the magazine winter 2012

Transcription

THE MAGAZINE
WINTER 2012
WINTER 2012
PRI_01_privat_coverFJ.indd 1
22/12/2011 12:21
A Daimler Brand
Occasionally, a headline is unnecessary.
The new 6.3 litre V8 SLS AMG Roadster.
Official government fuel consumption figures in MPG (Litres per 100km) for the SLS AMG Roadster: Urban 14.2 (19.9),
on the road including optional Sepang Brown paint at £1,755.00, 19"/20" AMG forged wheels – 10-spoke design at £1,715.00 and two-tone designo Exclusive leather, Sand/Black, at £2,140.00
No.74006 Mercedes Benz DPS.indd 2
16/11/2011 17:33
Extra Urban 30.4 (9.3), Combined 21.4 (13.2). CO2 emissions: 308 g/km. Model featured is a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Roadster at £182,505.00
(price includes VAT, delivery, 12 months Road Fund Licence, number plates, new vehicle registration fee and fuel). Prices correct at time of going to print.
No.74006 Mercedes Benz DPS.indd 3
16/11/2011 17:33
No.69497 Angelo Galasso.indd 2
23/08/2011 16:55
No.69497 Angelo Galasso.indd 3
23/08/2011 16:55
No.69952 - Spemot.indd 1
15/06/2011 17:35
INTHISISSUE
IMAGE©MARIANOHERRERA
P R I VAT S T Y L E
Printed top by Diane
von Furstenberg;
coon printed skirt by
Moschino; scarf by
Antik Batik; leather
wedges by L.K. Benne;
hand-painted necklace
by Pebble London
PRI_07_privat_contentsFJ.indd 7
Get jungle fever with this season’s bold
prints and tropical colours
16/12/2011 11:24
Tom Kundig
builds houses
continuous with
the landscape,
page 42
P R I VAT D I A R Y
Steve Handley talks to David Hockney
ahead of his Royal Academy exhibition
P R I VAT H O T E L S
Get away from it all in the Grenadines
on a private island retreat
P R I VAT YAC H T Frances and Michael Howorth uncover
the best alternative moorings in the Med
P R I VAT C O L L E C T O R
Anwer Bati heralds the benefits of
collecting cigars, rather than smoking them
P R I VAT S E L E C T I O N
Keith W. Strandberg showcases the most
exclusive multi-time zone watches
Burma – ‘quite unlike
any land you know’,
page 70
P R I VAT D I N I N G
Savour creative cuisine in Paris’s edgy but
chic new restaurants
P R I VATA R T S
Jennifer Sharp meets Konrad and Blanca
of Munich’s art-dealing Bernheimer dynasty
P R I VAT D E S I G N Jonathan Bell talks to Tom Kundig about
his beautiful homes in isolated landscapes
P R I VAT P E R S O N
Jo Craven speaks to Lady Serena Linley –
entrepreneur, shop owner and style icon
THE MAGAZINE
P R I VAT E S C A P E
Cover: Polar Power
by ‘Joe Bunni, one of
the winning photos
from the Veolia
Environnement
Wildlife Photographer
of the Year 2011
exhibition at London’s
Natural History
Museum,which runs
until 11 March
Teresa Levonian Cole journeys to northern
Canada to see polar bears in the wild
P R I VAT T R AV E L
Adrian Mourby follows in his family’s
footsteps to Mandalay, Burma
P R I VATA I R
News and developments at PrivatAir
WINTER 2012
Eight
PRI_07_privat_contentsFJ.indd 8
16/12/2011 08:42
.ATURESLUXURY
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No.73614 - Graf von Faber-Castell 1pp.indd 1
24/10/2011 13:14
P R I VAT C O N T R I B U T O R S
CONTRIBUTORS
ADR IANM OU R BY
WINTER
Adrian is a novelist, travel journalist and
international architectural correspondent for
Opera Now magazine. Twenty years on the road
have taken him to America, India, China, Africa,
Antarctica and most of Europe. However,
Adrian has yet to fully explore South-East Asia,
which is why visiting Burma and meeting Aung
San Suu Kyi was such an appealing assignment.
Michael Keating
EDITOR
A S S O C I AT E E D I T O R
Claire Martin
D E S I G N D I R E C T O R
Julia Murray
P H O T O G R A P H Y D I R E C T O R
Alex Ortiz
F A S H I O N D I R E C T O R
Nino Bauti
SUB-EDITOR
Steve Handley
J ON AT HAN B E LL
Jonathan is a writer and editor. Since 2005 he
has been Wallpaper* magazine’s architecture
editor and has also contributed to numerous
international publications. His books include
Penthouse Living, Concept Cars, The 21st
Century House and The New Modern House:
Redefining Functionalism. Tom Kundig is one
of his favourite architects.
PRODUCTION
Helen Grimley
REPROGRAPHICS
KFR Reprographics
PRINTING
Taylor Bloxham
LOGISTIC S
www.goferslogistics.com
SA L E S M A N AG E R
Sonja Müller
+44 (0)20 7613 8166
[email protected]
GROUPPUBLISHER
Stefan Bartsch
Photographer Mariano lives and works in
Barcelona, which was perfect for our fashion
story, shot in the city’s botanical gardens. He has
worked for many magazines, including Monocle,
Spanish Esquire, and El País Semanal (the
newspaper’s weekly supplement). He has recently
had exhibitions of his work at La Santa,
Barcelona, and Havana, Cuba.
Simon Leslie
C H I E F O P E R AT I N G O F F I C E R
Hugh Godsal
CHIEFEXECUTIVE
Jeff rey O’Rourke
PUBLISHED BY
Ink, www.ink-global.com
FOR
PrivatAir SA
Chemin des Papillons 18
PO Box 572, 1215 Geneva 15
Telephone +41 (0)22 929 6700
Fax +41 (0)22 929 6701
[email protected]
www.privatair.com
J OC RAVE N
Jo is a journalist who writes about fashion,
women, luxury and lifestyle for publications
including The Times Magazine, Wall Street
Journal Magazine and Vogue, where she was
features editor for five years. In this issue she
profiles Lady Serena Linley. Jo loves following
the way brands chart economic change and show
us where tomorrow’s business opportunities lie.
© Ink. All material is strictly copyright and all
rights are reserved. Reproduction in whole or part
is prohibited without prior permission from the
publisher. Opinions expressed in PrivatAir the
Magazine are not necessarily those of PrivatAir
ILLUSTRATIONS©STUARTWHITTONATHANDSOMEFRANK
M AR IANOHE R R E RA
P U B L I S H I N G D I R E C T O R
Te n
PRI_10_privat_contribsCM_FINAL.indd 10
19/12/2011 15:51
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16/12/2011 11:40
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NO.75714 Artmodul.indd 1
13/12/2011 17:18
P R I VAT D I A R Y
‘I get intense pleasure from my eyes’
WOLDGATEWOODS&NOVEMBER©DAVIDHOCKNEYPHOTO
RICHARDSCHMIDT
David Hockney talks to Steve Handley about his
exuberantly colourful landscapes at London’s Royal Academy
‘ANYARTISTWILLTELLYOUTHEWORKTHEYDID
yesterday was their best,’ says Hockney of his exhibition of
recent landscapes at London’s Royal Academy. The artist is
on sparkling form as ever: dour, wry, supremely northern.
Nevertheless, these vast, luminous canvases of unassuming
English lanes, woods and fields need no hard sell; they’re his
finest work since his 70s heyday. Some 150 pieces – from
wall-filling oils on multiple canvases to blow-ups of sketches
done on his iPad – are on display as part of the London 2012
Festival, the city’s cultural side dish to the Olympic Games. ‘I
couldn’t give a monkey’s about the Olympics,’ says Hockney
with flat disdain and flatter vowels. It’s heartwarming that
nearly a lifetime in the Californian sun hasn’t weakened the
Yorkshireman’s propensity to call a spade a spade.
Despite making his home among the swimming pools
and palm trees of the Hollywood Hills, Hockney has always
spent a good bit of time at his mother’s home in Bridlington,
on England’s fresh north-east coast. Since 2004 he has made
the surrounding countryside the focus of his work. ‘It’s the
landscape I know from my childhood. It’s mainly hidden
small valleys, few rivers in them. Not many people would
think it’s that unique – but then there’s not many people. At
my age, it’s a terrific subject. People leave you alone.’
At 74 Hockney is immensely charming and self-assured,
as you would be after over 40 years at the very top of your
game, but he has succumbed to at least two of the faults of age:
hobby-horses and deafness. He bats away questions with wellrehearsed maxims on how to live well, principal among which
is the pleasure of looking. ‘Most people don’t look very hard,’
he says. ‘To see colour you have to look, to think about it. I love
looking at the world. I get intense pleasure from my eyes.’
The heightened colour of his work is pleasing and uplifting,
a world of rich pinks, vivid greens, blues and mauves. Hockney’s
landscapes nod to Matisse and Rousseau in their intense fantasy
colours and love of pattern and rhythm, but it’s his English
artistic forebears who provide the emotional history: Spencer’s
dainty pictures of the leafy lanes and red-brick country cottages
of Cookham; Sutherland’s iconic natural forms. He is the
greatest living painter of pleasure – the everyday pleasure to be
found in looking. It’s a gift we could all benefit from learning.
David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture, Royal Academy of Arts,
London W1, 21 January – 9 April
Thirteen
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P R I VAT D I A R Y
VZAGATO
On the 50th anniversary of the iconic DB4GT Zagato,
Aston Martin (in collaboration with Italian design consultancy
Zagato) unveils the hand-crafted V12 Zagato. With its
aluminium and carbon body, this racer is based on the acclaimed
V12 Vantage, but the Zagato is faster, more dynamic, more
modern and utterly gorgeous. With a six-litre V12 engine and
510bhp and 570Nm of torque, it’s one of the most powerful
vehicles on the market. But creating such a groundbreaking car
was no easy feat, says Aston Martin’s CEO, Dr Ulrich Bez.
‘The task for us has been to create a concept that is a natural
successor to iconic cars that have gone before. Matching the
technology of the age with the traditional skills vital to deliver
such a bespoke and exclusive sports car will lead to a strictly
limited run of road-going V12 Zagatos.’ Indeed. Only 150 are
being produced and due to go on sale later this summer, priced
at £330,000. See it in the flesh at Geneva’s prestigious motor
show (www.salon-auto.ch) on 8–18 March.
www.astonmartin.com
It’s been all around the world, in London, Berlin, Istanbul and
most recently, at the Venice Biennale. Finally, the pan-Arab art
collective, Edge of Arabia, is coming home.
The month-long exhibition in Jeddah is the most highprofile platform for contemporary Arab art the Kingdom has
ever seen. Twenty Saudi artists including Abdulnasser Gharem,
a colonel in the Saudi army turned performance artist (he
cocooned himself in bubblewrap around a tree for a day) will
take part in the exhibition at the newly opened Al-Furusya
Marina gallery, overlooking the Red Sea.
Jeddah is already one of the region’s creative hubs, with an
ambitious public art programme pioneered by the city’s former
mayor. ‘This exhibition will be a true homecoming for Edge of
Arabia,’ says curator Mohammed Hafiz. ‘It’s geared towards
encouraging constructive discussion and dialogue between
Saudi contemporary artists and the local community.’
Edge of Arabia Jeddah: We Need to Talk, Al-Furusya Mall and
Marina, Corniche Road, Jeddah, 20 January – 18 February,
www.edgeofarabia.com
WORDS©CLAIREMARTINSAKHRAL-MAKHADHI
EDGEOFARABIA
Fourteen
PRI_14_privat_diaryFJ.indd 14
19/12/2011 12:51
COPYRIGHT 2011 BRIKK LLC ¦ ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PHOTOGRAPHER: BRYONY SHEARMUR IPHONE IS A TRADEMARK OF APPLE CORPORATION
Trim
for iPhone 4S
Trim Standard shown in Platinum (above),
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Learn more at brikk.com
No.75719 Brikk 1pp.indd 1
15/12/2011 10:05
P R I VAT H O T E L S
Sweet Escapes
Whether you are looking for black runs,
high culture or just a little peace and
tranquillity, there’s a room here for you
PE T ITSTVINCENT
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You may not be able to quite get away from it all
on the private island resort of Petit St Vincent,
but you can at least get away from most of it. The
115-acre island in the Grenadines prides itself on
being ‘unwired’, with no wi-fi access, telephone or
television in any of the 22 cottages, many on the
beach. Just reopened after refurbishment, Petit
St Vincent has been subtly improved by its new
owners with a few concessions to modernity, such
as air conditioning and room service phones –
previously you had to raise a flag to get attention.
Now you need hardly leave your bed to have
food delivered to you, but if you’re feeling more
gregarious you can eat at the new beach bar and
restaurant, where local grilled lobster has been
enjoyed by visitors such as Steven Spielberg and
James Dyson. Alternatively, head to the main
restaurant and savour the cuisine of the new
Belgian chef and indulge in the contents of the
excellent wine cellar.
