Curzon Street Baroque
Its name was coined by the English cartoonist and author Osbert Lancaster, as Curzon Street in Mayfair was an address popular with London high society.
[2] This was, according to author Jane Stevenson, because "a statistically implausible number of important men and women, and their decorators in the interwar arts, were gay".
It was pioneered in Britain, most notably, by Sir John Vanbrugh with his three principal projects Blenheim Palace, Castle Howard, and Seaton Delaval.
However, the architect, Clough Williams-Ellis, would adopt a colourful Northern Italianate pastiche Baroque theme as the style for the design of Portmeirion.
[12] According to Osbert Lancaster, key constituents and elements of Curzon Street Baroque included Venetian hand-painted furniture and art in the style of Canaletto (often of doubtful provenance).
[13] An ecclesiastical air could also be employed, which could be achieved by twisted Baroque candlesticks, old leather bound hymn books hollowed out to become cigarette boxes, and ancient gilt prie-dieux transformed into cabinets for the disguising of gramophones.
[13] Lancaster also stated that French furniture, much of it gilt and with cabriole legs, which was such a large part of 17th-, 18th-, and early 20th-century Baroque furnishings, was no longer considered fashionable.
When the wealthy merchant banker Vivian Smith, 1st Baron Bicester, acquired Tusmore Park, Oxfordshire, in 1929, he immediately brought in the architects Imrie and Angell to sweep away the heavy Jacobean woodwork and introduce a Baroque interior, which culminated in the staircase hall, with a double staircase, heavy with wrought iron, segmented arches, and a gilded chandelier hanging from a ceiling embellished with a gilded starburst.
"[21][n 2] Lancaster, no doubt, intended his description of the new Baroque interiors as 'Curzon Street' to be a gentle criticism, suggesting they were lightweight compared to the original form.
He disparaged and renamed other forms of contemporary architecture too, with titles such as Bankers' Georgian, Stockbroker Tudor, Aldwych Farcical and By-pass Variegated.
[n 4] Indeed, it was Osbert Sitwell's famed dining room at his London house which was the apotheosis of the style, with green walls, shell chairs from an 18th-century grotto, verde-antique marble resting on gilded supports with large Baroque masks and a mirror which Sitwell himself, seemingly unaware of the homoerotic undertones, described as "with playful black cupids, naked except for neat gold pants.
"[26] Whatever the merits of his decor, Sitwell clearly thought his own interior Baroque to be of a higher form than used elsewhere, as in his 1936 poem "Rat Week", in verse three, he ridiculed the female society decorators deploying the soft palettes of the style, Sybil Colefax and Elsie de Wolfe (also known by her married name, Lady Mendl); both were friends of the abdicated British monarch Edward VIII.
Besides Osbert Sitwell, another friend of royalty, the celebrated interior designer Elsie de Wolfe (known in Britain as Lady Mendl) had lesbian affairs.
Whatever the truth of the term, no designer or patron of "Buggers' Baroque" was ever likely to challenge the accusation as discretion was the key to survival: when William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp, known in society circles to be homosexual, was publicly exposed as a homosexual by his brother-in-law the Duke of Westminster in 1931, he had no option but to flee the country to avoid arrest, spending the remainder of his life in exile.
[32] The rise of the style could also be attributed to the huge increase and popularity in interior decorators: in 1912, the London Post Office Directory listed only four, but by 1920, this number had risen to 122, over 60 of them in Mayfair, close to Curzon Street.
"[35][36] Curzon Street Baroque was a brief fashion employed by the wealthy, remembered today only because of its survival in a few of their homes, such as Coleton Fishacre, Eltham Palace, and Upton House, Warwickshire.
