A Life By Design

by Siobhan O'Brien

  Even though Florence had her hands full designing, printing and overseeing staff and students, she got a kick out of dealing directly with her clients and her wallpapers were not for sale on the wholesale market. As Florence put it in the Australian on 16 October 1968, ‘I like dealing with people in person, and I want to keep the business to a size where this will always be possible.’

  It was a savvy approach that meant her designs soon evolved into what her son Robert referred to as a ‘status symbol’. Her clients felt that not only were they purchasing a unique product, but they were being well looked after. Though Florence Broadhurst wallpaper was an expensive interior design solution in the sixties, her clients were happy to pay. ‘If [Florence’s] papers seem expensive, varying from $8 to $30 a roll, it’s because she claims to do by hand what can’t be done by the most complex machinery.’

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  Success, however, made a failure of the Lloyd Lewis marriage. While Florence was busy building her latest business, Leonard, who once described his romance with Florence as a ‘young good looking man meeting a film star’ was having an affair with a younger woman. Leonard’s new mistress, Janice Marie Boulton, known by her nickname ‘Cherry’, was everything that Florence was not. While Florence was self-centred, strident and demanding, Cherry was selfless, gentle and easy-going. Leonard’s divorce from Florence, after twenty-six years of marriage, was swift and he married ‘Cherry’ in Southport, Queensland, in 1961. Florence was devastated but, according to Leonard, forgiving. ‘Florence treated my new wife like a daughter-in-law with love and affection…There was some bitterness when our marriage broke up, Florence was able to overcome it’ (Australian Woman’s Weekly, 16 November 1977). Nerida Greenwood, a former employee, gave a different version of events: ‘Florence and her husband didn’t really like each other very much. They were always dobbing each other in to the taxation office.’ Sally Fitzpatrick claimed that Florence could not stand Leonard: ‘Whenever he came near her, she’d scream and shout at him. She told me she’d set him up in two or three businesses and he’d run them all into the ground, including the trucking business. She said everything that he touched turned to rot.’

  After his second marriage, Leonard left his home, his son, his business affairs and his life in Sydney and shifted with Cherry to Western Australia where they became involved in the art world. There they had two children, a daughter Roshana and a son David. To this day, Cherry and Roshana are still involved with art. In 1999, Roshana set up the Lister Calder Gallery located in Subiaco, Perth. The gallery exhibits modern Australian art by artists such as Arthur Boyd, Norman Lindsay, Albert Tucker, Brett Whiteley and Fred Williams.

  After her divorce from Leonard, Florence kept her head high. Janet Mosely, whose portrait Florence painted in 1961, remembered this period vividly. ‘Although Florence was an extremely glamorous woman in her prime and her husband dumped her for a younger woman, she wasn’t shamed like most women in that era. She wanted to keep herself where she felt she belonged—on a pedestal.’

  Janet and Florence met at a charity event in Sydney’s east when Janet was a twenty-seven-year-old waitress, and Florence, who was in her sixties, was a highbrow guest. As the guests filed out at the end of the event, Florence approached Janet. ‘She stuck out her gloved hand and announced abruptly,“I would like to paint you.” We swapped details and I received a telephone call a week later. It was Florence. All she said was,“I need you tonight”,’ explained Janet. ‘I was bemused by her abrupt manner, but I was extremely naïve and felt honoured that this grand dame of high society chose me as her subject.’

