Exploring the history of English interior design with David Mlinaric & Derry Moore
Two men are walking down a London street towards me; they are of similar build, height and age. They are chatting and occasionally stop and face each other to emphasise a point. One is severely monochrome in his dress, the other is casually colourful, but they could be brothers, so easy and familiar is their body language.
They are not brothers. One is David Mlinaric, arguably the most influential interior decorator of his generation, and the other is Derry Moore, who has captured more beautiful houses and more interesting people than most other living photographers. They first met in the Sixties, when Derry was commissioned by Vogue to photograph David’s house in Tite Street, SW3, and for the past 50 years they have remained friends and collaborators. Derry has recorded many of David’s projects, including all his own houses.
We are meeting to talk about their latest collaboration, which is an extremely handsome book. Great English Interiors is a completely personal, idiosyncratic and – some might say – eccentric selection of buildings, which, in the authors’ opinion, best illustrate how design and decoration have developed from the fifteenth century to the present day. Neither David nor Derry would lay claim to academic scholarship and each attributes to the other the greater knowledge, but the fact remains that they have spent a lifetime (they are both hovering around their 80th birthdays) looking at buildings, studying buildings and reading about buildings, as well as travelling the world and mixing in cultivated and artistic circles. So their combined knowledge and erudition is formidable.
Every picture in the book has been either taken by Derry for this project or retrieved from his archive and each one invites you to look closer – and then look again. He has a way of capturing a room as though you have just stepped into it and are standing amazed at its scale or beauty. Then you begin to notice the detail – how the sunlight is patterning the marble floor or glancing off a gilded chair leg. Although the only people in these pictures are in the portraits that hang on the walls, even the grandest and most formal rooms appear lived in; you feel that their occupants have just left through that half-open door. Whether this is instinctive or calculated is hard to say, probably a combination of the two. But one thing is for sure – to capture the essence of a space, the person taking the portrait needs to be aware of how and why it is the way it is and the significance of the things in it. In this respect, Derry is a master.
The text throughout is both informative and anecdotal. The book begins at a time when domestic architecture ceased to be fortified and we linger in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in some of the great Tudor and Jacobean houses, among them, Knole, Hatfield and Burghley. Other rooms in this section demonstrate how successive owners altered and expanded their mansions in the Palladian and baroque manner. Six houses feature in the chapter on the eighteenth century and all richly deserve to be included in a book titled Great English Interiors, although the authors clearly have a particular fondness for entrance halls and staircases. Indeed, eight pages are devoted to the spectacular staircase at New Wardour Castle in Wiltshire.
For someone who has decorated so many houses and public buildings, David has included very few of his own projects in this book. Although his work at Spencer House, Waddesdon Manor and Chatsworth is shown, the text scarcely mentions his involvement. Rather he extols the talents of other decorators, such as John Fowler, Nancy Lancaster and David Hicks.
Some of the interiors chosen for the book, such as the Edwardian excess of the Royal Automobile Club dining room and the conservatory at Syon Park in Middlesex will surprise readers, as will the bohemian dishevelment of Charleston and the art deco Apollo Victoria Theatre in the chapter on the twentieth century. How, I wonder, did they choose what to include and what to omit. They respond that all the interiors chosen have influenced them in some way, with David adding that ‘a journey into the past can help make sense of the present’. Derry admits to being no fan of minimalism and, in fact, vetoed David’s suggestion of Norman Foster’s Apple store in Regent Street, W1. At this, David laughs and points out that he was persuaded to include photographs of the Ken Shuttleworth-designed pool and party room below a period house in London. This astonishing space appears to be completely empty but took almost 10 years to design and build – as long as the creation of Spencer House in the eighteenth century.
Great English Interiors, by David Mlinaric and Derry Moore, £39.99, Prestel
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Derry Moore1/15Wilton House, Wiltshire
The Double Cube Room; one of the greatest of the great rooms of parade in England. The amount of gilding, the very large Van Dyck portrait of the Pembroke family and the red velvet upholstery are powerful enough to balance the weight of the strong colours of the painted, deep cove and ceiling.
Derry Moore2/15Haddon Hall, Derbyshire
The Long Gallery. A union of natural surfaces; wood, stone and plaster with no colour, creating a dry beauty. Rex Whistler’s painting, a romantic vision of the house in its landscape is on the left above the fireplace.
Derry Moore3/15Chatsworth, Derbyshire
State Apartment enfilade along the South Front, the length of which appears doubled by a panel of mirror glass at its end.
Derry Moore4/15Chatsworth, Derbyshire
The Lower Library, as it was for the 11th Duke of Devonshire whose daily use of this room, and his preference, shows a ‘désordre anglais’.
Derry Moore5/15Chatsworth, Derbyshire
Talman’s 17th century shell and Crace’s 19th century decoration as at present for the 12th Duke of Devonshire.
Derry Moore6/15Knole House, Kent
The Cartoon Gallery at Knole is the third of the long galleries on the first floor. It is named after the six large copies of the Raphael cartoons, once housed here, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Derry Moore7/15Pauline de Rothschild's Albany Set, London
Drawing Room. An English room with French and Russian influence. Note the silk curtains falling and spreading generously onto the floor.
Derry Moore8/15Charleston, East Sussex
The Garden Room, showing “Le Desordre Anglais,” but beautiful and comfortable. Every component of this house would have been chosen and put in place with as much thought, care and love as any of the more disciplined rooms in this book. The over-mantel was painted by Duncan Grant. These photographs were taken when Duncan Grant was still living in Charleston.
Derry Moore9/15Spencer House, London
The Painted Room, north elevation. The seat furniture was made for the room and covered in green silk damask, fragments of which were found beneath the upholstery nailing. The chandelier is contemporary and made for the room.
Derry Moore10/15Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire
The Dining Room. Looking towards the Conservatory with the table laid as for a formal banquet. The room was inspired by Louis XIV’s state apartments at Versailles. The food was as complicated as the decorations.
Derry Moore11/15Houghton Hall, Norfolk
William Kent’s Stone Hall. A fine example of exterior architecture in an interior. The side tables are attributed to William Kent as is the plinth on which stands the bronze sculpture of Laocoon, a copy from the antique by François Giradon.
Derry Moore12/15Ham House, Surrey
The Green Closet. The decoration and contents of this room are original although the green silk damask has been copied recently. It is a rare example of the high culture, in both the fine and decorative arts, of the English court before the Commonwealth.
Derry Moore13/15Syon House, Suffolk
The Long Gallery. Adam’s disciplined design for a library in the Elizabethan shell.
Derry Moore14/15Wardour Castle, London
Staircase Hall, ground floor with rare shaded candle lights on the newel posts.
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