De Roskam has stood on the same corner in Nunspeet since 1855, and the date is still lettered across its gable end. It’s the oldest hospitality building in the village.
After two years of restoration it opened again in 2020 as a dorpsherberg - a village inn - with a café and restaurant downstairs and ten rooms above. I photographed it as it opened. An interior is never as complete again as it is on the first day, before anything has been moved.
A newly finished interior photographs like a showroom if you let it. Everything is square, nothing is worn, and the pictures come back looking like a furniture catalogue rather than somewhere to sit.
And this one isn’t new. It’s a building from 1855 that has been brought back, so the age had to carry as clearly as the finish - the bare brick, the tiling, the old floors - or the photographs would have sold a new café instead of an old inn.
Shot on the daylight from the windows and the lamps that were already lit, wide open, so each frame falls away behind whatever it’s about: the taps, a tulip in a jar, a shelf of glasses against bare brick.
Details as much as rooms. A candle on an oak table, the green and copper tiles down the front of the bar, the chalked Welkom board on the tiled floor by the door. Together they say more about the place than a wide shot of an empty dining room ever does.
De Roskam has traded ever since as café, restaurant and hotel - the oldest hospitality building in Nunspeet, back in use.
The photographs hold it on the first day of that, which is the only day it could be held.