  For the next eighteen months Janet spent one evening a week at Florence’s penthouse apartment which she described as ‘like fairyland, the height of glamour’. The arrangement was always the same: in the living room an easel and a chair faced each other in readiness for the painting session; the women didn’t talk, except for idle chit chat, and when Janet arrived she headed straight for the bathroom, where she changed out of her work clothes into the scarlet jumper that featured in her portrait. In the bathroom, she was puzzled to see that the bathtub was filled to capacity with wreaths of flowers still in their wrappers. ‘I’m not talking about a few wreaths, I’m talking about an entire bathtub literally overflowing with them and it wasn’t just on the odd occasion, but every single week. All I could think of was that Florence had a lot of admirers,’ she exclaimed. When Janet sat in the chair that faced the easel, there was no mention of the flowers in the bathtub or enquiries about how Janet had spent her week. As Janet explained:

  She wasn’t personable. She didn’t connect with people. She kept everything close to her chest and didn’t care about what the other person thought, felt or believed. Florence made people around her feel nervous and intimidated. Her eye contact was extremely intense and whenever she was around there was tension in the air. It was as if she was preoccupied or thinking deeply all the time.

  Janet found the stony silence awkward while Florence painted. But one evening in 1961 was special. The revered Australian artist Joshua Smith caught the lift to Florence’s apartment to watch Florence paint. It was 1944 when Smith hit the headlines after William Dobell painted a portrait of him for the Archibald portrait prize. When the painting won, the portrait was at the centre of intense opposition between the ancients and moderns in the New South Wales art world, when it was argued that the painting did not qualify as a portrait because it was in fact a caricature. The lengthy court case obtained wide publicity and evoked strong public opinion, and it affected Joshua’s health and reputation.

  Joshua, a talented artist in his own right, later painted a portrait of Florence sitting at her easel, which he entered into the Archibald Prize. On this evening Joshua perched beside Florence while she painted Janet. ‘They just mumbled to each other all evening and every now and then he’d make a comment on her brushstroke,’ claimed Janet. After Florence died, Janet tried to track down her youthful portrait and was dismayed to discover that Robert had auctioned it off along with many of his mother’s other portrait paintings. Janet’s portrait was one in a series that Florence was working on when she first met Janet. The other paintings were of people Florence met on the street such as a hairdresser, a deli owner, a florist, and a butcher. When the paintings were finished, Florence organised a party for her subjects in her apartment. According to Janet they all sat cross-legged on the floor around a bowl of Smiths Crisps and played marbles. ‘It was boring, but I suppose Florence thought it was a novel idea. I went there expecting to meet someone famous or fabulous. I guess the other guests did too, but in the end we were just a bunch of locals that she had painted.’

  Florence’s friendship with Joshua Smith was an enduring one. There are claims that he accompanied Florence on some of her painting expeditions to Queensland in the fifties. Ted Bettiens thinks he met Joshua in Mount Perry. ‘All that he and Florence wanted to talk about was the colour of the landscape and the colour of the soil and the sky,’ he said. Sally Fitzpatrick recalled meeting Joshua in Florence’s apartment in the late sixties:

  I walked in and there was Florence with her easel set up and sitting beside her with his easel set up was Joshua Smith. The two of them were just sitting there in the dark, painting and knocking back cocktails. I didn’t realise who it was at the time, but when she told me I was literally thunderstruck. That’s when I realised that Florence’s world wasn’t just about wallpaper; she was a true artist.

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  With Leonard’s departure and the subsequent changes at L. Lewis and Son, Robert moved back to the Sydney suburb of Avalon and took over as company secretary. The new arrangement suited Robert. He saw no future in wallpaper. As Florence remarked in the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1965, ‘My son Robert is running the trucking company now. I once asked him if he liked the wallpaper firm, and he said if it were his he’d put a match to it.’ Florence was now free to channel all of her energy into Australian (Hand Printed) Wallpapers Pty Ltd. By the mid-sixties, th
e business was going global. Florence had established a loyal and influential clientele, exporting to London, New York, Paris, Kuwait, Madrid and Oslo. In fact, business was so brisk, Florence even considered opening an office in Beirut—‘the minute they stop fighting’, she said (Sydney Morning Herald, 1977). Her commissions included designs for Qantas, a chain of hotels in Saudi Arabia and wallpaper for Estee Lauder cosmetics. Her designs decorated the homes of the Benz family in Germany, and the living rooms of Australian socialites including Jill Wran and Lady Sonia McMahon. Her wallpaper even made an appearance on the walls of Government House in Auckland and the Adelphi Hotel in Perth.

