@georgezengobi came through with some Curio advanced prefs that make the AppleScript nightmare go away. Existing prefs are :
defaults write com.zengobi.curio "Hyperlink Organizer Item Title Format" -string "Curio project \"%@\" > \"%@\""
defaults write com.zengobi.curio "Hyperlink Figure Title Format" -string "Curio project \"%@\" > \"%@\""
Replacing everything after -string makes it do what I want. I have set it up as:
defaults write com.zengobi.curio "Hyperlink Organizer Item Title Format" -string " %@ > %@"
defaults write com.zengobi.curio "Hyperlink Figure Title Format" -string " %@ > %@"