Thomas Hope

Born: 1769, Amsterdam, Netherlands Died: Feb. 3, 1831, London, England

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Thomas Hope (senior) was an English author and furniture designer who was a major exponent of the Regency style of English decorative arts. He was a member of a rich banking family that had emigrated from Scotland to Holland. During his youth he studied architecture and travelled extensively in Mediterranean countries, the probable source of his passion for classical art and architecture.

He settled in London about 1796 and in 1807 purchased Deepdene, the country house in Surrey that he decorated and furnished in the Regency style. Included in its furnishings were statues executed by John Flaxman, a leading English Neo-classical sculptor, and an Egyptian sofa and chair now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Hope's major work on interior design is Household Furniture and Interior Decoration(1807; facsimile ed., 1937), which influenced the Neo-classical movement. He also wrote The Costumes of the Ancients (1809) and Designs of Modern Costume (1812). His most popular work was the Novel Anastasius; or, Memoirs of a Greek Written at the Close of the Eighteenth Century (1819). He also wrote on philosophy and architecture. Interior design: 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe. In England, the work of Thomas Hope, a wealthy amateur architect, gained much attention through the publication of his Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1807). He enlarged and decorated his London home in Duchess Street, Portland Place, and also his country house, Deepdene, in Dorking, Surrey, with somewhat heavy and pedantic design that was at variance with the general trend of the time but influenced later work.

Deepdene House: Pleasure grounds first laid out by Charles Howard in the early 1650s as the setting for a country house, and owned by Thomas Hope in the early C19. The grounds were developed in the late C18, and early and mid C19 Italian style garden style / design. The term 'landscape architecture' had been invented by G L Meason in 1828 to describe a style of building which could be found in Italian landscape paintings. This was its first use in relation to garden design. The garden at Deepdene had terraces at different levels, balustrades, flights of steps, repeated urns, alcoves and sculpture but no central axis. Hope had written an essay on gardens in 1808 which reveals him as an enthusiastic supporter of the Landscape Style. The Italian garden at Deepdene was the first stage in a transition which ran through the park and over the lake to a distant view of Box Hill.

Thomas Henry Hope, MP, nephew of Henry Hope, owner of the Deepdene Estate, which included Brockham, gave as a gift the land to build Christ Church. The Village Pump is a memorial to him. He also purchased the "Hope" Diamond, once owned by King George 1V.

Henry Thomas Hope

Henry Thomas Hope, the youngest son of Lord Decies, was born in 1808, Educated at Trinity College Cambridge. He became a director of the London and Westminster Joint Stock Bank. He was elected as Tory MP for East Looe in 1830. He opposed parliamentary and factory legislation. Hope was defeated in the 1832 General Election. He returned to the House of Commons in 1833 when he was elected as the MP for Gloucester. He was a close friend of Disraeli, whose book Coningsby is dedicated to Hope and Deepdene.

Henry Thomas Hope died on 4 December 1862.

 

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