As Lord Montagu has unveiled a new themed room in Palace House, he explains the inspiration behind its transformation from the Master Bedroom into the Circus Room in the former private wing.
I chose the theme as a celebration of my mother’s love of circus imagery, as it appears in so much of her artwork which now hangs in the room.
The original idea came from a very fruitful collaboration with Southampton Solent University, and the project work of student Hannah Edmunds. One of the unexpected outcomes of working with the interior design department was that I gained the confidence to make a lot of the decorative decisions myself, assisted by my project manager Jane Yapp.
I’ve already honoured my father’s legacy in the Motor Room, and now I’m pleased to do the same for my mother. She loved the circus and produced so many wonderful paintings and embroideries drawing on it for inspiration, so this has become my tribute to her.
A tour of the room starts with my mother’s striking self-portrait, in which she presents herself as a ring master in a top hat. This is followed, above the main fireplace, by a painting of ‘Lord’ George Sanger’s Circus which she had visited with her sketchbook, drawing clowns, acrobats and performing horses. Both date from her days at the Byam Shaw art school in the late 1940s. She gave this painting to her friend Caroline Blakiston, who later became a successful stage and screen actress, and it hung in her home until recently when she kindly entrusted it to me.
Taking centre stage is a golden four poster bed with a red and white striped canopy surmounted by a crown at its apex. Under the ‘big top’, the upholstered bedhead is emblazoned with a comic heraldic lion and unicorn holding a conch shell filled with flowers. The design is my work, adapted from an old drawing by my mother.
An intricately embroidered folding screen stands to one side of the bed. On it, she depicted a circus horse, clowns, juggler and yellow caravan, a reference to the gypsy caravan which I adopted whilst at Walhampton School.
A glass-fronted cabinet contains a selection of my mother’s embroidered pieces and my favourite is the hexagonal box which dates from when she enrolled at Southampton Collect of Art to do a City and Guilds course in embroidery Each face of the box features one of her animals: a bantam, donkey, dove, Jacob sheep and two whippets.
See Lord Montagu’s full guided tour of the Circus Room here: https://youtu.be/VlzSPwKNh6c
COMING NEXT: The ‘sideshow’ turret which commemorates Beaulieu Jazz Festivals