Rooms from $1,050 per night, all-inclusive, excluding
alcohol. Exclusive use of the whole island is $60,000
a night, minimum five nights. www.petitstvincent.com
Sixteen
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BIG H ORNLODG E
DWA R IK A’SH OT E L
BRITISHCOLUMBIA
KATHMANDUNEPAL
Revelstoke, an old mining town in
British Columbia, has long been an elite
heliskiing hotspot. However, the launch
of Revelstoke Mountain Resort in 2007
placed it firmly on the international ski
map, making it the world’s only resort to
offer lift, snowcat, heli- and backcountry
skiing from one village base.
This winter’s hottest ticket in
Revelstoke (‘Revy’ to those in the know)
is Bighorn Lodge. Named after the local
sheep, the palatial timber-framed lodge
is located in an exclusive enclave on the
resort’s lower slopes. Not content with
ski-in/ski-out access, Bighorn’s owners
built a helipad in the back garden, so
guests can heliski from their doorstep.
Probably the most sumptuous ski
lodge in British Columbia, Bighorn
affords unbroken views across the
Columbia River and Monashee
Mountains from its triple-height
Great Room, eight spacious suites and
outdoor hot tub. The property boasts
snazzy contemporary design and is
home to a private cinema, extensive
spa and wellness area, games room
with pool table and bar, and even a
teppanyaki chef ’s table in the kitchen.
Bighorn is available for exclusive use for
16 people from Can$64,500 including
seven nights’ catered accommodation,
with house wines and in-resort transport.
www.bighornrevelstoke.com
Named after its founder, Dwarika
Das Shrestha, Dwarika’s Hotel is the
embodiment of his determination to
preserve Nepal’s rich yet threatened
cultural heritage. While jogging
one morning in 1952, the hotelier
rescued some intricately carved
wooden pillars from ancient Newar
buildings, which were being replaced
with concrete blocks. By 1977,
Shrestha was able to construct
a small hotel from his rescued
timber frames, fascias and shutters,
furnished exclusively with locally
crafted tiles, terracotta, wooden
furniture and hand-woven linens.
Today, Shrestha’s family continue
his legacy – the hotel now boasts 79
rooms and suites, all constructed,
furnished and decorated by local
craftsmen. Hand-carved 15thcentury window shutters open out
onto a secluded courtyard, in which
terracotta and wood carvings of
Hindu gods overlook fountains,
reflecting pots overflowing with
vivid bougainvillea, azaleas and
marigolds. Dwarika’s is also home
to an award-winning spa and three
restaurants, including Krishnarpan,
which showcases the best Nepali
cuisine in the country.
Double room from $225 per night.
www.dwarikas.com
I L SA LV I AT I NO
FLORENCE
With more five-star hotels than any other city in Italy, Florence
is no stranger to luxury. However, even the Florentines are
raving about the city’s newest five-star offering: Il Salviatino, a
much-remodelled 15th-century palace in Fiesole.
Famous for its sweeping views over Florence, hillside
Fiesole is just 15 minutes’ drive from the magnificent Duomo
and its surrounding churches and palaces. After a busy day’s
sightseeing, you can retreat to Il Salviatino’s terrace or sink into
the swimming pool to savour the views and cool breeze.
While the Ojetti and Marcello suites vie for the best views
in the house – the former boasting a private rooftop balcony
and the latter, 360-degree views from its second-floor dining
room – the Aff resco Suite features a frescoed ceiling painted
by Bruschi in 1886, best contemplated while soaking in the
Roman bath discovered in Il Salviatino’s gardens.
Deluxe bed and breakfast from €450 per night. www.salviatino.com
Seventeen
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P R I VAT YA C H T
PORTS OF CALL
MARINASINTHESOUTHOFFRANCETHESPANISH COSTAS
and the Balearics are all suffering from a similar problem. In
recent years, a chronic shortage of dock space has forced up prices
to the point that, in some cases, it has actually prevented the very
purchase of the yacht the owners planned to dock there.
‘Undoubtedly one of the best investments a yacht owner could
have ever made in the past decade is a superyacht berth in some
of the more popular Mediterranean marinas,’ says Patrick Coote,
marketing director of Fraser Yachts in Monaco. The company
currently has for sale the 16 remaining years of a lease on berth
number six, a 50m berth in the harbour outside Monaco at Cap
d’Ail, for €4.5m. A second berth for a superyacht up to 80m with a
16-year lease is available nearby in Italy selling at just under €8m.
With dockage in the Med so expensive, no wonder the savvy
yacht owner is looking elsewhere. Inside the EU, Malta tops the list
for value for money, but countries outside the clutches of VAT are
also attractive. In Tunisia, Marina Bizerte, a 40-minute drive from
Tunis airport, is well on its way to completion. Closer to the Côte
d’Azur than Malta, this purpose-built complex, currently under
construction, will offer 42 superyacht berths, 11 for vessels between
70m and 110m. Morley Yachts are central agents for the sale of
these berths and CEO Tim Morley is offering 30-year leases on
50m berths for €1m with an 80m berth available at €3.2m.
Morley is a passionate proponent of Bizerte’s future as a true
superyacht port. ‘Unlike some projects that offer a marina as a
catalyst to attract buyers into a real estate development, ours is first
and foremost about yachts,’ he says. ‘The modern apartments that
are being built next to the marina are there to support the marina,
not the other way around. The port is the vision of an experienced
yachtsman, and is being transformed into a reality by leading
companies in marina development.’
In the historic city of Limassol, Cyprus, a €35m waterfront
development is under construction that will offer yacht owners the
chance to buy residences as well as dock space inside the marina.
Designed by Atelier Xavier Bohl, the project is just a stroll away
from the old harbour in the town’s historic centre, overlooked by a
medieval castle. With Camper & Nicholsons Marinas appointed
as operators, it will, when open, accommodate superyachts up
to 100m. On the same island but across the border in northern
Cyprus, Karpaz Gate Marina has just opened. Owned by an
international group of investors, it is the country’s first-ever luxury
marina. Located on the Karpaz Peninsula in the north-eastern tip
of the Republic, the marina has 300 berths available including 12
berths for yachts of up to 55m in length.
Inspired by the successful Porto Montenegro project, Princeza
Jadrana, based in Zagreb, Croatia, was founded in 2008. It
independently analyses, designs and implements projects that
have the potential to significantly improve the quality of life on
Croatian islands and is planning to open 12 new marinas, worth
€350m in total. The first four will be finished before the end of
2013, and the whole project completed in 2017.
Turkey offers 20 ports suitable for cruising yachts, offering over
6,500 berths with a further 16 marinas in development. Buying
or leasing berths on this diverse coastline makes sense to yacht
owners. It offers unspoiled waters that are still close to a skilled
workforce that can economically maintain their yachts.
The Med’s new marinas may not have the same cachet as the old
guard, but they are not short on exciting sailing in beautiful surrounds.
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Eighteen
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Nineteen
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A DV E R T I S E M E N T F E AT U R E
A FINE LINE
Cohiba introduces the moﬆ exclusive lines Habanos has ever produced
ince 1966, Cohiba, a Habanos brand, has made
some of the most prestigious cigars in the world.
Originally, these valuable cigars were made solely
to be presented as gifts of the Cuban government, while
today they are the choice of aficionados around the world.
To celebrate 40 years of the Cohiba cigar, Habanos
launched a limited edition of 100 humidors containing
40 Habanos each, made by cigar roller Norma Fernández
and labelled ‘Behike’. A few years later, in 2010, Cohiba
released its best-kept secret – the most exclusive cigar line
yet, called ‘Cohiba Behike’.
Produced in extremely limited quantities, the Behike’s
blend is the fi rst to incorporate ‘Medio Tiempo’, a rare
eptional character and
leaf which lends the cigar exceptional
concentrated flavours. Th ree vitolas will be available,
4 x 119mm),
including the BHK 52 (20.64
S
natural scarcity of the Medio Tiempo tobacco leaf.
Each is presented in an exclusive, 10-cigar lacquered
box, and for the first time the Behike band incorporates an
embossed holographic paper and
exclusive hologram to authenticate
these Habanos.
Cohiba is already known as
a vanguard brand in the world
of cigars, and the prestigious
Behike is set to cement this
reputation with the ultimate
expression of Habano.
www.lacasadelhabano.com
Below: the Cohiba
Behike 10-cigar box
BHK 54 (21.43 x 144mm)
and BHK 56 (22.22 x
166mm). These completely
new sizes will be produced
in quantities limited by the
Cohiba Behike4S.indd 1
20/12/2011 10:48
Four generations of Cellar Masters have crafted twelve hundred eaux-de-vie to establish
Louis XIII as the most prestigious spirit on Earth. A closely guarded secret since 1874.
ONE CENTURY IN A BOTTLE
www.louis-xiii.com
No.75973 Groupe Remy Cointreau NEW.indd 1
20/12/2011 10:35
PRI_30_privat_collector S.indd 30
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The Big Smoke
They say successful people smoke cigars – but the
really clever ones collect them. Anwer Bati lights up.
Illustrations by Ruben Ireland
ONAFREEZINGCOLDNIGHT
in November 2010, the smoking
terrace of the Boisdale restaurant
in London’s Belgravia was packed
with high-spirited cigar aficionados,
all desperate to snap up a rare set of
10 Romeo y Julieta double corona
Cuban cigars. After frenzied bidding
by shivering buyers from around the
world, a Japanese collector finally beat
a rival from Hong Kong, and paid
the princely sum of £13,225 for the
cigars dating back to the 1950s. It
was a record price per cigar at public
auction, and showed just how much
money heavyweight cigar enthusiasts
are willing to spend to acquire
extremely rare cigars.
Handmade cigars have always been
a symbol of luxury, but the boom in
collecting took off in the mid-1990s,
largely thanks to buoyant western
economies. Several new cigar books and
magazines glamorised and popularised
the pastime, raising the experience of
smoking a cigar to that of savouring a
fine wine. Imports of premium cigars to
Tw e n t y - T h r e e
16/12/2011 09:33
the United States – the largest cigar market in the world – rose
five-fold in four years as smoking cigars became fashionable
with a younger, moneyed set. Seeing the demand, in 1999
Christie’s in London started holding exclusive cigar auctions
twice a year. Many records were broken at these sales, including
the sale in October 2000 of three Partagas Lusitania cigars
made before the Cuban revolution. They went for £3,000,
and were the most expensive cigars in the world at the time.
Though the Christie’s auctions stopped around four years ago,
many others have since filled the vacuum.
One organiser is Mitchell Orchant who, as well
as hosting vintage cigar auctions, also owns C.Gars
(www.cgarsltd.co.uk). He says that cigar sales are still high,
even in the current tough economic climate. ‘Sales have
been growing annually, as have prices for good-quality
vintage cigars, particularly with clients from China,
Hong Kong and Japan,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure quite how
to quantify the market as a whole, but we sell around
£2m-worth of vintage cigars a year.’
sale, a battered single-cigar case used by Churchill when he
was a soldier on the Western Front in World War I fetched
£4,830. Fidel Castro’s signature on cigar boxes and humidors
also attracts high prices, and if ever a cigar or smoking
artefact linked to Che Guevara came on the market, you can
bet it would snapped up for a ridiculous price.
‘People buy rare cigars for several reasons,’ says Mitchell
Orchant. ‘Many connoisseurs will typically buy one box
to smoke and one box to stash away to age and sell at a
later date. Usually they end up having smoked the first box
for free with the proceeds of the second box.’ Others buy
them as curiosities to be kept, maybe sold again, but never
smoked. Many cigars, maybe the majority, will improve with
a few years’ ageing, but unless they’re maintained in suitably
humidified conditions, they can only deteriorate – losing
their bouquet and drying out. The best bets are fuller-bodied
and fatter cigars, such as the stubby robusto size. As with
fine wine, even very old cigars can sometimes be surprisingly
good to smoke. ‘It’s all down to the way they’ve been kept,’
‘Connoisseurs will buy one box to smoke, one to sell at
a later date. They usually end up smoking the firﬆ box
for free with the proceeds of the second’
The most prized collectors’ items have always been Cuban
cigars. The island’s temperate climate, the skill of its cigar
makers and the low acidity of its soil make Cubans stand
out against cigars from anywhere else in the world. And
of course, the 1960 American embargo adds an element of
mystique and exclusivity. Before Castro’s revolution in 1959
there were more than 1,000 different brands and sizes of
Havana cigars. When the industry was nationalised, many
factory owners fled and many of the country’s finest cigar
brands ceased to exist. Today there are only 27 handmade
types of Cuban cigars.
Other paraphernalia, such as humidors, that are either
rare or have historical associations are also highly desirable
for cigar devotees. In 1998 a nine-carat gold cigar case given
to Sir Winston Churchill by Aristotle Onassis as a birthday
present in 1960 – estimated at £15,000 – was sold to a
private collector for £43,300 at Sotheby’s. The inscription
read: ‘Happy Birthday from Ari.’ And a mundane typed
letter inviting an MP for lunch sold for £3,000 because
it was framed with one of Churchill’s cigars. In an earlier
says Orchant. ‘I’ve just received some from the 1930s which
are very good.’ Of course, very wealthy cigar lovers can
afford to buy rare cigars to smoke, not keep. One such fan is
Sir Terence Conran: ‘I bought two or three hundred Monte
Cristos at an auction in Havana a couple of years ago, and
now there are only around 50 left,’ he says.
