Zetter days at a new Bloomsbury hotel

When the Zetter Marylebone opened in 2015, the interiors were conceived as the fictional home of an eccentric proprietor named Uncle Seymour. A decade on, the brief for the group’s new Bloomsbury opening was a little more grown-up. “This hotel is more about a feeling than a story,” explains designer James Thurstan Waterworth.

Made up of six Georgian townhouses, the hotel is a neighbour of the British Museum – the walls of which back on to the garden. “We spent months digging around for antiques and eclectic artefacts,” he says. There are now more than 2,000 pieces, bought at auctions around the world, dotting the hotel’s shelves. “None of them had a place or a home. We were moving them around constantly to get it right.”

Every room is a whimsical mash-up of eras and styles. There are striped rugs by Christine Van Der Hurd inspired by ceremonial Peruvian textiles, and lampshades made from 19th-century Japanese mosquito nets that are “sort of ripped to shreds”. Elsewhere, Egyptian artworks rub shoulders with bright abstract paintings by Sandra Blow and Robert Hilton.

In the Orangery, a rainbow set of wax crayons is glued to a mantelpiece. Next up for the enterprising hotel group, three new sites: another in London and two in Amsterdam. It looks like the grown-up Zetter is here to stay.

thezetter.com/bloomsbury