The Artfarm Story

Artfarm’s story began over a decade ago when our founders, Iwan and Manuela Wirth, restored and expanded their family farm in Somerset in South-West England.

That process, and the incredible people they met, enabled them to embrace the most sustainable, sensitive and traditional techniques for fostering both nature and the community, whilst championing foraging, ethical husbandry and a sense of place.

This connection also gave the company its name. Having become experts in the world of fine art through their gallery Hauser & Wirth, Iwan and Manuela saw the similarities between great artists and farmers. Both cultivate and care and cull from precedent and circumstance; both honour time as a central medium in their work; both thrive upon connection and exchange to complete their hard work, which acquires its true meaning through the participation of those who enjoy it.

And so we became Artfarm.

“Our business is an international hospitality company that develops hotels, restaurants and retail, but as our name implies, our real mission is cultivation: each of Artfarm’s projects comes to life in response to the specific local culture and customs of its site. These locations choose us, each promising a whole new set of conditions, each offering up a fresh opportunity to pursue our raison d’etre of cultivating community, conversation and connections between people in the places where we work around the world.

Artfarm projects evolve organically, hewing not to familiar hospitality industry formulas but to moments of inspiration and via local information, deep research and even deeper relationships with the people who love and live in the places where we go. There is no standardization in the world of Artfarm. No two projects are alike. This made-from-scratch-every-time approach allows us to develop supremely individual, welcoming, convivial places where fine art and wonderful food – the stuff of life – combine as catalysts for pleasure in togetherness. To some, this lack of predictability and commitment to rich detail make Artfarm properties ‘luxury lifestyle’ projects. But to us, great art in tandem with honest, delicious, enlightened seasonal cooking and enchanting lodgings are not luxuries; they are essentials.”

Iwan and Manuela Wirth

Image credit: Manuela and Iwan Wirth at Hauser & Wirth Somerset. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Sim Canetty-Clark.

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Clunie Dining Room and Flying Stag: Spring 2024

Our People

People are at the heart of everything we do at Artfarm and our fantastic employees make the company the creative energy centre it has become.

Headed by CEO Bee Emmott, the team, at every level, share the belief, passions and ambitions of our founders, whilst knowing that Artfarm embraces and values different talents, skills, genders, cultures, ages and abilities.

Work With Us

Art at the Heart

Art is intricately entwined with each project that we do, and our unique relationship with artists means we can celebrate their art in incredible forms, pushing ourselves and themselves even further than before.

We have invited many different artists to celebrate the story of our projects in the form of site-specific commissions, including Guillermo Kuitca with his 360 degree mural at the Fife Arms hotel, to Mika Rottenberg’s ‘Chandelier’ bar at Manuela in New York.

We also seek out artisans and designers to create interesting and thought-provoking pieces. In Washington DC Aberdeenshire-based basketmaker, Helen Jackson, who created Fish Shop Ballater’s original basket-weave fish shoal collaborated with weaver and teacher Angela Eastman from North Carolina to create the 200-fish installation floating above the dining room using invasive wisteria from North Carolina and willow from Scotland.

The Farm

Durslade Farm in Somerset is made up of over 1,000 acres and houses cattle and sheep, as well as a walled garden, apple orchards, bee hives, woodlands and hedgerows for foraging. Within the farm you can also find Durslade vineyards where our Made of Bruton wine is grown.

Everything we rear, grow and make throughout the estate becomes product available at Farm Shop in Bruton and Mayfair, or is used within our hospitality spaces.

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