Whether a collector chooses to smoke or save his
handmade bounty, there’s a topic that causes plenty of
debate between cigar connoisseurs: what will happen when
the American embargo on Cuba is finally lifted? Whenever
this might be (possibly in the next few years), there will be
a huge new demand for Havana cigars from the United
States. Of course, one can only speculate, but the consensus
is that annual sales in America could well exceed 40 million.
Cuba currently exports around 150 million cigars each
year. For some, this is a cloud on the horizon – the worry
is that the increase in demand could affect quality – but for
those canny investors with large, well-kept collections, it is
almost certainly a cause for celebration, as they will see their
carefully stored-away cigars start to rocket in value.
Tw e n t y - Fo u r
16/12/2011 11:24
THOMAS MANN, SIGMUND FREUD, WINSTON CHURCHILL
… and many other great personalities, despite all their dissimilarities had one passion in common: They all knew how to appreciate
a good cigar. Nothing but the best was good enough for them. And the best calls for plenty of time, love and care. Only in this
manner a cigar can mature like a good wine to become the top in its class.
We design humidors that live up to these high standards.
FIRST CLASS HUMIDORS BY GERBER
SPS-CONTROL WITH iHUMIDOR-APP: control your humidor from all over the world by a web-interface – www.gerber-humidor.de
No.75247 Gerber NEW.indd 1
13/12/2011 10:55
A RACING MACHINE ON THE WRIST
CALIBER RM 003-V2
DUAL TIME TOURBILLON
BLACK EDITION
EXCLUSIVELY AT RICHARD MILLE BOUTIQUE
Carbon nanofiber baseplate
Hand-wound movement
Power reserve
Torque indicator
Variable inertia balance
Fast rotating barrel
Second time zone
Function selector
Case of titanium with black DLC treatment
Limited Edition available in 10 pieces
www.richardmille.com
No.72036 Richard Mille 1pp.indd 1
02/12/2011 14:24
P R I VAT S E L E C T I O N
Clocking In
Want a goodnight chat with the kids in Cleveland when you’re doing business in Bombay?
Keith W. Strandberg explains how you can time that bedtime call to perfection wherever
you are in the world with a multi-time zone watch
ASATRUEJET-SETTERYOUWILLUNDERSTANDTHATKNOWING
the time where you are, where you are going and where you have been can
be a real challenge. Time is essential to travel: aircraft slots are scheduled to
the minute and it’s vital to know when to call your wife in Los Angeles,
make dinner reservations in Baku and contact your office in London.
Trying to do all that with an ordinary, single-time zone watch is a headache,
involving mathematics and mental gymnastics not so easily accomplished
when jet-lagged. That’s where multi-time zone watches, also known as
GMT/UTC, dual-time or world-time watches, come in. These watches
display at least two time zones, doing all the complex calculations for you,
meaning the hardest decision you have to make is which one to buy.
Before the advent of standard time in 1918, every city and region in
the US operated on local solar time, independent of any other city. Noon
on the clock was when the sun hit its zenith wherever you were – but that
moment changed with your longitude. So when it was noon in New York
City, it was 12:12pm in Boston, Massachusetts; 11:30am in Cleveland,
Ohio; and 11:14am in Indianapolis, Indiana. In a metropolis like New
York, local time could vary as much as a minute or more between the east
and the west side of the city. Sun time even differed by about 30 seconds
between the two ends of the San Francisco–Oakland Bridge.
PRI_27_privat_watchesFJ.indd 27
The US government officially adopted standard time on 19 March,
1918, just as Great Britain had given GMT the force of law in 1880. Within
a decade, most of the world was keeping time by this system. In 1972, the
majority of the world adopted Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and now
official time zones are indicated by +/- UTC, rather than GMT. While that
plus or minus usually refers to a difference of whole hours, there are parts
of the world that have finessed the system into fractions of an hour.
Newfoundland, India, Iran, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Burma and the
Marquesas as well as parts of Australia use half-hour deviations from
standard time, and some nations such as Nepal, and some provinces, like
New Zealand’s Chatham Islands, use quarter-hour deviations.
The United States has nine standard time zones, the same now as
Russia, which used to lead the world with 11 zones across its 2,000km
until it simplified them two years ago. Two of the world’s largest
countries, China (which should have five time zones) and India, have but
one time zone. When’s lunch? Well might you ask.
With a world time/dual time/GMT watch, you have a much better
chance of mastering the time zones, no matter how many you cross.
Unfortunately, your watch can’t help you with jet lag. For that, you’re
on your own.
16/12/2011 08:49
GMT/UTC
GMT watches use a
separate pointer hand
to indicate the second
time zone or GMT/
UTC, which you can
then use to calculate
any time zone in the
world if you know
the UTC off set.
New York, for
example, is UTC
minus five hours.
BREITLING
CHRONOMAT
GMT
SEIKOANANTA
SPRINGDRIVEGMT
Seiko’s high-end line uses
the revolutionary Spring
Drive movement, shown
here in the GMT version.
The Spring Drive, in
development for 28 years,
features a host of innovations
that produce a more efficient
and accurate mechanism.
Breitling Chronomat 44
GMT is a chronograph
h
with a GMT pointer hand,
using Breitling’s own innhouse movement, which
ch
is certified by COSC, the
exacting Swiss standards
rds
body. The watch comess in a
44mm stainless steel case,
ase,
water resistant to 500m.
m.
PRICE
PRICE
DUALTIME
Dual time watches
use two displays,
sometimes one above
the other, or a small
subdial on the main
dial, which indicates
your home time,
allowing you to set
the bigger display
to the time in the
country where you
are staying.
FRANCKMULLER
R
MASTERBANKER
R
LUNAR
Timepieces display
more than one time
zone in a number
of ways. The one that
suits you beﬆ depends
on how many
zones you traverse
You don’t have to be a banker
anker
to appreciate the Masterr
Banker Lunar from Franck
nck
Muller, a triple-time zone
ne
marvel that comes complete
plete
with moon phase indicator
tor
and date. The time zone
displays can be set to thee
half hour.
PRICE
WORLD
TIME
PATEKPHILIPPE
WORLDTIME
If you are a serious
globe-trotter, consider
a world-time watch.
These display the
standard 24 hour time
zones; a few even
display the half-hours.
Make sure the one
you choose is readable;
you need a magnifying
glass to read some.
A watchmaking legend,
the Patek Philippe World
Time features a beautiful
handmade cloisonné
enamel map of the
globe on the dial. This
39.5mm timepiece is
available in either yellow
or white gold.
VACHERON
CONSTANTIN
PATRIMONY
TRADITIONNELLE
WORLDTIME
INYELLOWGOLD
The complexity of the Geneva
Seal movement allows this
elegant world-time watch to
display several 30-minute time
zones. The movement is made
up of 255 components and the
world map is made night or
day via a shaded sapphire disk.
INWHITEGOLD
PRICE
PRICE
Tw e n t y - E i g h t
16/12/2011 08:49
LOUISMOINET
GEOGRAPHRAINFOREST
FPJOURNEOCTAUTC
TC
The Louis Moinet Geograph
Rainforest is a chronograph that
indicates the second time zone with
an elegant serpentine hand, while
using petrified wood over a million
years old in the subdial. This 45.5mm
timepiece is made of 5N 18K rose
gold and 316L stainless steel, and is
water resistant to 50m.
Master watchmaker François-Paul
-Paul
Journe offers the UTC function
on in
this beautiful Octa timepiece, all
hand-assembled in his workshop
hop
in Geneva, Switzerland. The Octa
UTC shows the second time zone
with a second gold hour-hand,
d,
but also features a unique colourful
ourful
earth subdial divided into 24
time zones.
PRICE
PRICE
INPLATINUM
M
INREDGOLD
PIAGETPOLO
FORTYFIVE
DUALTIME
The Piaget Polo is an iconic
watch which at 45mm is quite
large enough to accommodate
a dual-time display. This model
is also a flyback stopwatch,
which is one of the most useful
chronographs around.
PRICE
BL
BLANCPAINVILLERET
DUALTIME
DU
Cla
Classic
and elegant at 40mm, the
Blancpain Villeret Dual Time
Bla
6665 offers the convenience of
666
second time zone with a day/
a se
night indicator. The second time
nig
zone can be set for half-hour
zon
time zones. The display between
tim
four and five o’clock is the power
fou
reserve indicator.
res
PRICE
PR
LANGETIMEZONE
E
The A. Lange & Söhne Lange
nge
1 is an icon, made even moree
interesting by the world-time
me
movement powering it. Made
de in
Glashütte, Germany, the Lange
nge
1 Time Zone also features the
he
brand’s signature big date.
PRICE
INPLATINUM
UM
INPINKOR
YELLOWGOLD
MON
MONTBLANCSTAR
WOR
WORLD-TIMEGMT
The Star
S of Montblanc’s collection
tion
is the very handy Star WorldTime GMT. The world time and
nd
GMT functions are accessed via
ia
three-position screw-down
the th
n
crown. This 42mm watch comes
crown
es
stainless steel with a black orr
in stai
white dial, and on a steel bracelet
let
black alligator strap.
or blac
PRICEONSTRAP
PRICE
ONSTEELBRACELET
Tw e n t y - N i n e
16/12/2011 08:49
The New French Revolution
Never big on funky chic, Paris was left behind when London and
New York colonised grimy districts with hip eateries. Not any more.
Jennifer Sharp takes a look at the city’s cool new restaurants
Giovanni Passerini is the chef and proprietor of this
small, friendly restaurant that reinvents Italian food
for a savvy modern gourmet. Rino is the chef ’s
boyhood nickname and though Passerini was born in
Rome, he moved to Paris because ‘Romans only want
to eat their own traditional food and there’s very little
room for creativity or experimentation’. He worked
for Alain Passard and then at Le Chateaubriand. Out
of this experience, Rino was born.
The room holds about 20 and of course it’s full every
night, despite being situated in the no-man’s-land far
to the east of Bastille. You sit on red leather banquettes
or on tall wooden stools at high tables, and there are a
few tables outside on the pavement for hopefuls who
turn up without a reservation. The kitchen stays open
late and people often arrive at 11pm.
Along one side of the restaurant is a cramped open
kitchen and serving counter where Passerini and his
assistants prepare remarkable food. The chef is
constantly dashing out to serve the food himself,
chatting to customers, sharing the experience. And
interestingly, though the Italian quarter of Paris is
traditionally the fifth arrondisement, Rino attracts
many Italians prepared to make the journey.
Milan-based Paolo Marchi, an influential food and
restaurant writer, recently hailed Passerini as the best
Italian chef working outside his homeland.
The menu changes frequently in step with seasonal
products and the chef ’s whim, and the cooking is full
of surprising textures and flavours. He offers just two
set menus: four courses at €38 and six courses at €55.
The food is so light and delicious and beautiful to
look at, you’d be mad not to go for six.
You might be offered ravioli filled with succulent
onion confit and served with oysters, green herbs and
mushrooms. Or there’s a tranche of sea bass with
lightly cooked sweetcorn, courgette and tomato and
the bitter herb purslane. Tiny thimble shapes of
gnocchi are served with baby squid, baby leeks and the
savoury umami hit of a smoky pork emulsion. The
cheese course is basic, without cutlery or bread, and you
may feel a bit bourgeois to ask for it, but no-one minds.
There are lots of Italian wines, many by the glass,
along with artisanal fruit juice and very good coffee.
The house white is a refreshing Verdicchio from the
Marche, the red a luscious Barbera from Piemonte.
This is a very enjoyable place with captivating
personal service and a great atmosphere.
46 rue Trousseau, 75011 Paris, +33 (0)1 4806 9585,
www.rino-restaurant.com
IMAGE©STANISLASLIBAN
RINO
Thirty
PRI_30_privat_dining FJ.indd 30
16/12/2011 08:50
Just desserts: ricotta fig tart
with jasmine sorbet at Rino
Thirty-One
16/12/2011 08:50
LEDAUPHIN
CAFÉSALLEPLEYEL
The Salle Pleyel is an art deco concert hall designed by Gustave Lion which
opened in 1927 and has hosted artists including Stravinsky, Otto Klemperer,
Louis Armstrong and Ravi Shankar. On the mezzanine floor is a light and airy
space built around a vast atrium which looks down into the foyer. It’s here that
Hélène Samuel – not a chef but a food entrepreneur who has worked with the
great Alain Ducasse – has created Café Pleyel.
Samuel had the brilliant idea of inviting visiting chefs to inspire the season’s menu
and work with her in-house team. Recently Mauro Colagreco, who is based in
Menton at his highly regarded restaurant Mirazur, was the guest chef. His menu was
inspired by the Mediterranean and brought the warmth of the south into a chilly
Parisian winter’s day. We tried a tartare of fresh crevettes with peaches and a green
lemon vinaigrette, red mullet served with carrots and orange sauce, and a veal chop
served with unctuous mashed potato laced with vanilla. At one side of the room
stands a magnificent orange machine, like a work of art. In fact it’s a slicer, ready to
serve Parma ham and other delicacies, supervised by Samuel’s business partner, the
irrepressible Michael Eisenbaum, who also manages the short but excellent wine list.
The colour scheme of the room is black and white with flashes of red, and the
easygoing atmosphere clearly appeals to the lunchtime crowd of local hedge funders
and pretty women.
