MICA ERTEGUN

Exile, Elegance and the Art of Taste

Unlike most people who can afford to hang a Magritte beside a Miró, Mica Ertegun possessed the rarer gift of instinctive taste. 

Born Ioana Maria Banu in Bucharest on 21 October 1926, she entered a world of privilege. Her father served in the cabinet of King Carol II and was close to King Michael I during the turbulence of the Second World War. Allied air raids sent the young Mica to the family’s country estate, where aristocratic rituals continued against a backdrop of political collapse.

By 1948, the world she knew had disappeared. After the king’s forced abdication and her father’s imprisonment by the new Communist regime, Mica and her first husband were placed on a train carrying the royal family into exile. With stateless refugee passports, they arrived in Zurich without money or security.

Immigration was difficult and Canada offered easier entry. They borrowed money and bought a farm.

“I was living on a farm, you know?” she later recalled in a PBS interview. “When you are young, you can do anything. It really was a fantastic experience.”

The girl who had grown up on an estate learned to run a farmhouse. She spoke of machines she did not even know existed. It was hardship, but it was also an education in resilience.

Her life shifted again when she met Ahmet Ertegun, the co-founder of Atlantic Records.

“I was plunged into a world I didn’t know, and I was fascinated,” she said.

With Ahmet, Mica entered a cosmopolitan circle of music, art and society. They became fervent collectors and at one point acquired five or six paintings a day. More than 400 works were held in storage. Collecting, however, required discernment. Editing mattered as much as acquisition.

She co founded the design firm MAC II and created interiors that felt layered yet restrained. Fine antiques, muted palettes and atmospheric light combined to form rooms that felt composed and deeply personal.

Mica never had children, a decision she discussed openly. She once remarked that the idea of living an entire life with one person felt very American and not entirely logical to her, reflecting a lifelong independence of mind.

Philanthropy shaped her later years. In 2007 she made a 41 million dollar gift to the University of Oxford for humanities scholarships, the largest single donation in the university’s 900 year history at that time.

Born into fortune, stripped of it and later surrounded by greater wealth, Mica Ertegun lived through radical change while maintaining a singular clarity of vision. Her rooms were guided by discipline, confidence and a belief in culture as something to be lived with daily.

The Mica Lamp

Created after I spotted a pair of antique tole lamps from Mica Ertegun’s personal collection, the Mica Lamp was developed with Sophie Edwards and the artisans of Villa Bologna Pottery as a contemporary ceramic tribute to her refined, cosmopolitan sense of proportion and craftsmanship.