2012

The Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon at Fortnum & Mason

Restaurant
London
The Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon at Fortnum & Mason

Royal Flush

One might think that creating an afternoon tea restaurant for a client indelibly associated with the art of tea preparation would be more than enough pressure for one project. But when that client is Fortnum & Mason – holder of two royal warrants, including one as tea merchant to the Prince of Wales – and the project is to mark the Queen’s 2012 Diamond Jubilee, it is the sort of commission for which something stronger than a cuppa might be required to cope with the stress. Not least when the dining room is to be opened by the Queen herself, accompanied by the Duchesses of Cambridge and Cornwall.

“The Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon was envisaged as the jewel in the crown of Fortnums,” says Lewis Taylor, design director of David Collins Studio, who worked with David Collins himself on the project. “There was a lot of pressure from the client to get this right.”

Collins, however, remained unflappable. “David was always super-calm and reassuring,” Taylor says – even when faced with royalty. “The Queen was wearing an eau-de-Nil outfit when she came to open it. David said to her, ‘it's nice that you’re dressed to match the project’. Which was quite cheeky.”

Fortnums’ signature colour was introduced by the Studio rather than at the insistence of the client, Taylor says. “When you think of Fortnums, you think of tea, which meant that the Tea Salon had to be the most quintessentially Fortnum & Mason-looking space in the building. We used eau de Nil carefully, though, rather than overpowering the space with it.”

The Studio had already designed the store’s Fountain and Gallery restaurants, the Parlour ice-cream café and the 1707 Wine Bar (the year that Fortnums opened on Piccadilly), each with its own distinct identity. “But when you see a picture of The Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon, you know immediately that it’s in Fortnum & Mason,” Taylor says.

Customers are greeted at a reception desk panelled with the same wicker that is used to make Fortnums’ iconic hampers. The room’s carpet pattern references the chinoiserie used throughout the store. The bar front is cast in resin designed to look like glazed china; the original idea was to use porcelain, but it wasn’t hardwearing enough. “We used all of the expected Fortnums references, but tied in very subtly,” Taylor says.

Yet for all of the Fortnums signatures, the design is unmistakeably David Collins Studio, Taylor says. “We get obsessive about a couple of details which we don't compromise on and the bar front was one of those. We worked with an artist to perfect the floral pattern. We went through 50 different glaze samples before we picked the right one which hit the eau-de-Nil colour correctly, but also had a depth to it so that you could see that the flower pattern was raised and not printed on.”

David Collins Studio is no stranger to afternoon tea, having designed not only standalone restaurants such as The Wolseley and Delaunay in London, where afternoon tea is a key part of the all-day offering, but hotel tea rooms including Artesian at the Langham and the Mandarin Lounge at the Mandarin Oriental, Doha.

And yet as Taylor points out, only the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon has tea as its raison d’être, which is why many foodies (this writer included) regard the experience as the best afternoon tea in London. “We often talk about the ceremony of a project when we begin working on it,” Taylor says. “How the space will be used, or what our first feeling is when entering it. The ceremony of tea is as much a part of the overall experience as the cake and sandwiches: how the trolleys move around the room, how the tea stands are placed on the tables, the way that the tea is poured. We made very sure that customers would have as much visibility as possible across the space to take all of that in, to see the activity of the staff moving around or catch a glimpse into the tea sampling room.”

Ten years since opening and not only is the Queen celebrating her Platinum Jubilee but the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon looks as fresh as ever. But the space must have an appeal beyond when the Queen has an anniversary to celebrate – or, as Taylor says, it must look like “a signature, timeless David Collins design,” all of the time. What, then, is the secret to that?

“We never lean too much on trends,” Taylor says. “With all of our projects, we always look back before we look forward. We might pick a couple of historical architectural details from the archive of a client such as Fortnums or Harrods, which we then make contemporary versions of. That means the new DNA is embedded in the past and that there is an authentic point of view as a starting point. The design becomes timeless because it’s not referencing one particular period and it ages really well."

Taylor points out that the average lifespan for an interior design project is between five and eight years, but for a David Collins Studio design it is 17. Not quite as long as the Queen’s 70-year-reign, admittedly, but as it’s always time for tea at Fortnums, the Diamond Jubilee Salon looks set to sparkle for some time to come.

Ben McCormack is a British restaurant editor and copywriter.