Designers: Jason Hunt and Alma
The Crazy Bear group has opened its boutique hotel in Beaconsfield, offering one of the most original and opulent interiors.
More than 50 different types of leather has been used to create its unique atmosphere, with expert designers from leather supplier Alma working directly with the owner Jason Hunt to achieve the stunning effect.
The 500-year-old former coaching inn has been restored to create 10 individually designed guest rooms, two fine-dining restaurants, private dining rooms and bars, using in total more than 1,000 sq m of fine leathers in a dazzling array of uses.
Leather was used, not unsurprisingly, in banquette and booth seating, as sofa and chair upholstery, but also features as cladding on walls, ceilings, and doors, as flooring, as hand rails, desk tops, and on wardrobes, inside and out.
It appears in the bathrooms, as curtains in laser-cut Nubuck, as linings to display unit, in dining areas as menu holders, placemats, coasters and tablecloths, covering dustbins, and on bed frames and headboards. In the design and fit-out of the Crazy Bear boutique hotel, Alma’s belief that leathers can replace traditional coverings to create sumptuous natural surroundings, add beauty, depth and warmth to any space has been emphatically borne out.
Combining traditional expertise with cuttingedge techniques, Alma has been able to redefine how leather is used. At the Crazy Bear, for example, one bedroom is almost exclusively in black leather: cladding on the sloping attic ceiling, with a black mirror insert at the apex; leather croc-print tiles on the floor, and black leather insets to a heavily ornate silvered headboard and footplate. A low-level sofa in a patterned leather to match the flooring is covered with soft velvety, but black, cushions.
Shining out like a beacon from the black is a magnificent freestanding copper bath. To the side sits a copper-topped drinks table, and holding bathtime goodies is an oval hat-box-style side table, again in black leather, this time with silver studs.
Another bedroom, also created out of a roof space, has exposed beams and is rich and warm looking with exposed red brickwork and red inserts between the beams. The floor is covered in a snakeskin print leather tile in tones of rich and bright red.
In complete contrast is a handrail, covered in a rainbow-coloured snakeskin print, running adjacent to a spectacular waterfall of a crystal chandelier. In a private dining space, the rough wood-clad ceiling and walls, covered with behorned trophies of hunting, is the perfect foil for a single piece of smooth leather used here as a covering for a 3m-long communal dining table.
It is estimated that some 85 per cent of all surfaces at Crazy Bear are covered in leather, made possible because of the material’s flexibility and durability. Not to mention the exotic design statement it makes used in such a variety of ways.
This article was first published in X2 Magazine
