In February, acclaimed interiors studio, Holloway Li, revealed its design for Tbilisi artisan bakery, Entrée.
Centred around the celebratory Georgian ‘supra’ – a feast centred around a gathering table – the bakery is situated in Notting Hill, and marks the brand’s first London outpost.
Entrée’s compelling aesthetic draws on Wes Anderson’s cinematic style, and is organised as a ‘deconstructed shopfront’, based on a scene from Wes Anderson’s ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’, which follows the main character Agatha through a process of chocolate-making at Mendl’s Sweet Shop, from gathering ingredients, to decoration through to assembly.
The propery takes cues from the organisation of a theatre-space, with the area between the shopfront and kitchen structured like the layered space between the audience and back-stage. The shopfront window forms the ‘Apron’, the café area becomes the ‘Stage’, and the serving area the ‘Proscenium Arch’. A window behind the serving counter offers a glimpse into the ‘Backstage’ area, where traditional Georgian breads and pastries are baked.
The foreground café space, the ‘stage’, has been designed around the Georgian culinary tradition of the ‘supra’, a celebratory feast centred around an oversized gathering table. Holloway Li curated a large oval bronze-finish table, continually replenished with an abundance of freshly-baked Georgian and French pastries, giving customers the feeling of joining an ongoing ever-evolving feast.
The walls are dressed with antique mirrors and artwork inspired by traditional Georgian calligraphy and patterns, lending a domestic feel to the space.
“On a research trip to Tbilisi at the start of the project, we were drawn to warmth of Georgian hospitality, a culture which has been materialised as an object in the Supra table,” comments Na Li, Director, Holloway Li. “We wanted to make this table the heart of the design, a symbol around which an imagined feast might unfold. We worked closely with branding and design studio, Here Design, to translate these qualities of Georgian culture into a spatial design.”
Holloway Li’s design concept experiments with the bakery’s name, playing with the notion of an ‘entrance’ and applying it to the property as a ‘gateway to Tbilisi’. The team has created allusions to Tbilisi’s position on the Silk Road, and its myriad cultural influences.
A two-tone colour palette of teal and plum draws from these varied influences, accentuating the arched areas. This is set against rough pitted plaster and tumbled limestone tiling, in reference to the rendered houses in Tblisi’s old town, home to Entrée’s bakeries.
“We were sparked by how the textures and colours of ‘Old’ Georgia (the domed sulphur baths, the byzantine brickwork, the wooden balconies and Caucasian rugs) sit restlessly next to the grittiness of ‘New’ Georgia (with its repurposed Soviet buildings and monuments),” says Emily Mak, Designer, Holloway Li. “We tried to capture this combination subtly, through the controlled use of texture, textile and ornament.”
