THE lost world of opulence and extravagance is revealed in a new exhibition, reports Peter Elson
by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post
THE words cosy - or, for that matter, comfortable - were not in the lexicon of Liverpool's merchant princes when it came to creating palatial homes fit for them to be seen residing in.
The words they wanted to describe their domestic realms were de luxe, grandiose, plush, sumptuous, dramatic, extensive and, of course, expensive.
To which we could also add: overblown, pompous, self-important, hedonistic, profligate, pointless and vulgar.
Nothing like it had been seen before - or since.
But that would hardly bother these men who daily traded in their business empires which stretched across the world from their offices around Castle Street, powering Britain's industrial revolutions and fuelling its stupendous wealth.
After all, they were imperial Britain's most affluent nouveau riche, although many came from overseas: French, Germans and Greeks. Conspicuous consumption was part of the territory as Britannia ruled more and more of the waves. Style-wise, less wasn't more. More and yet more was more.
Although their commercial achievements and status looked so solid, the heady heyday of these plutocrats and patriarchs living at such a dizzy eschelon lasted a relatively short time.
World War I's winds of change sent shivers through Liverpool's merchant elite, and it was downhill from there.
Providing a glimpse into this fascinating, lost world, is the Merchant Palaces exhibition, organised by National Museums Liverpool, now on show at Lady Lever Gallery.
The houses, their interiors and giant conservatories are shown in a superb set of photographs, many unseen for decades, taken between 1888 and 1916, by Britain's leading architectural photographer, Bedford Lemere.
