The Royal Pavilion at Brighton: consultant Anne Buky discusses licensing the lush and the lavish

Anne Buky, welcome! Let’s start in the obvious place: who are you? And what have you got to do with The Royal Pavilion at Brighton?
Along with Gwyneth Campling, I’m a licensing consultant. I’ve worked in the museum and heritage industry for quite a long time. I actually started my career in the direct-marketing industry, working for companies like The Franklin Mint, Bradford Exchange, Compton Woodhouse… They were promoting collectibles: I used to go to museums and heritage organisations asking, at that time, for their sponsorship. After a while, I thought: museums could do this for themselves… So I’m a poacher turned gamekeeper!

Ha! Great phrase… I absolutely get it from that!
Right! And now, of course, what we used to call sponsorship is called brand licensing. But I’m still working in the museum and heritage industry space and – on and off – have worked as a consultant for most of the major museums… Helping them sell their wonderful brands and collections. And in relation to our call today, I’ve been working with The Royal Pavilion for just over a year.

Fantastic. And for those not in the know, what is the The Royal Pavilion? What’s its history?
Built on the south coast of England, The Royal Pavilion was King George IV’s party palace by the sea. George IV was, as you may know, the son of King George III – the king that famously had mental-health problems, to the extent that he was unable to reign. So in 1811, George was Prince of Wales – but he became Prince Regent.

A regent being a prince or princess that rules when a monarch is absent or – as here – incapable…
Exactly. But George IV was an extraordinary character; very vivacious; party loving… A hugely creative person. He started creating The Pavilion in the late 18th century – it was built between 1787 and 1823. Originally, it was a simple house, but George transformed it into an extravagant example of Regency grandeur with the visual style of India and China. Inside, the décor is in the style of Chinoiserie. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that term, Chinoiserie… It’s quite difficult to get your tongue around!

Never mind my tongue, I’m worried about my spellcheck! Chinoiserie… What does that actually mean? Chinese and Indian inspired, isn’t it?
Yes, reflecting those patterns, those motifs. Which means that inside The Pavilion is completely extraordinary! Very strong colours; resplendent with lavish, bold designs and inspired by Indian and Chinese art… That’s true to the extent that many people – when they look at the ornate domes and architecture – think it might be an enormous Indian restaurant.

It does have the most striking architecture – quite incongruent with its surroundings…
And the inside is amazing! You go into a quite low anteroom, then emerge in the most extraordinary banqueting hall with interiors that words fail to describe. I’ll send images showing where George held the most hedonistic parties! Banquets, dances, card parties… Entertainment of every kind for fashionable society.

Fascinating. And what then, Anne, is The Royal Pavilion looking to license?
For a start, many of the interior designs have the most extraordinary patterns The wallpapers, for example… Wonderful gold decorations and scrolls, key designs… The carpets also have amazing decorations! We want to use these stunning patterns on a wide range of products: from stationery and textiles to prints and homewares. One wonderful thing about these stunning designs is that they can be adapted – in terms of repurposing… Taking the essence of them but adapting them if the need arises because they’re all owned by The Royal Pavilion.

No third parties – so very flexible. And do we know the names of the original artists?
Some of them – but at one point, I believe George IV had as many as 40 different painters at work in one room! He also used the cutting-edge technology and craftsmanship of the time to create his palace which was, of course, incredibly expensive. In fact, he bankrupted himself – and almost the nation – creating this amazing palace.

Is this why you’ve got to claw it all back in licensing, Anne?
Ha! No, no, no! In fact, The Pavilion has changed hands a couple of times since George IV owned it. He died in 1830, having lived in poor health for some time. By the time he died, he was immensely overweight and very ill from the complications that caused. His brother, who became William IV, used it for a period. Following that, Queen Victoria briefly owned it. She didn’t like the location though because, as you know, it’s right in the middle of the town – she felt people could peer in and look at her.

I can see that – it’s a bit goldfish bowly… Bowly! I’m making up words! And Queen Victoria sold it?
She sold it to the town of Brighton – but she removed a lot of the contents first; she took them back to Buckingham Palace. Over the subsequent years, some of things in the Royal Collection have been returned. During the First World War, it was used as a hospital for Indian soldiers. Subsequently, it was used for functions and not treasured as well as it might have been. About four years ago, though, The Royal Pavilion became a self-governing trust. So it’s now partially funded by the council, but able to fundraise and do commercially active things like licensing.

And on that, let me ask you this: what kind of licensing partner do you need?
We’re looking for people who have a sustainable product. We’re looking for companies that have great visibility in terms of promoting our wonderful designs… And people that can work with us to bring the essence of The Pavilion to the wider world. I’ll add that they’re somewhat at the higher end of licensees in homewares and prestigious companies, wallpapers, stationers…

And what’s next for the Pavilion, Anne?
One of the things we’ve been working on for the last year is gathering more of these incredible assets… Photographing the wonderful interiors so that they’re deliverable to the best-possible standard. That might sound odd, but you have to consider that – for example – some of our exquisite designs are way up high on the ceiling!

Oh, but of course! You can’t just have a photographer lie down on their back with a long lens!
Exactly! There has to be scaffolding and all that kind of thing. But there’s a program of continuous development there, alongside a continuous programme of restoration… Because, as with any historical building, it needs a good deal of upkeep. Also, it’s assailed by that salty coastal air the whole time. But that offers an advantage because we often have scaffold in and, while they’re repairing, we can capture hard-to-reach imagery! As a result, we’re looking at delivering more images and more material for licensees.

Excellent! And am I right in saying that The Royal Pavilion is one of a group of museums?
Yes. There are five museums in the Brighton and Hove Museums group, which all feed into each other to a certain extent. We’re speaking about The Royal Pavilion today – The Royal Pavilion and Gardens – but there’s also Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, Preston Manor and Gardens, Booth Museum of Natural History and Hove Museum of Creativity.

Gosh, there’s a Museum of Creativity in Hove?! I had no idea. Shame on me!
Next time I’m down that way, I’ll check it out. To wrap things up, Anne, my final question is this… What’s the one thing I could’ve asked you about today, but didn’t?
Hmmm… You could’ve asked how BLE went for us.

That’s an excellent question – it was The Pavilion’s first BLE, was it not?
Yes – and it went really well. We had people in meetings across the aisle that came straight to our stand to say what fantastic designs we had. So that was really great… We had a lot of interest and we’re following up on all that now. Hopefully, this time next year we’ll have a lot of new licenses and we’ll be able to return to you with some great success stories.

Fantastic! Thank you, Anne. I hope that’s true – please come back and keep us posted!