Russell Sage2019

Glenmorangie House, Scotland

A visual retelling of the Glenmorangie story, in collaboration with Russel Sage.

Until 2021, Glenmorangie House was a perfectly pleasant, if unremarkable, hotel in the Scottish Highlands. Acquired by the whisky distillery in 1989, the 17-century farmhouse had exactly the kind of interior you might expect of such a building: tartan sofas, floral pelmets, that sort of thing. Very comfortable, but not very Louis Vuitton. Or Moet. Or Hennessy, for that matter.

Since Glenmorangie had been owned by LVMH since 2004, it was deemed high time to bring a little pizazz to the design scheme. The man to do that would be interiors genius and good friend of Fromental’s, Russell Sage.

Russell is no stranger to Scottish hotel restorations, having gained much acclaim for his joyous and outlandish interiors at the Fife Arms in Braemar (think taxidermied stag with ptarmigan’s wings leaping from the bar). A sprinkle of that magic was precisely what Glenmorangie House needed. And indeed got.

Russell, never one to be contained by traditional limitations, took the theme and ran with it, continuing the wallcovering onto the ceilings and the gold foiling onto the doors and woodwork. The overall effect is one of being enveloped in nature.

“It’s one of the things we love about what we do,” says Tim. “A stunning piece of furniture can enhance a setting, whereas the wallpaper is the setting. A space feels the way it does because of what’s on its walls. And that’s certainly true of the Morning Room.”

The project wasn’t without its challenges, though. The site was an 8-hour drive from Fromental’s London studios, there was pressure for an extremely swift turnaround, and it was in the middle of an international pandemic.

“No courier was guaranteeing deliveries,” says Tim, “so we printed the paper long into the night, and the moment it was ready, put it in the car and delivered it by hand. There are always solutions if you look hard enough. It was a joy to work with Russell and the team at Glenmorangie, and we’re more than delighted with the results.”

As is usually the way, Russell reached out to us very early on in the project, before the first ideas had begun to germinate. The brief? A visual retelling of the Glenmorangie story. We were to collaborate with Russell on the entire property, 12 rooms in total, and each was to have its own distinct character.

None more than the Morning Room. Early design discussions with Tim, our co-founder, centred around a vital ingredient of the distillery’s whiskies: Scottish barley. Tim’s mind was immediately taken to our Clef des Champs wallcovering design, which aims to capture the joyful feeling of wandering through a field of wild flowers on a perfect summer’s day (complete with bees, butterflies and field mice frolicking along).

The name was apt, too, clef des champs – literally “key to the fields” – being a French idiom meaning “to escape”, which seemed particularly apposite given Glenmorangie House’s location deep in the Scottish Highlands. Our original Clef des Champs design features layers of translucent washes on silk, which lends a subtle sense of space to the layout. But this project called for a bolder approach.

“We wanted to evoke the warm, honeyed glow of Glenmorangie’s whiskies and begin to tell the story of how they’re created,” says Tim. “I love the idea that the warmth of the sun is transformed into barley which is then transformed into this incredible whisky. So rather than have a background of washes on silk, we decided to go all out and paint the design directly onto gold leaf.” This transformed a joyful yet calming design into a spectacular one.

Russell, never one to be contained by traditional limitations, took the theme and ran with it, continuing the wallcovering onto the ceilings and the gold foiling onto the doors and woodwork. The overall effect is one of being enveloped in nature.

“It’s one of the things we love about what we do,” says Tim. “A stunning piece of furniture can enhance a setting, whereas the wallpaper is the setting. A space feels the way it does because of what’s on its walls. And that’s certainly true of the Morning Room.”

The project wasn’t without its challenges, though. The site was an 8-hour drive from Fromental’s London studios, there was pressure for an extremely swift turnaround, and it was in the middle of an international pandemic.

“No courier was guaranteeing deliveries,” says Tim, “so we printed the paper long into the night, and the moment it was ready, put it in the car and delivered it by hand. There are always solutions if you look hard enough. It was a joy to work with Russell and the team at Glenmorangie, and we’re more than delighted with the results.”

“I’ve worked with Tim and Lizzie for 15 years and I always love it,” says Russell. “Some craft business rely too much on history for their ideas; Fromental are really good at turning everything upside down. They know art history better than anyone, but they can be quite subversive – and they always have endless ideas for ways to answer a brief.

“My background is in fashion and, in the interiors world, Fromental are the closest thing to couture. They’re the best of the best.”

In this article:

Clef des Champs

Clef des Champs

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