WALL TO WALL

THE SCOTTISH HERITAGE HOME

WHERE The Fife Arms, Braemar, Scotland

Seasoned collectors know that it takes time to build a blue-chip art collection. So it is no mean feat that The Fife Arms owners, Iwan and Manuela Wirth (pictured right), took three years to restore this 19th-century Victorian coaching inn into a 46-bedroom boutique hotel—which opened last December—and fill it with more than 14,000 works of art. Considering the Swiss couple is behind leading global gallery Hauser & Wirth, you know that they were in their element, despite this being the first property of its kind in their nascent hospitality portfolio. For the hotel’s interiors, British designer Russell Sage took inspiration from local history and landscape, as evinced by the bespoke tartan covering the walls and even taxidermy (above left), juxtaposed withand Lucien Freud’s (opposite) take centre stage in the drawing room and lobby, respectively, alongside site-specific commissions such as Chinese artist Zhang Enli’s ceiling fresco (above left) that emulate the cross section of Scottish agates in their colour and texture, and American artist Richard Jackson’s (above right), crafted of intertwined glass antlers, bathing the hotel’s central staircase in neon lights.