  But Florence still wasn’t satisfied. Her constant quest for improved designs led to the invention of new and innovative processes in colour, texture and material durability. She experimented in printing with finely ground metals, importing bronze, copper, gold and silver papers from Norway and Sweden when she was unable to find what she wanted in Australia. Metallic colour for use in Australian interior design was unheard of at the time, but before long it was the latest trend. Florence combined these shimmering metallics with fluorescent colours that included lime green, bright yellow, hot pink and sapphire blue.

  As kitchens were the focal point for wallpaper at the time, the next step for Florence was to develop washable wallpaper. According to Florence her idea was to create ‘a paper from which marks could just be wiped without any use of abrasive or scrubbing’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 1963). It is possible that Florence got this idea from an early nineteenth century innovation called sanitary wallpapers. These early papers dominated the late-Victorian middle-class market at a time when cleanliness was considered paramount in the home. They were produced from a combination of turpentine and resin and, like Florence’s innovation, could also be wiped down. Working closely with an industrial chemist, it took Florence a year to develop a vinyl coat that could be applied without affecting the radiance of her colours. As she said in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1963, ‘Greens darkened, gold became brittle and red moved out. So I had to find a special formula to meet each of these problems.’ Her ingenious vinyl-coat method, which created the opportunity for the hand silkscreen method to be transferred onto other materials such as wood, glass, metal, fabric, blinds and carpets, is still being used around the world today.

  On one occasion Florence demonstrated the effectiveness of her method to an unsuspecting Sydney Morning Herald journalist who visited her at her Potts Point home in 1963. She picked up ‘a sample piece of wallpaper with a lovely matt surface and smeared it with butter. Then [Florence] took a dry tissue and wiped it off—without leaving a mark.’ Florence announced, ‘At the factory I use axle-grease to demonstrate, but I haven’t got any here.’

  Florence also made sure that she was up-to-date with interior design trends from overseas. She imported Mylar, a washable man-made product with a mirror surface, from America. Then she matched curtains, pelmets and blinds to her wallpaper, a trend that was popular in Britain. Florence Broadhurst copyists came thick and fast.

  Architectural draughtsman David Miles met Florence in 1965 when he was twenty years old. At the time, David was working for high society interior designer Merle du Boulay who, along with a host of other Australian designers, including Leslie Walford, Marion Hall Best, Thomas Harding, Mary White, Malcolm Forbes, Margaret Wardell and Barbara Campbell, signed the document of incorporation for the Society of Interior Designers of Australia in 1964. The vision of these designers was to reinvigorate the organisation, which was established in 1951, to ameliorate and promote the art of interior design. By the late sixties, Florence had become a member of the organisation, along with her contemporaries stylist and author Babette Hayes and Barry Little, of Barry Little Interiors (who was appointed the president at this time).

  Merle du Boulay’s office was located in Gurner Street, Paddington. David commenced work with Merle in 1963 after he responded to a newspaper advertisement for an employee with drawing skills. It was his lucky break:

  I worked for Merle for three years. She was an amazing, high profile designer who had very influential, wealthy clientele. She had a great eye for colour, a great sense of style, she could throw money around and she was well connected socially. In a way, she was another Florence Broadhurst.

  While in her employ, David designed murals for private clients that included the American Club on Macquarie Street and the Menzies Hotel on Carrington Street. He also designed tables that had a Corinthian column as the base and a surface encrusted with mosaic tiles. According to David, Merle announced ‘out of the blue’ that she needed to get some wallpaper done and she sent him to Australian (Hand Printed) Wallpapers in Crows Nest:

  So I drove over in my old beat-up Volkswagen and there was Florence Broadhurst. I had no idea what to expect and she completely and utterly swept me off my feet. She spoke at a million miles an hour and said to me, ‘Tell me, what do you do with Merle?’ Over the next few months, we developed a rapport and eventually she said to me, ‘You should be working for me, not Merle.’ She worried me in a way, she seemed so ruthless, so driven. She was someone that I immediately felt that I didn’t trust one hundred per cent. I’m not even sure she designed her own wallpapers, I think most of them were rip-offs.

