown photographs and videos, and loves it. “He was very touched.”
the-connaught.co.uk