252 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, 75008 Paris, +33 (0)1 5375 2844, www.cafesallepleyel.com
Zut alors! Is nothing sacred? Is this the end of the traditional
French three-course meal? Ultra-fashionable Le Dauphin is
serving food tapas-style and the Parisian public love it. The
restaurant is owned by Fred Peneau and chef-of-the-moment
Inaki Aizpitarte, the dark-eyed, self-taught Basque whose
flagship eatery, Le Chateaubriand just a few doors away,
opened in 2006. Aizpitarte spearheaded the new bistronomique
(bistro+gastronomique) movement to bridge the gap between
high-priced gourmet destinations for a moneyed elite and tourists,
and tired, formulaic restaurants for everyone else. The neo-bistros
of Paris attract daring but accomplished young chefs, effortlessly
cool waiting staff, and a buzzing bohemian crowd of all ages.
Le Dauphin opened at the end of 2010 and was wildly
successful from day one, despite the location in an old working
class area. The interior, designed by Rem Koolhaas and Clément
Blanchet, is a cool, minimalist cube of white Carrara marble with
mirror, steel and exotic wood. The room is dominated by a
marble-topped bar with tall stools, and set around the walls are
tables simply adorned with stylish glasses, napkins and chairs.
The dinner menu contains about 50 different items grouped
by category: cooked meat dishes; cheese; salads, pasta and rice
dishes; fish; sausage and cured meats; and desserts. Many dishes
are familiar but prepared with a light modern touch. You can
tuck into suckling pig, gigot of lamb with haricot beans, melon
gazpacho with almonds and lemon verbena, or octopus served
with robust tandoori spices.
There’s a list of well-priced wines with an emphasis on
biodynamic natural labels that don’t appeal to everyone, but who
cares? This place is pure joy.
131 avenue Parmentier, 75010 Paris ,+33 (0)1 5528 7888
MOREQUIRKYDININGDESTINATIONSINPARIS
LES GRANDES TABLES DE L’ÎLE SEGUIN
SATURNE
VIVANT
While architect Jean Nouvel transforms the old
Renault factory into a museum, this pop-up, set on
an island in the Seine just outside the city, has
been created from scaffolding and containers.
Jardin de l’île Seguin, +33 (0)1 4610 7972
Wonderfully simple food, natural
wines, clean sparse interior, some say
deplorable service but we loved it.
17 rue Notre-Dame des Victoires, +33
(0)1 4260 3190, www.saturne-paris.com
Natural wines again and precisely sourced
ingredients served in enchanting room that
used to be an exotic bird shop with walls
covered with art nouveau tiles.
43 rue des Petites Écuries, +33 (0)1 4246 4355
T h i r t y - Tw o
16/12/2011 08:51
No.75622 Eggersmann.indd 1
13/12/2011 14:45
PRI_34_BernheimersFJ.indd 34
16/12/2011 10:22
P R I VATA R T S
A FA M I LY P O R T R A I T
For more than 150 years, the Bernheimer family
has been among the world’s foremost art dealers.
Today, Konrad Bernheimer and his daughter,
Blanca, lead the firm with undimmed enthusiasm.
Jennifer Sharp visits them in Munich
single point of view.’ As always, wealthy
newcomers to the art market appreciate the
expertise that Bernheimer Fine Old
Masters can offer. ‘Over several generations,
we have become developers of taste,’ he
says, with no false modesty.
The founder of this art-dealing dynasty,
Meier Bernheimer (1801–70) hailed from
south-west Germany and had a modest
business in fabrics. By the mid-19th century,
he and his son Lehmann (1841–1918) were
established in Munich and had expanded
into textiles, furniture and porcelain. Before
long, Lehmann and his own three sons were
supplying the royal families of Europe,
aristocrats, diplomats and wealthy
industrialists in the New World and the
Old. One royal client wrote: ‘Whether
antique chest, carpet, relief or bronze,
IMAGE©MICHAELLEIS
meet Konrad, the fourth generation
of Bernheimer, in his Munich office,
and I am immediately fascinated by
the range of intriguing clutter in the room
– oil paintings and water colours, family
photographs, a tiny marble replica of
Canova’s Three Graces, books and catalogues,
a bronze head of grandfather Otto
Bernheimer. There is also a statue of Franz
von Stuck’s mounted warrior, The Amazon,
with her spear pointing precisely at
Konrad’s head as he sits at his vast desk. ‘I
always have her in my office,’ he says
cheerfully. ‘She keeps me on my toes.’
Konrad insists that every picture he
buys reflects his own taste. ‘I have never
bought for the market,’ he says, ‘I always
buy for myself. And the clients understand
that, they appreciate the harmony of a
Thirty-Five
16/12/2011 08:51
HIRSH
L O N D O N
SNOWFLAKE COLLECTION
HANDMADE IN PLATINUM
Where Every Piece is A Work Of Art
www.hirshlondon.com
WEST END 56-57 BURLINGTON ARCADE W1J 0QN - T +44 (0)20 7499 6814 - CITY 9 HATTON GARDEN EC1N 8AH - T +44 (0)20 7831 3333
No.74994 Hirsh Jewellers.indd 1
09/12/2011 09:20
P R I VATA R T S
‘I always buy for myself.
The clients understand
that, they appreciate
the harmony of a single
point of view’
IMAGES©THEIRVINGPENNFOUNDATIONGUIDOMOCAFICO
Previous page:
Konrad and Blanca
Bernheimer at their
Munich gallery;
Blanca holds a 1955
Lucien Clergue.
Above: Nature morte
à la vanité (2008) by
Guido Mocafico.
Above right:
Dahomey Children
(1967) by Irving Penn
behind these works there usually stood Bernheimer Munich.
Bernheimer, Pope among art’s true believers.’
Otto Bernheimer (1877–1960), the youngest of Lehmann’s
three sons, built up magnificent collections of Italian renaissance
artefacts including tapestries, furniture and decorative wood panels,
coffered ceilings and imposing doors, sculpture and fountains.
Otto became the prime mover within the company, surviving
WWI, the Depression, Nazi oppression and expropriation, and
WWII in a fantastical move which saw the family relocate to
Venezuela and then after the war return to Munich. Otto’s son
Kurt (1911–1954) had married while in South America but he
died tragically young and his family moved back to Munich
under the care of Otto. Then in 1977, Kurt’s only son, Konrad
O. Bernheimer came into the business at the age of just 26.
Konrad had worked at Christie’s in London and was
determined to make his mark. The company was thoroughly
modernised, changing focus from furnishings and decorating to
art and specifically old master paintings. Given that the
Bernheimer name is now synonymous with old masters
(paintings from the 15th to the 19th century), it’s hard to
believe that this side of the company is scarcely more than 30
years old. Today Bernheimer Fine Old Masters occupies an
elegant neoclassical building in Briennerstrasse, Munich, and at
Old Bond Street in London where, in 2002, Konrad acquired
the legendary fine art dealership Colnaghi in partnership with
Katrin Bellinger, the eminent specialist in fine art drawings.
Colnaghi celebrated its 250th anniversary last year and the
combination of Bernheimer, Bellinger and Colnaghi has
created an unparalleled concentration of expertise.
Konrad Bernheimer has inherited the family business sense
along with an ultra-refined taste and artistic sensibility. He has
an enviable network of contacts in the art world from private
individuals to museum curators, and he generally knows which
pictures are for sale and who may wish to buy them. I ask how
work comes onto the market and he quotes Peter Watson, former
head of Sotheby’s: divorce, debt and death. But the three Ds
aside, the relationship between dealer and client is very close and
confidential, and many works come back to Bernheimer if the
owner, or the owner’s family, needs to resell them.
The international centres for old masters remain London,
New York, Munich and major international fairs such as TEFAF
at Maastricht (16–25 March) and the new summer event in
Thirty-Seven
16/12/2011 08:52
Иногда в жизни подходит
буквально всë.
www.lloyd.de
No.75177 Lloyd Shoes 1pp.indd 1
07/12/2011 12:03
P R I VATA R T S
Below: the Bernheimer gallery
and last year’s exhibition,
Mirella Ricciardi, Vanishing Africa.
Bottom: The Glass of Wine by
Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675)
IMAGES©JENSBRUCHHAUS©STAATLICHEMUSEENZUBERLIN–GEMÄLDEGALERIE
COURTESYOFTHESTIFTUNGPREUSSISCHERKULTURBESITZPHOTOJÖRGPANDERS
‘Jeff Koons, best known for his playful, provocative pop
art which sells for millions, spends his own money on old
masters such as Poussin and Fragonard’
London, Masterpiece (28 June – 4 July), which has replaced the now
defunct Grosvenor House Fair. Konrad is enthusiastic about Masterpiece
as for him London is the number-one city for all art, both historical and
contemporary. ‘London is the only real international metropolis,’ he
insists, ‘and for old masters it is number one and always will be.’
He reminds me that even in a downturn, old masters rarely lose their
value. Indeed, some of modern art’s most high-profile artists, such as
Lucien Freud, Damien Hirst and George Baselitz, are or were collectors.
Even more surprising is Jeff Koons, best known for his playful, provocative
pop art which sells for millions, who spends his own money on old
masters such as Poussin and Fragonard.
Down the corridor there’s an office that’s very different to Konrad’s
– white, calm and modern. This belongs to Blanca Bernheimer, 29, the
only one of Konrad’s four daughters to enter the business. She has
created her own niche with Bernheimer Fine Art Photography and is
making a significant name for herself. Initially Blanca had quite different
career plans. She studied philosophy and literature at King’s College
London, deliberately choosing an English university for its rigour and
coherence. She flirted with media, journalism, publishing and PR in
London and Germany, but nothing felt quite right. She became involved
with the edgy modern art movement and while living in Berlin in 2004,
was asked to curate two photography shows featuring young artists
Thirty-Nine
16/12/2011 11:25
P R I VATA R T S
Nick Brandt and Silke Lauffs. Despite an enticing offer to
open a gallery in Berlin, she decided to join Bernheimer
Munich and develop the photography business. Her father is
thrilled that his daughter has joined the firm.
‘There was never any pressure on any of us girls to go into
the art world,’ she says. ‘My father was very clear about that,
especially as, as an only son, he never had any choice. He has
been very generous with his contacts, advice and experience,
and Munich is a wonderful centre for high-quality art
photography. The city attracts a wide market of German and
foreign visitors and of course our prices are much lower than
paintings so customers can easily make a spontaneous purchase
without blowing the budget.’
Blanca has mounted exhibitions in London and Munich
with work by Robert Mapplethorpe, Lucien Clergue, Toni
Schneiders and Julian Schnabel. She’s a great supporter of
up-and-coming artists such as Mat Hennek, and one of her most
effective ideas is to juxtapose modern photographers with old
master paintings. One such exhibition showed limited-edition
photography by Guido Mocafico who recreates in minute detail
the great still-life paintings of the Dutch old masters. It is
unnerving and exhilarating to see them hang side by side.
Last autumn, Blanca’s main focus was Paris Photo, the
most prestigious photography fair in Europe, which is held at
the Grand Palais. Each year, photography becomes a more
important part of the modern art scene and Blanca tells me
that major galleries like Gagosian and Pace MacGill from
New York now have a presence there. Gagosian, a giant of the
contemporary art world, recently bought the whole estate of
photographer Richard Avedon. ‘Larry Gagosian is very astute,’
says Blanca. ‘He could obviously sense a new demand for the
cool, classical aesthetic that Avedon was famous for.’
Constant change is clearly part of the Bernheimer identity
and success. Just as her father Konrad changed the direction of
the great enterprise he inherited, so Blanca is forging her own
interpretation of the Bernheimer name. ‘I would like to think
that one day we’ll be better known for photography than old
masters,’ she says cheekily, ‘but I think that’s some way off.’
Her proud father would probably applaud her ambition.
www.bernheimer.com
‘ I would like to think
that one day we’ll
be better known for
photography than
old maﬆers’
IMAGES©CHRISTOPHERTHOMASCOURTESYOFBERNHEIMERFINEARTPHOTOGRAPHYCONDENASTPUBLICATIONS
Right: Passion 11 / One of the
People (2010) by Christopher Thomas.
Below: Cuzco Children
(1948) by Irving Penn
Forty
16/12/2011 08:52
At Newby, we know how good tea can be and that
an outstanding cup of tea is created by protecting the
freshness of the tea leaf.
This was once well known, and Newby was founded to
revive this lost tradition of preserving the true character
of fine tea.
For us, nothing is too much trouble to bring you the
best quality cup possible.
All our traditional teas are guaranteed to be selected
from the very best first and second flush teas – the first
shoots from the prime season of each harvest.
cup
of
Our dedication doesn’t end there. We know that the
freshness, flavour and fragrance of tea can be lost over
time and in transit. We are the only tea company in
the world to introduce the concept of preservation into
our tea facility in Kolkota. In addition to this, all of
our packaging materials are selected to complement the
preservation of our teas. For example, our tea bags are
wrapped in unique multi-layered ALU foil sachets.
No other company goes to all this trouble to capture
and keep the freshness of the tea leaf. But we believe it’s
worth it.
A good cup with powerful character is heaven’s delight.
Our belief is shared by the word’s finest hotels,
restaurants and landmarks. Wimbledon, Lord’s Cricket
Ground, Selfridges and The Goring Hotel all choose
Newby, to give their guests a tea of true distinction.
