Linley Sambourne, cartoonist for Punch, made 18 Stafford Terrace his family home in 1875. It stayed in the family, barely changed, well into the twentieth century. It has been open to the public since 1980, run first by the Victorian Society and now by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
The Aesthetic interiors are a microcosm of so many things we associate with Victorian homes: ornaments everywhere, occasional tables, fancy lampshades, stained glass, William Morris papers, crowded mantlepieces. It is also lined with some of the thousands of photos taken by Sambourne, including many used as models for his cartoons. And there are lots of mirrors...
2 comments:
What splendid names Linley gave his son - Mawdley Herapath Sambourne! Apparently he preferred to be called Roy, otherwise he might have been confused with his sister Maud.
Sir John Some achieved a similar success with the collections and projects in his house between c1790-1810. I wonder if Sambourne ever saw Soane's interiors.
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