A room with a view: the unique wallpaper to be discovered at our Belmont Room
A room with a view: the unique wallpaper to be discovered at our Belmont Room
Inspired by Bettys founder Frederick Belmont’s journey on the May 1936 maiden voyage of the grand Queen Mary ocean liner, the interior of Bettys York offered its first customers a rare taste of the luxury and adventure of an transatlantic cruise. Even today, the elegant Art Deco lines and gleaming brass fixtures of the café’s Belmont Room evoke glamour and escape from the everyday. Thanks to a recent refurbishment, that now extends to what you’ll find in the Belmont Room’s restrooms.
On entering, you’re greeted by a scene thousands of miles away from bustling York. The restroom wallpaper transports you to an exotic cove, with lush vegetation, calm seas and picturesque mountains. Painted in soothing greys, it makes you a willing castaway on a dreamy tropical island – albeit one with the modern comforts of fragrant soap and soft hand towels.
Before returning to your afternoon tea, let’s take a closer look. The wallpaper is printed with a bespoke pattern created just for Bettys by Yorkshire-based Haley Studios, who have become sought after for their hand-painted designs. Combining the sumptuous flora, fauna and landscape scenes of centuries past with a contemporary edge, each visual is a stunning one-off.
Many of them come from the skilled brush of Geoff Haley, the studio’s founder and design director. Geoff started his journey in 1977 as an apprentice carpet designer, rising to head up the design department of esteemed Scottish firm Stoddard (where playwright John Byrne once mixed paints, inspiring his 1978 work The Slab Boys).
But, as Geoff explains, “After a couple of years you get to a point where you either enjoy management or you don’t. And I realised that I loved design.” So he set up his own studio, creating patterns for fabrics and wallpaper as well as carpets. After graduating in fine art, his son Richard joined in 2011 and is now managing director, followed by daughter Rebecca and daughter in law Anna – both senior designers, while Geoff’s wife Lesley is also part of the team.
With their patterns appearing across the globe on everything from textilesand wallpaper to gift wrap and ceramic tiles, the family are busier than they’ve ever been. But Haley Studios HQ is still Geoff and Lesley’s home in Brighouse, namely the conservatory and a garden office. Break times bring everyone together in the living room for tea and a brandy snap from long-established local producer Wright & Co.
“The great thing about all being family is that it’s the ultimate trust,” says Richard. “We can all trust one other and so many things can be done informally.” Geoff adds: “I keep telling them that once I’m retired it’s going to be their business, so they’d better look after it!”
As an apprentice Geoff learned his art from a designer on the cusp of retirement who had trained in the 1920s. He in turn trained Richard, Rebecca and Anna, passing on traditional skills lost to many. “It runs through the veins of the studio, that classic understanding of design,” says Richard.
And it shows. Unlike some studios who might choose a set of readymade visual elements and assemble them digitally, at Haley Studios each design is painted as a single composition, with great attention paid to both the overall layout and the finer details.
“With a lot of people, you look at a floral design and you can tell that they’ve Photoshopped it together, because the light’s coming from top right on one flower and bottom left on another,” Geoff notes. “When you do it properly, the design glows because the light’s consistent.”
The Belmont Room itself provided plenty of inspiration for the new wallpaper, chiefly a set of original glass panels etched with landscape designs. Geoff also drew upon the lavish panoramas – “slightly unreal, but real” – of Jean Zuber, whose woodblock printed wallpapers graced the most fashion-conscious 19th-century stately homes.
As the design developed and the tropical feel emerged, elements that were too reminiscent of British forests, such as a deer, disappeared. However, there was still room for ducks, a nod to those in the Belmont Room’s Spindler marquetry panels, much admired by Geoff. And an Easter egg for the sharp-eyed is the monkey perching on a branch, as one also features on the etched glass.
The final design has been scaled up from Geoff’s gouache painting to a width of four metres and would repeat seamlessly on a large enough wall. Although the restrooms’ layout mean that you won’t be able to take it all in at once, each visit promises new details to discover – an adventure where you might least expect to have one.