The interior designer experienced a premiere. Rupert Murdoch, however, is a repeat offender. "Rosehearty" is not the first ketch from Perini Navi that he has sailed. For six years, he sailed the 48-metre "Morning Glory", built in 1993. In 1999, he sold her to Silvio Berlusconi for 4.5 million pounds sterling.
The "Rosehearty" owner is not a fair-weather sailor. Murdoch gained experience of the occasional heavy sea in a number of Sydney-Hobart regattas. In 1964, he steered his 59-foot wooden ketch "Ilina" to second place in this tough race.
He was also a sponsor of the Volvo Ocean Race, and his fierce business rivals also included a sailor, namely Ted Turner, a successful America's Cup defender. The links to the sea are therefore close, as the name of the new ketch testifies. Murdoch, a US citizen and Australian by birth, chose "Rosehearty" after his family's roots in Scotland. His grandfather came from the small fishing town of Rosehearty north of Aberdeen, which today has a population of over a thousand. As a child, his grandfather emigrated to Australia with his parents.
However, Murdoch only occasionally looks to the past. He recently proved this by helping to inflate the recent dotcom bubble by buying an Internet community. He wants to invest another two billion dollars in the Internet. Murdoch predicted the demise of the old media elite. An exciting scenario.
The contemporary interior of his new Perini Navi ketch "Rosehearty" obviously suits the man in his mid-seventies. The newly minted internet evangelist apparently, but only apparently, relaxes in these surroundings.
Christian Liaigre was commissioned with the interior design of the 56-metre-long aluminium structure. The French designer is represented with showrooms in metropolises between Chicago and Bangkok and made a name for himself in the 1990s by furnishing houses and hotels. Fashion artists such as Calvin Klein, Karl Lagerfeld and Kenzo have already ordered an ambience from him, as has the media man Rupert Murdoch himself.