WWW.NEWBYTEAS.COM
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7251 8939
No.71254 Newby Teas 1pp.indd 1
06/12/2011 15:24
P R I VAT D E S I G N
Native Son
Architect Tom Kundig’s boyhood love of
the great American outdoors gives his
cool country homes an elegant harmony
with the landscape, says Jonathan Bell
PRI_42_privat_design FJ.indd 42
16/12/2011 08:53
IMAGE©TIMBIES
16/12/2011 10:24
The Pacific North West is home to some of
North America’s most dramatic scenery,
scoured by glaciers with deep valleys and
lakes, with the Cascades rising up to the
west and the densely wooded shores of
Puget Sound creating endless beautiful
vistas. But this is also a working landscape,
and ever since the industrial revolution, its
communities have interacted with nature on
an epic scale, whether they were gouging
minerals from the earth or stripping trees
from the ground.
The architect Tom Kundig, 57, grew up
in the region. Although his background
wasn’t in mining, logging or farming, he
trained initially as a geophysicist before
switching to architecture, his father’s
profession. As a teenager, he worked in
sawmills and spent time learning to weld
with a family friend, the sculptor Harold
Balazs. And all the while, he drank in his
surroundings, climbing, skiing and hiking
among some of most panoramic
wildernesses on the planet. ‘I experienced
being relatively humble in the landscape,’ he
once said of this early passion, ‘and
mountaineering and architecture have many
parallels – they’re about solving the problem
in as clear and economic means as possible
– it’s not about getting to the top.’
It’s fitting that Kundig should now find
himself one of the most feted residential
architects in the world, a designer of houses
with a strong cultural resonance thanks to
their rich combinations of skills, influences
and approaches. Kundig is a modest man,
and would be first to admit that these houses
are not the result of individual effort, but a
creative collaboration between himself, his
studio, the client and skilled contractors and
craftspeople. ‘Architecture has never been a
single source of genius,’ he says.
His practice, Olson Kundig, is based in a
former garment factory in the southern
Previous page and
opposite: house-studio
Outpost (2007) is
built of concrete blocks
and similarly rugged
materials to withstand
Idaho’s harsh high desert.
Above: Montecito
Residence (2008) in
California’s fire-prone
Toro Canyon shields
the house from the sun
while allowing cool
breezes to waft through.
Right: the Pierre
(2010) in Washington’s
San Juan Islands is a
luxury bunker built into
a stone outcrop
Fifty-Six
16/12/2011 08:54
‘Mountaineering and architecture have
many parallels – they’re about solving the
problem in as clear and economic means as
possible – it’s not about getting to the top’
IMAGES©NICOLASKOENIGTIMBIES
Left: outdoorsman and
architect Tom Kundig is
a believer in collaborative
effort rather than
individual genius
Seattle suburbs. Set up in 1968 by Jim Olson
(Kundig joined in 1986), the firm is now
90-strong, and combines a disarmingly
modest approach to networking and a
no-frills approach to hiring. ‘We’re not a
meet-and-greet kind of firm – we don’t do
the country club scene, we’re not golfers,
we’re not the socialising type,’ Kundig says,
and his firm explicitly ‘only hires people
willing to do everything from design through
to construction’. Arranged as a collection of
small ateliers, Olson Kundig has dozens of
jobs on the board, ranging from tiny cabins
to sprawling estates, apartment buildings,
stores and galleries. Each project is in the
hands of a small team who will see it through
from design sketches to the final nail.
Retreats, vacation homes and cabins
loom large in Kundig’s portfolio; the spirit
of the frontier, the beauty of isolation and,
above all, a sense of getting away from it all.
These range from the modest Gulf Island
Cabin in British Columbia to the expansive
Highlands House in North Carolina, which
stalks through a wooded site on a forest of
precise steel columns. The cabin on Gulf
Island is a single room, secured by a sliding
sheet of steel taken straight from a mill,
with an outdoor shower and a kitchenette;
it’s pared down but still luxurious in its
generous relationship with its surroundings.
Kundig drew early inspiration from a
small project designed by his father’s
employer, the Seattle architect Royal Alfred
McClure, in 1960. The McClure Cabin
stands on the shore of Lake Coeur d’Alene,
stark in its wall-less simplicity, like a
defenestrated, rusticated version of the
Farnsworth House, or Thoreau housed by
Pierre Koenig. ‘I was an outside kid and this
was literally just a small platform basically for
going outside.’ In more recent times, he has
developed a strong affinity with like-minded
architects around the world. ‘There’s a sort of
Forty-Five
16/12/2011 08:54
Below: the Pierre almost
disappears into nature from
some angles. Inside, bare
rock extrudes into the openplan living space
These houses go beyond
framing a landscape – they
remove the building altogether
Forty-Six
16/12/2011 08:54
Left and below
left: the Slaughterhouse
(2009) in Maui, Hawaii,
is a high-tech surf shack
with walls made of
compacted earth.
Below right: opening
the window at Chicken
Point Cabin, Idaho (2002)
IMAGES©BENJAMINBENSCHNEIDER
world wide web of folks that seem to connect,’ he says. As a
result, the architect uses the phrase ‘pragmatic regionalism’ to
describe his approach, adding in the importance of Japanese
architecture, ‘the Zen Buddhist philosophy behind the purity of
the simple. As a kid I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance, of course, and Alan Watts’ The Wisdom of
Insecurity, they were all about the simple being complex. Classic
Zen.’ Did he feel under pressure for his early works to arrive
fully formed? ‘There was very little architecture that really
resonated with me, especially when I was younger,’ he recalls. ‘I
was in architecture, and I knew there was something about it
that I found fascinating but that really didn’t start to coalesce
until I started seeing some of Carlo Scarpa’s work, and Pierre
Chareau’s work – the references you can see clearly.’
Many of Kundig’s houses are characterised by their very
visible gizmos and gadgets, all of which have a satisfyingly hefty,
handcrafted feel. It’s the difference between the American
definition of craft – which post-dates the industrial revolution
– and the European one, which pre-dates it. Kundig’s craft comes
from the hands of boilermakers and blast crews, of machine
workshop obsessives who like turning flywheels, levers, cranks,
pulleys, governors and gears into amped-up versions of everyday
objects like door handles and window winders. For the kinetic
elements of these houses aren’t simple fanlights or ventilation
slots, but massive, oversized components that entirely shift one’s
perception of space and place.
These houses go beyond framing a landscape – they remove
the building altogether. ‘That’s a nice way of describing it,’ says
Kundig, adding: ‘I’d rather be there than here,’ and pointing a
finger to the rocky shores a few hundred yards from the spiky
horizontal angularity of the Shadowboxx. This house, in Lopez
Island, Washington, is a technological tour-de-force, a showcase
Forty-Seven
16/12/2011 08:54
for Kundig’s avowed obsession with gadgetry
and technology, yet it is still deferential to its
prominent plot overlooking the Strait of Juan
de Fuca. Shadowboxx features a facade of
shuttered windows and sliding doors,
allowing the living areas to be totally open to
the outside world. Throw in the tilting roof of
the bathhouse, a technical tour-de-force that
turns alfresco bathing into an architectural
performance, and you have a house that
revels in the paradox of technology being
used to enhance its relationship with nature.
The Shadowboxx also contains a key
piece of Kundig subversion, a direct riff from
the outsider artists and hot-rodders he so
admired in his youth. Push a button, and a
cheeky sliver of decking pops out to extend
beyond the designated building line – a
means of frustrating a neighbour’s insistence
on strictly following local codes. A similarly
subversive idea underpins the Rolling Huts
in Mazama, Washington, a group of six
Corten steel and wooden wheeled structures
that roam the client’s meadows. Officially
classified as recreational vehicles in order to
skirt a prohibition on further development on
the plot, they serve as vacation rentals, guest
beds and extended living space.
Over the past decade, Kundig and his
team have spread out from Washington State
to new environments, building in such
far-flung locations as Hawaii, California and
Spain. The latter project, in Sitges, was
commissioned by a Norwegian living in Paris
who was put on to the firm by a South African friend, testament
to the internet’s ability to bring like-minded people together.
Kundig says that his clients come from all walks of life, but there
is a noticeable emphasis on art and artists, with his houses often
serving as a bold backdrop to a lifetime’s collecting.
Despite Olson Kundig’s size, the architect will stay focused on
small projects. ‘I’ll be doing houses for the rest of my life. I meet all
these interesting clients with all these different histories. And then
all these different landscapes around the country and hopefully
around the world,’ says Kundig. Like his architecture, the firm’s
approach is pragmatic and low-key. ‘Our office happens the way it
happens,’ he says, ‘we “ski the trees”. You’ve got your skills, your
talents and your equipment, and you don’t know where you’re
going to wind up. You’re just following the space between the trees.
I don’t know where it’s going to go. It’s exciting.’
www.olsonkundigarchitects.com
Kundig is an architect
of fierce invention.
Above left:
Chicken Point Cabin’s
window-wall opens
the entire living space
to the forest and lake.
Above right: the
main living space of
the San Juan Islands’
Shadowboxx (2010)
contains six rolling
platforms that serve
both as sofas and beds.
Above: Washington
State’s Rolling Huts,
(2007) are classed
as RVs to get round
planning restrictions
IMAGES©BENJAMINBENSCHNEIDERTIMBIES
Forty-Eight
16/12/2011 11:26
:LQQHU*HUPDQ6XVWDLQDELOLW\$ZDUG
For many years now, Baufritz have been using nature as a role model to build homes
for healthy living. Because nature shows best of all how hi-tech should work in an ideal
world and how we can construct intelligent buildings that are not only good for the
people who live in them but for the environment as well. Working on this principle, our
Research and Development team have already registered many award-winning patents.
For example, Baufritz cork granule paper for better draught protection, flame-retardant
and anti-fungal treatments made from natural ingredients, the ingenious HOIZ biological
insulation made from wood chip, the almost maintenance-free Natural Silver facade,
and earthquake-proof designs based on the technology of nature itself.
Der Ökohaus-Pionier seit 1896
See for yourself the innovative solutions that Baufritz can offer for healthy living. And
be inspired by our sense of style. Visit www.baufritz-pa.com
No.74269 Baufritz 1pp.indd 1
22/11/2011 13:14
SWEET SCENT OF SUCCESS
hen it comes to stylish royals,
Viscountess Linley is arguably
always the best-dressed in any
British Royal family line-up. While
other relatives so often get it wrong, Linley
consistently gets it right: her cream Roland
Mouret dress at Wills and Kate’s wedding is
the perfect example. No crazy head pieces here,
just a delicate floral headband. Discreet, subtle,
yet so elegant that she stands out from the
crowd, it is Linley’s innate sense of style that
she has bottled in her new incarnation as a
businesswoman and shop owner. On the bijou
London shopping avenue of Walton Street,
Linley has opened Serena Linley Provence, an
elegant store selling scents, candles, and soaps,
all made from lavender oil from the three
lavender fields at her home in Provence, which
were planted by Linley herself.
As a member of the Royal Family – she is
married to Lord David Linley, the Queen’s
nephew, who is also a successful furniture
maker – Linley does not have to work to make
ends meet, so why did she make the decision to
pour all her efforts into a commercial venture?
Her explanation is that she and her family love
being in their house in France, so much they
wanted to make the land there work too. ‘I love
the small things, like cracking open a pine cone
and smelling the scent, when I’m there.’ In
terms of business she admits: ‘I’m new to this,
and it has taken at least seven years to get this
far. We’ve been working with a chemist to
create the products, but the greatest leap has
actually been opening the door of the shop.’
At Serena Linley Provence you can buy an
array of bespoke, luxurious beauty products. For
example, only here can you find lavender-scented
IMAGE©PALHANSEN
After years of planning, Lady Serena Linley has
created a tiny corner of fragrant Provence in
London’s Knightsbridge, says Jo Craven
Fifty
PRI_50_privat_person sFJ.indd 50
16/12/2011 11:26
Thirty-Five
16/12/2011 10:25
20 centres throughout Europe
Austria s Benelux s France s Germany s Greece s Italy s United Kingdom
mcarthurglen.com
No.69210 Mcarthur Glen 1pp.indd 1
08/09/2011 09:56
Previous page: Lady
Serena Linley in the garden.
Right: with husband
David, Viscount Linley,
who takes a keen interest in
the lavender harvest
soap suited to the softened water you find on yachts (Tara
Getty has chosen the soap for her yacht, Blue Bird), where
you find you can never rinse off the lather. Linley has also
created a soap which works perfectly with the specific
qualities of the water on a private jet, as well as products
that complement the different waters of different countries.
For example, Skibo Castle in Scotland commissioned her to
create an exclusive soap that matched their needs. Linley
can even personalise products with initials or a motto. In
fact, she had just been to stay at Skibo with friends, who
made her laugh when they asked her if she’d mind if they
took her complimentary soaps and lotions from the hotel
bathrooms. ‘Please do!’ she enthused.
The bespoke soap and perfumery idea came about after
a long lunch (and possibly a few glasses of rosé) at the
Linleys’ French home, Château d’Autet in the Luberon part
of Provence, with their neighbours, Sally Aga Khan and
Philippe Lizop. The Linleys had been trying to decide what
to do with their land; the soil was poor quality and the only
good thing there was the lavender. The house was bought
after a chance conversation with A Year in Provence author
Peter Mayle, and is what they describe as ‘the smallest
château in France’, but it suits them perfectly for being far
away from everywhere, and it is here that they go to relax,
have guests, and farm the ingredient for all their products.
