THE QUEEN has agreed to lend a prince’s hidden treasures from out-of-bounds rooms in Buckingham Palace to a museum in Brighton.
Extravagant gilt clocks, 15-foot pagodas, and vases adorned with model dragons from George IV’s collection will go on show at the Royal Pavilion next week.
While the private east wing of Buckingham Palace is being renovated, its exquisite art and furniture has been boxed up and sent to Brighton.
Few have had the chance to witness the contents of these rooms. But on 21 September, the pieces will be on public display – and back in the city for the first time in 170 years.
The Royal Pavilion’s Caroline Sutton said: “This is really exciting. The east wing of Buckingham Palace is open for private events every so often, but on the whole these rooms are closed to the public.
“All the items were originally owned by the Prince Regent who later became King George IV, and displayed in the Pavillion, his seaside home.
“But they were packed up and sent off to Buckingham Palace in 1847 when Queen Victoria decided the Royal Pavilion wasn’t for her.
“There’s a sense she wasn’t a great fan of Brighton as a city, and preferred her residence on the Isle of Wight where there was more privacy. It seems the Pavilion, right in the middle of the city, was too public for her.”
“They’ve remained in Buckingham Palace since she was on the throne. But as of next week, they’ll be back in Brighton for two years.”
Keeper of the Royal Pavilion David Beevers pointed out one of the collection’s highlights: six porcelain pagodas from the royal music room. He said: “It was – and remains - the greatest collection of porcelain pagodas ever assembled in one place. They were brought from China, a journey of some 4,831 miles.”
The Royal Collection loan includes more than 124 unique decorative artefacts. George IV was fascinated by an idealised vision of China, and many of the items belong to an artistic movement called ‘Chinoiserie’.
Caroline said: “George IV was a great lover of art from China. It was a place few from England had visited – so it was unusual for people at the time. Images came back that people thought were incredibly gorgeous. It was like a fantasy land. And of course it was: these ideas were not authentic. It was a stylised idea of what China would be like.”
George IV is best known in Brighton for the Royal Pavilion, which he transformed from a former lodging house into an extravagant palace inspired by a romantic impression of Eastern design.
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