  Sally Fitzpatrick agreed that her old boss copied a lot of her designs:

  When I worked for her, Flo knocked off everything she could get her hands on. I used to call her the queen of the knock-off. She called it improvising. Most of the time, she didn’t design anything if she could get away with it. Her favourite wallpaper designers were Albert Van Luit and William Morris. She simply adored them. We’d go through their sample books and she’d say, ‘Fabulous, fabulous, let’s do that, darling. I love it’. Then I’d set to work, draw it up and amend it slightly. Of course there was no doubt she did do some originals and she was a very clever artist and designer, but by the time I came on board in 1967, Florence Broadhurst originals were far and few between.

  Leslie Walford put it another way:

  Florence Broadhurst should be seen as a resource, someone who collected and archived designs; she wasn’t really an innovator, just an extremely good business woman who tapped into a niche market. She could produce colours and designs for decorators at breakneck speed. She could produce what you wanted, while you waited.

  Barry Little was a little more lenient on his old friend:

  Florence did have her detractors, there was no doubt about that. But she was a brilliant woman, whatever she touched turned to gold. When I travelled to America, she would ask me to bring back wallpaper samples for her, which I did. Sure, she used some of the ideas, but she made sure she changed them. Everyone derives their inspiration from somewhere, don’t they? What people sometimes forget is that there were other things that Florence did that were totally unique, such as the pearlised effect that she applied to the surface of her prints. I never saw this done anywhere else.

  A few months after David Miles met Florence in 1963, he bumped into her at a musical at The Seymour Centre on City Road in Sydney. David recalled that Florence was seated behind he and his wife Cherie during the performance and after it was finished Florence tapped him on the shoulder and invited them back to her Macleay Street apartment for a nightcap.

  When we arrived at her apartment there was something that made me feel sorry for her. Here she was in this glamorous apartment, with glamorous clothes, but she was so numb, vague and closed. Deep down I think she was a sad person. She was outlandish, quite nice, but she also seemed like a desperately lonely and pathetic person.

  It would take another three years of hard work with Merle du Boulay before David decided to branch out and launch a business of his own in 1966. During the formative stages of his new venture he juggled a variety of jobs that included drawing architectural plans at night, building mosaic tables by day and some design work on the side for Florence. In the late sixties, Florence commissioned David Miles to create a dramatic floor-to-ceiling mural that
featured a row of Paddington terrace houses. The design spanned three-and-a-half metres and was printed onto wallpaper panels for The Top of the Cross restaurant in Kings Cross. David and Florence agreed on a price for the commission, but when he showed her the completed mural, she said she wasn’t happy. She paid half the agreed fee but still installed it. ‘What could I do? She was an extremely difficult person’, said David.

  In 1969, David and his photographer wife Cherie undertook a road trip around Australia. While he was travelling he couldn’t shake his annoyance with the mural deal. He felt that he had been wronged. So, when he returned to Sydney, David Miles decided to set up in opposition to Florence Broadhurst. To learn the ropes, he did a short stint with a silkscreen printing business in Kogarah; and then David and Cherie developed a range of wallpapers. The name of the company was David Miles Handprints. According to David Miles, Florence’s head printer, David Bond, was extremely helpful:

  He told me where to buy paper, supplies, paints, you name it. We’d chat and he’d say, ‘This is where you get this, this is where you get that’. He probably thought that if I became successful, maybe he could come across and work for me.

  It was not long before David Miles Handprints boasted twenty-five designs and thirteen employees.