It took several years to bring to life the plan they made
that day; three were solely spent summoning life from the
IMAGE©GETTY
‘I love the small things
about Provence, like
cracking open a pine cone
and smelling the scent’
lavender beds. ‘It was a rational use of
everything there, and growing the
lavender is the most wonderful process.
You sit on a mini-tractor and feed the
baby plants in upside down, then it puts
soil on top. I love it – the excitement of
seeing the lines come up – then there’s an
artisan factory where the oil is distilled…’
Linley has a palpable passion for her
project. She was also lucky enough to find
an experienced chemist, and then more
time was spent having the creams she
makes tested around the world. ‘I’m now
very proud of these products,’ she says.
The brand has investment from sleeping
partners. ‘It’s a great responsibility, but
I’ve found it thrilling.’
A particular high point was
‘spending hours in laboratories in Grasse
[the scent capital of France]’. There her
nine-year old daughter, Margarita, chose
the ingredients for the perfume that was
then named after her, which has gone on
to become the shop’s bestseller.
Margarita’s enthusiasm for the project
doesn’t stop there: she often steps behind
the counter at the shop when she isn’t at
school, while her brother, Charlie, who’s
12, spent his holidays exploring new
packaging options. ‘It is one of the
biggest surprises to me, that all the
family has been so involved and so
enthusiastic about it.’ She remembers
finding notes on her desk saying ‘come
on mummy, you can do it’. Margarita is a
tomboy – ‘I struggle to get her out of her
combat trousers,’ smiles her mother – but
a sweet-smelling one.
On a personal note, Linley adds that
she is ‘pushing myself quite a bit, which
is fun, and pushing my nose (I don’t have
a trained nose) to great lengths’. The
most challenging part, she says, has been
learning how to give an interview; her
low-key persona means she has never
interacted with the press if she could
Fifty-Three
16/12/2011 08:56
Serena Linley’s lavenderperfumed products capture
the essence of Provence
help it. Her husband David has given her
advice, especially because she says he is
particularly proud of her. But when in
France, Serena takes charge, as she is the
only fluent French speaker, with David
patiently awaiting her translations of
what is going on.
He also loves the lavender oil
making, and ‘jumps into his red 2CV [it
has their names embroidered onto the
linen head rests] and chases the lorry full
of the harvest to help unload at the
nearby artisan factory to speed up the
distilling as they only have an incredibly
short period of time to get the best oil’.
It sounds simple, but it’s obviously
deceptively hard to create such a refined
product. The attention to detail is superb at
the soap factory: they discard all the waste,
never reusing it as some soap factories do.
The elegant grey-marl boxes are embossed
with a dragonfly – ‘A good luck symbol,
they have a long life, and 70 per cent of all
dragonflies in France live in Provence;
they’re also strong creatures,’ says Linley.
There’s nothing shouty or bling about the
business, and every effort is made to source
ingredients and products locally, even
commissioning the local basket-maker for
kitting out the new shop. Then Linley’s
scented candles come in grey Murano glass
holders and the soaps have a tiny dot of
gold leaf on them. ‘We’ve been vigilant in
making the very best quality; we’ve poured
our energy into it,’ she says.
So has Linley embraced business
moguldom? Is she now planning global
expansion? ‘I’m extremely tempted by the
Far East, but I want to think it out and
take my time. I’d love to have a place in
Hong Kong.’ One thing is for sure, her
knack for making ease and simplicity
available to the rest of us is always going
to turn heads; her style stands out from
the crowd for all the right reasons.
www.serenalinley.com
IMAGE©AXIOM
‘We’ve been vigilant in
making the very beﬆ
quality; we’ve poured
our energy into it’
Fifty-Four
16/12/2011 10:54
No.00000 - Scea Du Chateau Montrose 1pp.indd 1
27/10/2011 14:54
PRI_56_privat_fashionFJ.indd 56
19/12/2011 15:58
P R I VAT S T Y L E
W I L D F LOW E RS
Rumble in the jungle with this season’s hot
colours, bold prints and statement accessories.
Photography by Mariano Herrera.
Fashion director: Nino Bauti
19/12/2011 15:58
previous
page﹕ printed
shirt by Paul & Joe Sister;
printed coon trousers by
Diane von Furstenberg; red
lace-up shoes by Simone
Rocha; embroidered bag by
Antik Batik; white bangles
by Pebble London; bone
necklace by Antik Batik.
this
page﹕ leather and knit
jacket and printed kaan
by Missoni; patchwork
trousers by DSquared2;
beaded bag by Antik Batik;
ethnic necklace and beaded
bracelet by Pebble London
16/12/2011 08:58
P R I VAT S T Y L E
above﹕white coon shirt by Paul Smith; printed silk trousers by Roberto Cavalli;
knied scarf by Missoni; long beaded necklace and shell necklace by Pebble London
Fifty-Nine
16/12/2011 08:58
Embroidered linen shirt by Paul
& Joe; printed coon trousers
by Just Cavalli; gladiator
sandals by Jimmy Choo; suede
bag by Diane von Furstenberg;
Massai multi-coloured beaded
cuff and feather headband by
Pebble London; pendant and
chain by Moschino
16/12/2011 09:39
Long coon shirt by
J. Crew; embroidered
trousers by Diane von
Furstenberg; raffia shoes
by L.K. Benne; snakeskin
and seashell bag by Antik
Batik; circular shell
pendant and shell bangles
by Pebble London
16/12/2011 09:39
P R I VAT S T Y L E
above﹕printed top by Marc by Marc Jacobs at Selfridges; printed yellow leggings
by Lucas Hugh at Browns; floral bag by Marc by Marc Jacobs at Selfridges; jewel wedges
by Burberry Prorsum; necklace by Moschino; bangles by Pebble London
S i x t y - Tw o
19/12/2011 12:53
Floral printed silk dress
by Stella McCartney
at Matches; long beaded
necklace and bangles
by Pebble London
photographerMariano Herrera
fashiondirectorNino Bauti
photodirectorAlex Ortiz
hairandmake-upManel Rosa
using Dior make-up
stylist’sassistantNormandie Hoche
modelGenet Ogeto from
Sight Management
thank
you
to
jardí
botànic
de
barcelona﹐
www.jardibotanic.bcn.es
19/12/2011 12:55
PRI_64_ManitobaFJ.indd 64
16/12/2011 10:59
While on the trail of Ursus maritimus in
Canada’s frozen north, Teresa Levonian Cole ponders
the ethics of wildlife tourism just one week after a
schoolboy was killed by a bear in Norway
16/12/2011 11:00
e had been standing on a rocky promontory
watching the bloody spectacle of two bears
tearing at a whale carcass for over an hour.
Then with no apparent provocation, one
suddenly wheeled round and charged. A 400kg
polar bear, crimson in tooth and claw, was bearing down on us,
full tilt. There was a collective gasp. ‘Don’t panic,’ said Andy, our
guide, quietly. ‘Stay together and stand still.’ Andy yelled at the
beast and, at some 25 metres’ distance, he stopped. With a low
growl he turned tail and returned to his meal.
It was over before I could even feel scared. But it could
have been very different story. Earlier that same week, a British
schoolboy had been killed by a polar bear in Norway and
several of his companions mauled, an event that had made
headlines and reached even this remote corner of Manitoba in
north-eastern Canada. With the ease of travel and increased
demand for exotic destinations and adventure holidays, animal
attacks on tourists are on the rise: shark fatalities; frequent,
unreported near-misses with elephants on walking safaris;
riding safaris, in which gung-ho participants claim to be
experienced horsemen, and prove to be nothing of the sort
when confronted by a lion. Every year, we put our lives in the
hands of strangers whom we trust to protect us, so we can
experience the thrill of getting close to wildlife in its own
habitat. But when something goes wrong, questions are
invariably raised about the responsibility of organisers, risk
awareness of travellers and even the ethics of wildlife tourism.
Can we justify trespassing on the territory of an animal for our
pleasure, if it then kills in self-defence?
It was with these thoughts in mind that I arrived at Seal
River Heritage Lodge on the shores of the Hudson Bay, a
lonely place inaccessible by road or rail. The journey from
London required four planes of diminishing size, and my last
stopover en route, Churchill in Canada’s barren north, proved
sobering preparation. ‘Don’t wander out alone at night,’ I was
warned. ‘And on no account go near the rocks on the beach.’
This sleepy little one-horse town, which consists of little more
than one desultory Main Street, is known as the ‘polar bear
capital of the world’. The previous day, Rose, who met me at
the airport, encountered a bear in her back yard, while a few
days earlier, Gloria, the receptionist at my hotel, had fended
one off with a shopping bag while delivering her children to
nursery school. It sounded surreal. Do Churchillians live in
permanent fear during the months when the ice melts in
Hudson Bay and the bears come ashore? ‘Well, you certainly
have to be aware,’ said Rose. ‘We take precautions. And no
one here locks their houses or their vehicles in case someone
has to make a dash for cover.’
‘No one here locks
their houses or their
vehicles in case
someone has to make
a dash for cover’
Above: intrepid nature-lovers on the
trail of Ursus maritimus.
Right: playful moments are few and
far between in the ferocious and solitary
life of the polar bear
Sixty-Six
16/12/2011 09:00
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A two-man, round-the-clock team of conservationists is
responsible for bear management in town. On sighting an
errant animal, you call the dedicated Polar Bear Alert line.
‘Ideally, we try to chase the bear out of town,’ said Bob, one of
the conservationists. ‘But in the case of persistent offenders, we
tranquillise them and place them in the polar bear holding
facility for a month or so without food, so they do not associate
the town with easy pickings. Then we airlift them out by
helicopter to a spot on the bay, some 80 miles to the north.’
The holding facility, popularly known as ‘the polar bear jail’, is a
large windowless edifice by the airport, whose air-conditioned
cells were currently hosting five inmates. Gloria’s bear, however,
was not among them. He had displayed ‘aberrant’ behaviour,
and had had to be shot.
In the wilds where I was headed, however – at 59⁰ north,
just seven degrees shy of the Arctic Circle – there was no such
fallback. I boarded a tiny float-plane for the 60km journey
north west, flying over the region’s unique marriage of coastline,
taiga and tundra, as evidenced by boulder-strewn tidal flats,
stunted conifers and permafrost peat bogs. It was from this
vantage point, as we banked low over the landscape, that I had
the thrill of spotting my first polar bear, sunning itself on a
sandbank in the bay. All around, the ocean teemed with what
looked like silvery Polaris missiles – the white beluga whales that
migrate every August to these waters with their young.
We landed on Swan Lake, where we were met by our two
guides, Andy and Terry, who off-loaded provisions and ferried
us by 4x4 to our temporary home. One of three wilderness
retreats owned by Jeanne and Mike Reimer of Churchill Wild,
Seal River Heritage Lodge sits on the site of a former
fur-trapper’s cabin. This delightfully simple wooden lodge
accommodating 16 guests, with a wood-burning stove as warm
as the hospitality, is distinguished by wonderful views and
exceptional cuisine using locally sourced ingredients, wild snow
goose, perch, caribou and cloudberries among them.
Guests’ safety is paramount for our hosts, experienced
wilderness hands. “Churchill welcome mats” – wooden boards
studded with nails – surround the lodge to deter unwelcome
visitors, and picture windows in the communal areas are
shuttered at night (‘Bears are learning to negotiate the mats
Top left: a tundra
buggy lets visitors get
up close and personal
with Manitoba’s
polar bears.
Above and top
right: the Seal
River Heritage
Lodge on Hudson
Bay allows guests to
meet the local bears
– and vice versa; the
building is heavily
fortified against
ursine visitors
Sixty-Seven
16/12/2011 10:27
and dive through windows,’ Rose had told me). Before we set
off into the wilds, Andy and Terry, armed to the teeth with a
battery of deterrents, gave a strict safety briefing. Polar bears are
unpredictable, we were warned – forget the myth that they
always attack from behind. If threatened, don’t run and don’t
play dead. The first line of defence is to shout at the bear, then
to throw stones at it (apparently, they do not like to be
touched). If that fails to stop an advance, ‘screamers and
bangers’ are fired at it. As a last resort, a shotgun is used. ‘It will
not hurt the bear at a distance,’ explained Terry, ‘but at close
quarters, if he keeps charging, it will kill him. It is a much
better option than a rifle, which would require a very accurate
aim. A bear’s skull is thick and angled in such a way that it
deflects bullets.’ Happily, in their combined 20-odd years of
experience with polar bears, neither Terry nor Andy have had
cause to shoot one of these magnificent creatures.
Thus briefed, we set out in hushed single file, over spongy
ground fragrant with berries and wild flowers, solid permafrost
just 50cm beneath us, in search of bears. The distinctive bugle
call of sandhill cranes accompanied us, while cheeky sik-siks
– Arctic ground squirrels – stood sentinel on rocks, vanishing at
our approach. Overhead, a bald eagle soared, surveying the
scene as an Arctic hare made its escape, bobbing white tail a
bull’s-eye for predators.
