Thomas Hope, the son of one of the richest bankers in Europe, has long been known as a pioneer of the Greek Revival in Regency England. Now, thanks to the reassembly of many of the furnishings of his two houses in London and Surrey, as well as the discovery of five volumes of his Grand Tour drawings, it is clearer than ever that he was not only an accomplished draughtsman but an exceptionally versatile designer.

The finest craftsmen were happy to execute Hope's designs in precise detail, even if on occasion Hope was a little tardy in crediting the contribution of those who worked with him, notably the architect Charles Heathcote Tatham.

Hope's drawings were sold with the remainder of his once fabulous collections in 1917 in London. Following up a rumour that they were in America, Professor David Watkin found they had been bought at auction in Chicago in the 1970s by a Greek shipowner and passed to the Benaki Museum in Athens.

In 1787 Hope had embarked on a ten-year grand tour which took him to Italy, France and Germany as well as to Seville, Córdoba, Granada, Portugal and Syria. His drawings of picturesque streets in Athens form an unrivalled record of a vanished world. He travelled on via Mount Athos to the islands of the Aegean and Rhodes, spending 12 months in Constantinople. Here he made a delightful sketch of the Sultan's audience chamber as well as a ground plan of the imperial summer palace, adept enough to have got him arrested as a spy. As well as making line drawings in the manner of Neo-Classical artists like Flaxman, Hope shows an impressive mastery of perspective, notably in a ravishing drawing of the “Quarters of the Sultan Valide in the Summer Seraglio”.

His grand tour drawings include beautifully observed costumed figures, one inscribed “Tartar Messenger, Greek Lady, French Merchants Wife, Ambassador's Janissary [and] Taooishan”. These led to his two remarkable volumes, Costumes of the Ancients and Designs of Modern Costume. From the exhibition Hope appears as much a master of the tout ensemble, or total work of art, as Art Nouveau designers a century later. Indeed he is claimed as the first to use in English the phrase “interior decoration”.

On May 10, 1802, The Times reported a splendid Rout given by Hope “attended by nearly 1,000 persons of the first rank and fashion” at his newly completed house in Duchess Street, Mayfair. Guests paraded through 16 rooms “brilliantly lit with 250 wax candles many weighing 2½ pounds”. Hope lavished money on the jewellery of his wife Louisa Beresford - at Brighton Pavilion in 1823 she is described as “dressed in solid gold, with rare birds flying in different directions out of her head”. Inevitably views on Hope varied sharply in aristocratic circles. Lord Glenbervie described him as “a little ‘ill-looking' man” with an “effeminate face and manner”, but the novelist Mary Russell Mitford noted “a quick glancing delicate wit” and “the air and bearing of a man of the highest distinction”.

The dazzling installation is the work of Line Lund. It opens with a pair of gloriously colourful full-length portraits of Hope in Oriental costume by Beechey, and Louisa by Sir Martin Shee (never exhibited before) brilliantly lit against a dramatic black background. To the right a group of white marble busts stand-out from the darkness, of Hope's brother Henry Philip by Flaxman and other busts commissioned from the great Danish sculptor Thorwaldsen.

One thrill of the exhibition is the number of amazingly precise pairings between engravings in Hope's book Household Furniture (illustrating his Duchess Street House) and virtuoso objects and furniture which often tally in virtually every detail with Hope's drawings. Philip Hewat-Jaboor, joint curator and editor of the sumptuous 500-page catalogue, says “every dealer and auction house has its ‘Hope' chair. The pieces in the exhibition have been selected either because we know they were Hope's own or they are so close in design, technique and quality that they must be from Duchess Street”.

Hope's furniture and metalwork is of rare opulence and splendour. He delighted in the richest materials, porphyry, alabaster, polished granite, solid mahogany, extravagant gilding and highly chased ormolu. Some of his furniture is regal or even imperial in its monumentality. A copper vase looking like lustrous bronze is encrusted with gilt mounts on Bacchic themes. A Hope engraving of a Chinese porcelain vase has been cleverly matched with a photograph of one stolen from a private collection. There is even a ragout dish with the mark of silversmith Paul Storr for 1801 with a ram's head on the end of a handle.

The colours of the Duchess Street interiors have been conjured up from his descriptions. There is a thrilling recreation of Hope's Aurora Room with Flaxman's white marble statue of the goddess reflected diagonally in mirrors framed by red silk curtains with black trimmings evoking dawn dispelling night and an intense sky-blue vault above.

A beautiful model of Hope's country house, The Deepdene, has been made by Thomas Gordon Smith. It reveals a delightful essay in Romantic classicism, mellowed by the incorporation of older elements. For anyone who has marvelled at the interiors of Sir John Soane's Museum, this exhibition is a must.

— Thomas Hope, Regency designer, in Room 38 at the V&A until June 22 £5.75. http://www.vam.ac.uk/