Fabulous Fabergé Returns to Luton Hoo

Luton Hoo once housed the largest collection of works by fabled Russian goldsmith and jeweller Carl Fabergé outside the Royal Collection of the British monarchy.

Sadly, many of the Fabergé pieces were stolen from Luton Hoo in the 1990s, when it was the family home of the Wernher family, and never recovered.

As part of Elite Hotels’ £60 million project to restore Luton Hoo to its former glory, guests at the newly opened hotel can once again get an impression of the fabulous Fabergé ornaments and jewellery that formed the glittering centrepieces of the Wernher Collection.

Art consultant Lisa Banholzer, director of London-based LMB Arts, oversaw the massive project to produce replicas of original artwork that once graced the mansion, as well as commissioning contemporary work to provide a modern view of Luton Hoo’s treasures. 

The new Fabergé artwork is on display in two of the hotel’s public rooms, the Fabergé and Romanov Suites, the latter a former Russian Orthodox chapel.

Photographs provide the only record of the items stolen from the Wernher Collection and an artist, commissioned by Lisa, studied the photos in order to create the new works.

They include a picture showing one of the most important pieces in the collection, a freedom box originally made in nephrite jade, with red and green gold mounts, topped by a Russian eagle.  The piece was originally given to the 14^th Earl of Pembroke by Tsar Nicholas II in 1896 during a visit to Balmoral to visit Queen Victoria

Lisa, who also commissioned tapestries and statues for the hotel, said Luton Hoo had been her largest and most interesting project in her ten years as an art consultant.

“Most of the time I work on hotels a floor at a time, or am involved in new build projects,” she explained. “But due to the rarity of this type of building, Luton Hoo was unique and was not the type of opportunity that had presented itself before.

“I wanted to keep the artwork in the mansion house relevant to its previous occupants, so recreating part of the Fabergé collection was an obvious choice. In addition to the freedom box other items represented in the paintings include unusual and quirky pieces such as a cane top and parasol top, lipstick case, enamel box and jade animals, rather than the fabled eggs for which Carl Fabergé is more generally well known.”

Diamond magnate Sir Julius Wernher bought Luton Hoo in 1903 and the priceless Fabergé collection came to the mansion through Lady Zia Wernher, who married his son Sir Harold Wernher. Lady Zia, who was related to virtually every royal family in Europe and married Sir Harold in 1917, had inherited the  collection from her parents, Grand Duke Michael of Russia and the Countess Torby.