From July to November, having swum ashore from the
melting ice, polar bears are in a state of ‘walking hibernation’,
their digestive systems switched off unless food (like the hapless
whale) falls into their laps. ‘They are conserving energy,’ said
Andy, ‘but it is a state they can control.’ Sure enough, we soon
reached a ridge where a furry white heap lay dozing among
brilliant purple fireweed, a huge paw batting away the noisome
bugs. Sensing us, the bear sat up, stretched his neck to sniff the
sky, and settled down again, legs in the air, unfazed by our
presence 40 metres away. ‘He is quite relaxed,’ said Andy, ever
alert for trouble. ‘Warning signs are yawns and flattening of ears.’
We came across a mother vigilant over her nervous cubs,
and we followed the hairy rump of an adolescent male, making
swaggering, pigeon-toed progress deftly over granite boulders
where the tide had receded. One magical evening, a bear came
snuffling up to the dining-room windows, drawn by the
mouth-watering aroma of our barbecuing ribs. I watched him
loiter hopefully, then swim away into the setting sun, a white
speck in the silvery ocean, disappearing towards the horizon.
Mother Nature is unbiddable, and we were fortunate to
have had so many sightings. The sacrificial whale no doubt had
something to do with it, and afforded us the rare treat of seeing
bears in action, successively sizing each other up in displays of
dominance and eviction; or taking the path of least resistance
and sharing the windfall. It was a primal scene, a gory banquet
such as Sir David Attenborough might have waited months to
capture on film. Above all, it was a salutary reminder that these
beautiful, alluring creatures are the world’s largest and most
fearsome land carnivores, to be treated with the utmost
circumspection and the respect they deserve.
Teresa Levonian Cole travelled with Frontier Canada,
+44 (0)20 8776 8709, www.frontier-canada.co.uk.
The best time to see polar bears at Seal River is July/August and
October/November. For further info: www.churchillwild.com
Can we juﬆify trespassing on the territory of an animal
for our pleasure, if it then kills in self-defence?
Sixty-Eight
16/12/2011 09:01
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15/12/2011 10:06
hen I was young, my aunts would recite
Rudyard Kipling’s poem Mandalay every
Christmas. It was the done thing in those
days to get together and read aloud, and as
my great-uncle had served with the British Army
out in Burma, Mandalay was their party piece. My
family had always had a fascination with Burma, and
the family connection made Kipling’s mythical
landscape of the country with its pagodas and palm
trees seem very much a part of our history. And yet
in all my years of travelling, I never visited Burma.
I knew Kipling’s breathless description of the
country as being ‘quite unlike any land you know’,
but the behaviour of the brutal military regime put
me off going. Then I heard last autumn that Aung
San Suu Kyi – the democratically elected leader who
was released from her 20-year house arrest in 2010
– was asking tourists to visit, and I jumped at the
first opportunity.
I was fortunate to briefly meet Aung San Suu Kyi
in Yangon. The woman who is known simply as the
Lady, fixed me with those strong, dark eyes and said:
‘Tell people to come to Burma.’ Having now sailed
the Irrawaddy River from Bagan to Mandalay I have
no hesitation in endorsing her words, but with one
rider. Go to Burma now. Go while Burma is unspoiled.
Go while you can still travel the Irrawaddy for days
and see nothing but fishing boats, thatched villages,
shorelines of green palm trees and hundreds of golden
pagodas, suspended like tear drops between the sky
T H E R O A D T O M A N DA L AY
PRI_70_BurmaFJ.indd 70
16/12/2011 11:27
and the ground. This is the Burma I was fortunate
enough to witness – the magical country of my
family’s history and of Kipling’s stories.
I flew into Yangon (the city Rudyard Kipling
knew as Rangoon) and stayed at the Governor’s
Residence, a colonial-era hotel run by Orient Express.
Everything felt very safe and people talked openly
about their hopes for the future. After two busy days
touring the city by cycle rickshaw and meeting up
with the Lady I flew north to Bagan. Here I joined
my cruise on the Irrawaddy, the 2,200km river that
flows from northern Burma to the Andaman Sea, and
which is still central to Burma’s trade and transport.
Old Bagan is a deserted, overgrown city
seemingly built entirely of pagodas, sitting on a bend
of the mighty river. I discovered straight away that
pagodas sum up Burma more than anything else –
more than rickshaw cyclists and lacquerware
salesmen, more than ox-cart taxis and Buddhist
monks with their furled umbrellas. It is believed
there are over four million pagodas in Burma and
more are being built all the time. A new pagoda is
considered a fitting end to a life well-lived. Indeed
there is a saying that if you are standing in Burma
and cannot see a pagoda, then you are not in Burma.
As we drove through the Indiana Jones landscape
of Bagan my driver explained that the city was
founded as the Burmese capital in 874 by King
Pyinbya. Most of its 2,000-plus pagodas and temples
were built between the 11th and 13th centuries; at
IMAGE©CORBIS
military regime, but now democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi is asking the
world to visit. Adrian Mourby follows the ghost of Kipling to Mandalay
16/12/2011 11:27
ME
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(+*#
35".+)
+. %*.5
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R W
MAUR ITIUS. LONG B EACHMAUR ITIUS.COM
No.75699 Sun Resorts NEW.indd 1
14/12/2011 10:41
Previous page:
the temples and
pagodas of Bagan are
best seen by balloon.
Left: young monks
among Bagan’s
ancient stones.
Below: the banks of
the Irrawaddy are a
landscape untouched
by modernity
IMAGES©CORBISAXIOM
Old Bagan is a deserted,
overgrown city seemingly
built entirely of pagodas,
a landscape of trees, goats and
huge, otherworldly buildings
the height of Burma’s power it is estimated that there may have
been over 5,000 pagodas and temples in Bagan, but many were
destroyed in 1287 when the empire fell to Kublai Khan. Even
more may have succumbed to the changing course of the
Irrawaddy. Even so, today Bagan is all pagodas. Since only
religious buildings were made of stone, only they remain.
Everything else is gone; all the houses, shops and palaces have
been eaten up by the forest. Bagan is a strange landscape of
trees, goats and these huge, otherworldly buildings.
A traditional teak ferryboat transferred me to The Road to
Mandalay, a gracious old river-cruiser named after Kipling’s
poem. It sat there at anchor, low and white in the middle of the
Irrawaddy. Black smoke rose from the ship’s antiquated funnels
but inside it was a floating five-star hotel with a swimming
pool on the top deck. The Road to Mandalay is operated by
Orient Express, and my cabin had a writing desk facing the
river, a brand new bed, exemplary room service and the best
air-conditioning in all Burma.
The roads in Bagan are rudimentary, just red sandy tracks
through the dense foliage. The best way to explore is by slow
horse-drawn carriage or bicycle. After lunch on deck I joined a
party of cyclists from the ship heading off to get a proper look
at all those temples and pagodas. They are invariably dark,
four-sided ambulatories structured around four golden statues
of the Buddha, some reaching 10m tall. In their cool corridors
we could rest and wipe the perspiration from our brows. We
were also free to explore the hundreds of recesses where smaller
statues illustrate incidents from the Buddha’s many incarnations.
The only thing you must never do is sit with the soles of your
feet facing a statue of the Buddha. The Burmese are the gentlest
of souls and keep a respectful distance from visitors, but on the
one occasion when, overcome by the heat, I made this
monumental faux pas I was amazed at how quickly people
appeared to ask me to please point my feet in another direction.
The difference between a temple and a pagoda in Burma is
simple. Pagodas are solid, towering structures – often covered
in gold leaf – that may contain a holy relic but are not to be
entered. Temples are for prayer and worship. The great
advantage of some pagodas is that they can be climbed. I did
this at the Buledi Pagoda, up terrifyingly steep steps that were
cut into the outside of this square, tall structure. The view from
the top was stunning. As far as the eye could see, pagodas and
temples rose up in the light of the setting sun.
At the end of the day we found ourselves at Hsin Phyushin,
where we found a rare example of how people lived in Bagan
Seventy-Three
16/12/2011 11:27
Chamonix, Courchevel 1850, Crans-Montana, Davos, Megeve, Meribel,
St. Moritz, Val d’Isere, Verbier, Zermatt
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+41 22 819 94 07
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[email protected]
No.75698 Kings Avenue.indd 1
13/12/2011 16:19
Five-sided
Dhammayazika
Pagoda is unusual
in having four
surrounding temples
to the Buddhas who
have already attained
enlightenment – plus
a fifth to the future
Buddha, Metteyya
IMAGE©LIGHTMEDIATION
The beﬆ moment of the balloon trip was the
Dhammayazika Pagoda, its crown and vane reaching up
to us like a golden rocket as we sailed over
800 years ago. We followed a local woman who was carrying two
five-litre cans of water on a pole back to her family and came upon Min
Nan Thu Village which had a roadside café made of wood and thatch
and little open-sided houses on stilts. The villagers were amused to see
us, sold us beer and let me look around. One old lady even offered us the
enormous cheroot she was smoking. Its filling of woodchips, tobacco,
tamarind and maize smelled fine in the night air.
That night I ate on the boat and gloried in the air-conditioning. The
banks of the Irrawaddy were very dark but the stars above were a riot of
light. Occasionally there would be a distant silent flash of lightning on the
horizon, but otherwise it was incredibly peaceful. A balloonist called Lee
came on board to talk about the flight we would take the following
morning. We were at the end of the monsoon period so it was all
weather-dependent, but at 5am, an old battered motor coach of the kind I
remember from my childhood picked up the Road to Mandalay party and
chugged to an open field in front of a sandstone pagoda. Here Lee was
preparing two balloons for a flight and in the blackness bursts from
helium burners dazzled those of us waiting to clamber on board.
Half an hour later we rose with the sun, the pagodas below us turning
pink as we rose to 700m. On the horizon hammer-headed storm clouds
were forming, but fortunately we drifted away from them and away from
the river too. The best moment was the rare five-sided Dhammayazika
Pagoda complex, its crown and vane reaching up to us like a golden rocket.
As we came in to land, children in the villages below abandoned their walk
to school and joyously chased our balloon as we sailed over the peanut fields.
W
e returned to The Road to Mandalay, and the gracious old
ship finally lifted anchor and chugged north up the
Irrawaddy. People sat out on the top deck watching Burma
pass slowly by. We are not used to landscapes untouched by modernity,
and the shores of the Irrawaddy that day seemed timeless. Pakokku,
Myingyan and the confluence with the Chindwin river floated by, a
landscape of pagodas, thatched villages and trees. The pattern repeated
endlessly. No bridges, no power lines or telegraph cables. The occasional
log drifted past and lapwings and wagtails flew overhead. Sometimes the
best thing about a journey can be its slowness.
That night the boat laid on a special treat for us as we moored in the
darkness. It is a Burmese custom during Thadingyut (the end of Lent) to
light candles. Our ship had arranged for local boats upstream of us to light
2011 candles and release them down the river. We passengers were taken
up to Captain Myo Lwin’s bridge and music played as this carpet of light
came slowly downriver towards us, breaking up into individual clusters
with the current and finally passing the ship in little floating baskets.
The next morning I was awakened by the sound of small motor
boats. Outside my cabin the river was full of families fishing, working
with nets and poles while tiny overloaded river boats took people
upstream. Further north we encountered our first sight of modern
Burma, a great river bridge constructed of steel and brick by the British.
We were arriving in the village of Shwe Kyet Yet. The eastern bank of the
river was lined with a temple complex that rose up dramatically from the
Irrawaddy and culminated in a large golden pagoda.
Seventy-Five
16/12/2011 11:28
Right: Mandalay Hill is an
old Buddhist pilgrimage site and
gives the city its name.
Below: a master carver turns
out another image of the Buddha
RUDYARD
KIPLING’S
MANDALAY
THEFIRSTSTANZA
streets were full of stalls selling sizzling food.
Music played from speakers and a woman with
a basket full of birds on her head tried to sell
me one for luck. I broke away from the crowds
and strolled through an old fairground that had
been constructed next to the Kuthodaw Pagoda
complex. This golden structure contains the
entire canon of Theravada Buddhism on 729
marble slabs. For this reason the Burmese refer
to it as the World’s Largest Book. It was here at
the end of my trip that I caught sight of the
moon rising as pink thunder clouds loomed
over the golden pagoda. It was an eerie,
beautiful sight that seemed to belong not just
to another country, but another world. My own
personal Road to Mandalay had shown me
sights beyond anything I’d imagined all those
years ago listening to family recitals of Rudyard
Kipling’s famous poem. As I reflected on
Mandalay, I couldn’t help but agree. Burma is
really quite unlike any land you know.
By the old Moulmein
Pagoda, lookin’
eastward to the sea,
There’s a Burma girl
a-sein’, and I know she
thinks o’ me;
For the wind is in the
palm-trees, and the
temple-bells they say:
‘Come you back, you
British soldier; come
you back to Mandalay!’
Come you back to
Mandalay,
Where the old
Flotilla lay:
Can’t you ’ear their
paddles chunkin’ from
Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to
Mandalay,
Where the flyin’fishes play,
An’ the dawn comes up
like thunder outer
China ’crost the Bay!
