In the 1990s, London’s historic Charlotte Street felt a bit shabby and uninspiring. Its fortunes changed in 2000 when Kit Kemp opened the 52-room Charlotte Street Hotel on the site of a former dental warehouse that had blighted the street in London’s Bloomsbury neighborhood. “The hotel gave the street a focal point,” Kemp says.
For the design, Kemp took cues from the Bloomsbury Group, a group of writers, artists, intellectuals, and philosophers in the early 20th century whose ranks included Virginia Woolf, Duncan Grant, and John Maynard Keynes. In the drawing-room, for example, contemporary artwork hangs alongside pieces by Bloomsbury artists such as Alfred Wolmark and Nina Hamnett, while a painting by Virginia Woolf’s sister, Vanessa Bell, finds a home above a handsome stone fireplace mantel in the painted wood-paneled library. For the restaurant, Kemp commissioned artist Alexander Hollweg to create a mural that pays homage to the many Bloomsbury ones destroyed during World War II.
Ideally suited for London’s gray skies, the sootier colors associated with Bloomsbury art also influenced the upholstery and custom carpets, which Kemp had made using old Bloomsbury woodblock designs. Book covers by Bloomsbury artists, meanwhile, inspired the custom wallcoverings, which are decidedly and deliberately out of fashion. “If you do that, you don’t have an interior that wears high-heeled shoes,” she says. “You have an interior that will last.”
The rooms are equally timeless. In one, a flint-covered linen wallcovering creates a peaceful backdrop for a headboard upholstered in a boisterous floral fabric accented with throw pillows, artwork, and drapery. “This is a concoction of glorious fabrics,” Kemp says. “It’s not frantic, but there are little punches of color. You want something that makes the room memorable.”
Ever evolving, each room has a distinct vibe, giving Kemp plenty of space to experiment with new ideas to honor the Bloomsbury Group. “History gives you something to hang your hat on,” she says. “There was nothing of Bloomsbury in this street, and yet it’s the heart of Bloomsbury,” she says, with the hotel providing a key link to the neighborhood’s hallowed past.
The exterior of the hotel, a former dental warehouse
Contemporary artwork hangs next to works from classic Bloomsbury artists
A floral-upholstered headboard pops against gray walls
The wood-paneled library continues the colorful upholstery trend
