INDIAN JEWEL Magnificent and exotic, this hotel has a very personal touch
Interior designer-turned-hotelier Richard Hanlon has created a masterpiece of Anglo-indian style
You’ll find a myriad of amazing interiors at Bujera Fort hotel in Udaipur and they all reflect the eclectic style of its interior-designer owner Richard Hanlon – and he wouldn’t have it any other way. ‘I hate rooms that look like a hotel,’ he says. ‘This is very much our home. And, when you’re here, this is your home.’ Richard and his friend Trish Mcfarlane set off second-home hunting in India some 13 years ago, a plan that gradually morphed into building an entire hotel from scratch.
Completed five years ago, the hotel is on an epic scale, covering some 40,000 square feet, with fragrant gardens, shady colonnades and vast, lofty rooms. A lesser interior designer might have approached a project like this armed with mood boards, swatches and bookmarked Pinterest pages. But all that is too formulaic for Richard.
‘Mood boards? Good Lord no. I didn’t even do sketches of the rooms because I can’t draw,’ he says with a laugh. Instead, his approach was more instinctive, born of decades of designing homes for a select client list. Or, as he puts it, ‘I just threw it all up in the air and it came together like this.’
Of course, he’s being unduly modest. Richard’s ability to track down the unusual and the beautiful is well known and he has long been Kit Kemp’s Man In India, sourcing key pieces for Ham Yard Hotel and other Firmdale properties. ‘I’ve learned more about decoration from Kit than from anyone,’ he says.
At Bujera Fort, Richard had free rein to create his own blend of Anglo and Indian traditions, most notably with fabrics. Country house florals that would look at home in a Cotswold rectory sit comfortably alongside intricately embellished
Kutch embroidery and vintage Kantha quilts.
‘I don’t do matchy-matchy,’ he explains.
Richard’s first visit to India was 46 years ago, making this project the culmination of a long-term love affair with the country and its craft traditions. Around 100 artisans were hired, from woodcarvers to stonemasons, weavers to cabinetmakers. Highlights include 86 hand-carved stone pillars and expanses of Udaipur marble, worked into luxurious bathtubs and geometric-patterned flooring.
The hotel’s finished structure is rooted in the Mughal tradition, with mihrab arches, jewel coloured Belgian glass, crenellations and domeshaped chhatri pavilions hidden amid the gardens. All the doors and windows are salvaged ones, adding to the authentic feel. The recycling ethos continues inside, but with a more personal twist.
The fabric on the sofas in the library began life as curtains in Richard’s grandmother’s house in Sunderland. ‘Although I remember them when they were reused in the dining room in my parents’ house in the 1950s, in that post-war make-do-and mend way,’ he says. Locally sourced textiles and rugs also come with their own stories. An ottoman is, in true Richard Hanlon style, upholstered in a Bennison linen on the sides but then topped with a rare piece of Kashmiri gros point.
Richard and Trish’s headlong adventure into Indian design, architecture and culture was, in part, fuelled by reading These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach, which also inspired the film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Richard felt quite at home in India long before Judi Dench donned her shalwar kameez, but her character’s lines still struck a chord.
‘Initially, you’re overwhelmed,’ she says, describing the adjustment to Indian life. ‘But gradually you realise it’s like a wave. Resist, and you’ll be knocked over. Dive into it and you’ll swim out the other side.’ By diving deep into his love of Indian and English design, Richard Hanlon has turned going with the flow into quite an art form.