IMAGES©AXIOM
Shwe Kyet Yet means ‘the Golden Rooster Lands’, and
legend has it that the Buddha in one of his incarnations flew
here. It’s a delightful settlement full of temples and busy boat
traders, and the ideal place to disembark for Mandalay. After
lunch I took a bus that weaved through villages and along
causeways to the last royal capital. On the way to Mandalay we
paused at Thein Nyo, a silk workshop where women still work
on 18th-century looms, and got out to wander down Kyauk
Sittan, or ‘Marble Carving Street’.
King Mindon, who made Mandalay his capital in 1857,
decreed at the same time that Kyauk Sittan should be where all
the statues of Buddha in his kingdom would be carved and all
these years later this is still the case. About 40 families have
workshops along this narrow busy road and, as only the master
carver from each workshop can carve the face of Buddha, the
street is lined with nearly finished statues with just a rough-hewn
marble block for a face, each waiting their turn for completion.
Modern Mandalay is the commercial capital of Upper
Burma, but the moated walls of its massive palace remain, as
does the Shwenandaw Monastery, a beautiful teak building
covered in carvings in which King Mindon died. At Mahamuni
Temple we saw a carving of the Buddha that is specially
venerated because it is supposed to have been carved in his
lifetime and therefore a good likeness. Over the years pilgrims
have applied so much gold leaf to the statue that he appears to
be covered in gold feathers. There was a festival of the full
moon being celebrated at the Kyauk Taw Gyi Pagoda and the
Seventy-Six
16/12/2011 11:28
Photo: www.jimmynelson.com
No.75643 Shamballa Jewels 1pp.indd 1
16/12/2011 17:06
T H E L U X U RY YA C H T C H A RT E R S P E C I A L I S T S
Sydney +61 280 050 054
No.75790 Charter World NZ.indd 1
Florida +1 954 603 7830
London +44 207 193 7830
Cannes +33 970 408 889
16/12/2011 10:07
P R I VATA I R
P R I VA T A I R
Capturing
the PrivatAir
Identity
Nathalie Beuchard, charter sales
director for PrivatAir, gives a
very personal take on customer
service to Charlotte Pénet
NATHALIEBEUCHARD still
remembers the company slogan
that captured her attention when
she joined PrivatAir six years ago. ‘It
was the term Service d’Excellence,’
she says in her fast, jittery style,
perched on the edge of her seat. ‘It
was the perfect description of how I
envisage customer service.’
The words Service
d’Excellence are certainly
evocative, but in the luxury
business aviation sector, both
service and excellence are at the
core of every client’s expectations.
It takes more than slogans and
assurances to win the clients’ trust,
especially in the current jumpy
market. Demand for private
charters is still up despite a dip in
September, but pricing is becoming
more and more aggressive among
operators. So how does Beuchard
give real meaning to the phrase
Service d’Excellence, in the face
of all the competition? ‘Of course
you have to negotiate your price,
but there comes a point where you
can’t devalue your service. We’ll
go the extra mile on every other
aspect, and we’ll put pressure on
our operators and partners to be
the very best. We’re known for that,
and I believe that’s what makes the
difference. It’s no longer enough
to tick every item on each client’s
list of requirements. In the current
market, you have to offer an extra
special ingredient: the personal
touch. You have to really care.’
To find an account manager
who is genuinely driven and
tenacious enough to respond to
every request is quite rare. It’s the
person who thinks to arrange for
two medical assistants and a special
disembarking facility for a client
in a wheelchair, so she endures
minimum discomfort and stress
when coming off the plane. It’s
the one who answers the phone
on a Sunday afternoon and pulls
all the strings to rearrange for a
late flight slot, so that a father can
help his son blow out his birthday
candles. It’s the account manager
who forgoes her day off when
a new client is passing through
town unexpectedly, just so that
he can put a face to the voice, and
establish that personal connection.
‘The recognition and the gratitude
we receive from clients is the best
reward,’ says Beuchard with a smile.
Such ardent personal service
inspires loyalty: one of Beuchard’s
clients recently cancelled a prearranged trip with another operator
to fly with PrivatAir. They had the
right plane at the right time, and as
the client stated: ‘We’re back, and we
know the service will be top class.’
‘At PrivatAir, we are a niche
boutique out of choice,’ says
Beuchard. ‘We want to keep
offering such responsiveness to our
select clients. We make sure we are
not just reachable, but physically
present. Our new charter sales
offices in Dusseldorf and London
ensure that we are close to our
clients.’ She talks with the same
enthusiasm about plans for the
future. ‘We want to go that step
further and act as a personal travel
agency, arranging special trips,
excursions, journeys of discovery,
always with the promise of our
Service d’Excellence.’
When such service is served up
with that personal touch so deftly
personified by Beuchard, there is
no doubt they will enable PrivatAir
to continue to build long-lasting
relationships with its fortunate and
discerning clients.
Seventy-Nine
PRI_79_privatair_pageFJ.indd 79
16/12/2011 09:07
P R I VATA I R
THE POWER OF SPORT
GENEVAISTHELITTLECITYTHATPUNCHESFARABOVE
its weight. It is famous as the home of luxury watches and the
birthplace of the internet. It’s celebrated as a city where different
countries and cultures come together: more than 20 international
organisations have their base here, including the
United Nations. It also has some 11 museums
and is one of the greenest cities in Europe. But
sport? While bursting with potential, Geneva
has still to make it on the sporting stage. Until
now. Hugh Quennec (pictured right), a SwissCanadian entrepreneur and financier who grew
up in Montreal, became president and co-owner
of Genève-Servette Hockey Club (GSHC) in
2006. With a wealth of business experience and
a passion for ice hockey, Quennec has devoted
himself to putting Geneva on the sporting map.
But his goal isn’t just to give Geneva’s ice hockey
team a shot at winning the championship. It is to give the city all
the benefits that a strong sporting philosophy can offer.
Before we met, I did a little background reading to get a taste
of what Quennec has already achieved in the last six years. Since he
took over at GSHC, average attendance at the games has almost
doubled and today regular sell-out crowds reach 7,200. Sales of
season tickets rose by 70 per cent, the ice-rink at Les Vernets has
been renovated and the project for a new bigger, better rink with
increased capacity is expected to finish in 2015. The team’s
performance has gone from strength to strength
under the management of Chris McSorley, who
co-owns the club with Quennec. They have
reached the play-offs seven times in the last eight
years and have twice been the Swiss vice-champions in the last four seasons. There’s a new
consistency to the performance that is a sure sign
of a solid structure. Home games are no longer
just sporting events; they have become huge
spectacles that keep pulling in the crowds. Fans
no longer come just for the game alone, they
come for the experience, the music, the giant
screens, the animations and the mascots Calvin
and Calvina. They come to see the live eagle, Sherkan, soar above the
rink at every game. There’s real, palpable emotion and GSHC has
become an environment filled with positive energy where politicians
and business executives sit alongside working-class fans. Quennec
and McSorley have managed to completely transform the club.
IMAGE©GETTY
Hugh Quennec has injected his business philosophy
into the Genève-Servette Hockey Club. As a result,
the club’s mission is now about far more than just
winning games, says Charlotte Pénet
Eighty
PRI_80_privatair_hockeyFJ.indd 80
16/12/2011 09:08
I was surprised when I first met Quennec to discover that his
manner was discreet and his tone was soft. But once he started
talking about GSHC his voice was charged with passion and pride.
‘Our core values are excellence and customer service,’ he began. ‘You
have a philosophy, then what makes the difference is execution,’ he
told me, before divulging some of his sound business acumen – and
telling me how he’s managed to take his principles from the office
to the ice rink.
THE GSHC APPROACH TO EXCELLENCE
GSHC has always felt it has a duty to its fans, but Quennec has
taken it to the next level. Every aspect of a game has been analysed
and improved to create an unforgettable experience for every
spectator. For fans who worry about security at big games, GSHC
has thrown its weight behind its security staff to make sure
everything runs smoothly. For women, who were never previously
considered a target audience and think ice hockey is a rowdy,
boys-only sport, GSHC has launched special events for women
which, in turn, has helped to make games even more appealing to
families. For supporters who want more than just a hot dog and a
soft drink to enjoy while at the game, GSHC opened McSorley’s
Pub & Steakhouse, serving top quality food and drinks that any
restaurant in Geneva would be proud to offer. ‘We all want positive
emotions: hope, to feel good, to feel a part of something we admire,
and to be taken care of. We’re in the business of satisfying those
needs,’ says Quennec.
THE GSHC APPROACH TO CUSTOMER SERVICE
‘Everything is about people. You’re only limited by the number of
good people on board who can execute your projects. We want
people who go the extra yard, people who really care,’ says Quennec.
And how does GSHC manage this? ‘Every person knows who
their boss is, what their job is, and how they will be rated. But
mainly, they feel passionate about what they do. It is much more
than a job, it is a way of life.’ Quennec’s partner Chris McSorley
shares this philosophy with his players. ‘When you come to a game,
you’re coming to work, you’re a professional. After a game, you
smarten up and you come and connect with the fans, smile, talk to
people, whether we won or lost.’ This has benefits for fans and
players alike, Quennec says. ‘The players feel accountable and
produce better results. They’re ambassadors for the club, and for the
city of Geneva. They have a sense of responsibility.’ He describes his
organisation as having a backbone, but one that’s not vertical and
can stay strong even if one link is missing. ‘I see the backbone as
Eighty-One
16/12/2011 10:40
Below: a GSHC player mentors a young child.
Bottom: Hugh Quennec (left) and PrivatAir’s
Victor Grove (right) enjoy a big match
horizontal. If one element is out of sync with the others, the whole
organisation is off balance.’ Quennec’s mix of drive, passion and
humility is a large part of how he gets the best out of his staff.
‘There’s no such thing as being the best, but we strive to be
considered among the best sports organisations in the world.’
The tip of the iceberg is Quennec’s philosophy. It could have
been applied to any number of organisations, it didn’t have to be a
sports club. But Quennec chose GSHC, and the reason behind this
was for more than just the challenge of turning the club into a
successful sporting team and entertainment enterprise. For him and
Chris McSorley being the best means much more than simply
winning games. GSHC is a vehicle, a launching pad for projects
that can make a real difference to the
community, thanks to its reach through
its fan base and corporate sponsors,
through the media attention it generates
and through the influence of its players.
The GSHC message goes beyond the
rink: the club aims to be a model for
youth hockey development and to
provide a positive impact on the local
community. ‘It’s not about money, and
it’s not just about winning games. It’s
about all this positive energy, and how
far that can go,’ says Quennec.
GSHC devotes much of its time and energy into Geneva’s
children. In Switzerland today there are kids of all ages and from all
across the city who are discovering and enjoying ice hockey. Some
may even be the hockey stars of the future. Thanks to the Genève
Future Hockey Association (GFH), a non-profit organisation set
up by GSHC, both aspiring athletes and kids who just want to
have fun playing the sport have the opportunity to play hockey with
their peers, get professional coaching and interact with star hockey
players who act as mentors and role models to educate them about
the positive attributes of the sport. GFH will even give career
advice to help promising players think about their future both
inside and outside the rink.
But that’s not all. Thanks to GSHC’s overwhelming popularity
and media attention, the club is able to organise a number of
high-profile charity fundraisers and events through the GenèveServette Foundation for Children and Humanity. A great example
is the Teddy Bear Night when fans throw stuffed animals onto the
rink after the first goal of the home team is scored. The bears are
then collected and delivered by the players to local children’s
hospitals. And on Pink Night in support of breast cancer charities,
players don pink jerseys as they play. Their kit is then sold off at
auction and the proceeds given to charity.
Hugh Quennec’s Sport for Life Foundation illustrates how
sport can benefit the community in a variety of different ways. Take
the Community Rinks programme for
example. The foundation provided funding
that was instrumental in helping several
communities in the Geneva area to build
outdoor rinks. These rinks have become a
meeting point for family recreation, social
events, school outings as well as venues for
hockey initiation programs for boys and
girls, that are managed by GFH. The Sport
for Life Foundation’s Le Petit Sport
programme aims to allow children as
young as four to learn good manners,
follow rules, work as a team and stay focused on a task, all through
the use of stories and games. ‘We’re getting four-year-olds to shake
hands when they say hello, look you in the eye when they’re talking
to you, and accept time-out when they’ve not followed the rules,
respected the other participants or the equipment. It’s not just about
sport, it’s an education for life,’ says Quennec.
GSHC is already changing the face of sport in Geneva. And it’s
not just thanks to good business sense or solid sporting performance.
It’s largely because everyone involved wants to work towards the
positive ideals that the club believes in. Quennec’s drive is contagious
because his values are sound, and you can bet he gained these through
his love of sport. ‘It is about sport,’ he says. ‘But more importantly, it’s
about good people doing good things for good reasons.’
When Victor Grove, senior vice-president for training and customer
service at PrivatAir, met GSHC president Hugh Quennec, their joint
appreciation of sport was just a starting point for a friendship that is
based on many shared values. ‘In my role at PrivatAir, it’s all about
people. We aim for that heightened level of excellence among our staff.
When we talk about customer service, we call it our Service
d’Excellence. I’m a great believer in the values people can learn
through sport, and apply to every area of life: the team spirit, hard
work, focus and discipline. There are many ways to communicate those
values to our staff and our customers. Highlighting role models like the
GSHC is a fine example.’
IMAGE©BOMBARDIER
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16/12/2011 09:08
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the magazine winter 2012

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