I suppose the name most associated with Regency style is Thomas Hope, whose time, taste, and money allowed him to decorate his Marylebone house, his country seat of the Deepdene, and publish the results in the widely distributed Household Furniture and Interior Decoration published in 1807. A flagrant self-promoter, upon completion of his decorative scheme for Duchess Street, Hope sent tickets of admission to members of the Royal Academy, many of whom not surprisingly found this an act of hubris. Many, though, took advantage, including Sir John Soane- and were impressed with the result. Besides influence and an exercise in ego, I’m not aware that Hope’s efforts did him any material good. But, then, Hope made his money the old fashioned way- he inherited it. A bit of an irony- with Hope’s designs considered the quintessence of English Regency period fashion, Hope himself was an auslander, the scion of a Dutch banking family who fled Holland fearful of the predations of Napoleon. Although Hope was sometimes thought a parvenu and nouveau riche, but as has often been said, it is the riche that counts, and Hope’s efforts were generally well considered in his day.
And to this very day, too- with the designs of Thomas Hope arguably forming the basis of what most people consider as Regency style. Certainly Hope’s own extended Grand Tour through not just Italy but the sites of Greek antiquity in the eastern Mediterranean contributed a tremendous degree of archaeological accuracy. Not only were the forms of antiquity copied, but the popular Regency paint schemes executed in black and red and yellow ocher took their lead from the Attic pottery Hope studied.
Hope knew his work would inevitably spawn imitators, and it is thought Household Furniture…was in fact published to ensure that those who cribbed from Hope actually got it right. And imitation quickly followed, with George Smith’s Collection of Designs for Household Furniture published in 1808, only a year after Hope.
While Smith’s designs clearly owe a significant debt to Hope, what had already become standard neo-classical motifs- bellflower swags and fruit and flower garlands- were given a Regency twist when executed in a Regency period palette. The London furniture maker John Gee prominently used an ‘antique’ palette to contribute a Hope-inspired classicism to essentially English forms, like the chairback settee.
Things do go in and out of fashion and I suppose the fact that, for much of the last century, Brighton was a bargain day out for Londoners occludes its glory days. It’s still pleasantly seedy, as are most seaside resorts, but no where else is the Brighton Pavilion.
With an increase in funds with accession to the Regency, the now Prince Regent let imagination run wild. The forest of onion domes and minarets executed by John Nash, while lavish in their number were a bit less extreme in cost, built as they were of stucco over a wooden and iron frame. The vaguely Mughal exterior gives way to a riot of Chinoiserie, with the long gallery with walls and trim painted an astonishing pink, with a bamboo motif overlay in a blue-green. 
The bamboo motif carries on with chairs and tables made of split bamboo. Even the staircase that leads to the upper floor carries on the bamboo motif, but in cast iron, faux painted to match the yellow color and ribbing of the furniture.
The effect of all of this is less of anything oriental than of exotic excess. Moreover, the design of the pavilion was even in its day not in the most fashionable taste, which tended more toward studied antiquarianism in the manner of Thomas Hope, who’s Household Furniture and Interior Decoration was published in 1807. It’s interesting to note that the interiors at the Royal Pavilion were realized by Crace and Company, whose more sober commissions included the interiors of Sir John Soane’s London residence. And, of course, with the accession of Victoria, sobriety became the order of the day. The Brighton Pavilion was sold by her to help pay for her decidedly more practical and domestic seaside home, Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.
The contrast with Windsor had political implications also, as the aesthetic came to represent the Whig modernity of the Prince’s allies, contrasted with George III’s Tory conservatism. Ironically, the Prince had to moderate his interest in all things French to avoid any political association with the excesses of the French Revolution. Although frequently at odds, the Prince of Wales and George III found common cause in support of the ancien regime.
