Books |
Rooms
Derry Moore
By
Published: Jan 01, 2006
Category:
Art and Photography
The Earldom of Drogheda was created in 1661. Soon there was a home worthy of the title — Moore Abbey. It was large. It was Gothic. It was hugely impressive. And, of course, expensive. In 1945, the family sold it to The Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary.
Derry Moore — that is, Henry Dermot Ponsonby Moore — is the 12th Earl of Drogheda. In the orderly way of English succession, Moore Abbey would have been his. He is, however, very happy it went to the nuns: “Had I inherited it, I would’ve become an alcoholic and done nothing with my life.”
Instead, Derry Moore became a photographer. A very special kind of photographer. Three decades of documenting great homes for Architectural Digest — to some, that might not seem like doing much with your life. But Derry Moore’s pictures are light years from the homes and apartments that, in the shelter magazines, increasingly look like “house porn.”
For one thing, Moore knows a thing or two about rooms the public never gets to see. He is not bored with them, or protective of them; he grew up in them and visited them, and his privilege is just a fact. So his focus is never on the trillion-dollar painting or the opulent curtains — he sees a room whole.
For another thing, he also has a brilliant eye for the telling detail. And so he leads you gently into a room, rather like a kindly tour guide. He does not turn up the lights; if anything, his pictures seem to be shot in the quiet of a late afternoon, when the kitchen staff is preparing tea and the lady of the house is still out with the dogs.
“Rooms” is thick (225 photographs) and diverse (eight of these 24 residences are rural; a third are ancestral). Most, as you’d expect, belong to the very rich and very mannered: Pauline de Rothschild’s London apartment, Elsie de Wolfe’s Versailles pavilion, the Marques de Casa Torres’s town house in Madrid. For all that, Moore has particular affection for homes that don’t bear the mark of an interior decorator — “I don’t think anything in the book was done by an outside decorator, except maybe Nureyev’s apartment in Paris, but even that was distinctive and could only have been his,” Moore says. [To buy ‘Rooms’ from Amazon, click here.]
What impresses Moore most? India. Thirty years ago, he was knocked to his knees by Hyderabad’s Falaknuma Palace. The telling detail? “Although it hadn’t been lived in since 1911, there were sheets on the bed,” he recalls. There the book starts. As a result, you will see, in the very first spread, rooms with paneled walls, giant rugs, ceilings high enough for basketball and chandeliers for miles. No people, though — feel free to insert yourself.
For all but a few, “Rooms” is a book from another world, now mostly lost. Not because no one can afford to maintain them; many hedge fund managers could keep these up without flinching. It’s the sensibility that’s gone: the world of ladies’ maids and footmen, tea in the late afternoon, invitations on the mantel.
There was much that was cruel about that world; most of us would have been on the losing end of power in it. So it’s with mixed feelings that I turn these exquisite pages. For there’s no question: In this book, Derry Moore has assembled photographs that are essential for those who love great homes. But in a time of change — of dramatic upheaval — he also makes the reader nostalgic for an immutability and order that was built on exploitation and rank.
I emerged from ‘Rooms’ dazed and dazzled. I went somewhere; where did I go? It took some time to return to myself. But it took no time at all to realize that this curious book had given me a remarkable experience.
This book is a drug. Be warned. And then….plunge in.
