Toward the end of 1969, the same year that David and Cherie launched their Mortdale-based wallpaper studio, their premises was ransacked. The front door of the fibro factory was broken in, walls were smashed down, windows were shattered, paints were spilt and splashed everywhere, screens were broken and splintered and their precious wallpaper had been slashed and destroyed with a sharp blade. When the police arrived and David reported that nothing had been stolen, David alleged they said to him, ‘It looks like you’ve got an enemy.’ As David explained:
There is no doubt in our minds that Florence had sent someone in, that she had instigated the crime. Basically we had become more successful than her and she was worried about us becoming a threat. Even when I spoke to David Bond about it, he alluded to the fact that Florence hadn’t wanted us to succeed. But what could we do? We couldn’t press any charges. All we could do was buy a vicious German Shepherd to protect us and protect the property.
It is hard to establish whether Florence herself was capable of such a heinous act. As Barry Little said, ‘I doubt whether Florence was capable of something so despicable. She could be impulsive, but this could have been anyone.’
Either way, it took David Miles and his wife years to recover financially. And despite the hardship they endured, David did finally succeed. His business, which was later renamed David Miles Handprinted Wallcovering, was given a generous helping hand by Arthur G. Wilson of Wilson’s Fabric and Wallpapers. David said:
Seventy-five per cent of the business was owned by the Wilson family and twenty-five per cent by us. They set us up in Kent Street in the city, brought us two new cars and sent us on a world trip to look at the world’s best design studios, and suddenly Florence was very quiet. There was nothing she could do.
Then in 1976, after an eight-year-long career that included twenty-six design awards and countless front covers on Vogue Living, Belle and Australian House & Garden magazines, James Hardy Industries bought out Wilson’s Fabric and Wallpapers, renamed the David Miles collection as Signature, and David and Cherie branched out on their own to pursue other creative ventures.
It didn’t take long for Australian (Hand Printed) Wallpapers to outgrow the leaky shed and annex at Crows Nest. To handle rapid expansion and a dramatic increase in stock (Florence’s collection now included Kabuki prints, Spanish scrolls, Florentine and Tudor tapestries, Mexican daises, Birds of Paradise and Ottoman and Imperial brocade), the newly named ‘Florence Broadhurst Wallpapers’ moved to a spacious new studio-factory in Royalston Street, Paddington. This studio-factory, which in 1970 was valued at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, was a dramatic improvement on the cramped workshop tucked behind the truck yard. It’s gargantuan proportions hailed the beginning of a new era for Florence Broadhurst.
To coincide with the move to her new premises, Florence launched a new advertising campaign in a variety of magazines including Vogue Living, Australian House & Garden and the Australian Home Journal. The advertisements claimed that Florence’s was ‘the only studio of its kind in the world’. It read:
We print in your choice of colours to any of our 800 designs. Constant exhibition with 12,000 rolls in stock. Featuring the new Mylar Mirror Foil and satin foil papers and patent leather and vinyl look too. We print glass panels, supply furnishing fabrics from Italy and Lamp bases from London. Open Saturdays 10 am–3 pm.
The advertisement also provided contact details for Florence Broadhurst’s Melbourne agent, Opat Decorating Services, and highlighted her prestigious international connections: ‘Now exporting to America, England, Hawaii, Kuwait, Peru, Norway, Paris, Oslo’. The advertisement also featured a photograph of Florence poised and seated at her desk. She exuded an air of confidence, smug self-satisfaction and looked every inch the sophisticated, savvy business woman of the sixties. She wore a crisp, elegant striped blouse and gold jewellery on her fingers and wrists, and her hair was perfectly teased and set. Her theatrical makeup looked like she has just stepped off the stage. For this (and subsequent) campaigns Florence selected a backdrop of her most eye-catching design: Peacocks—a complex pattern of full-scale birds printed on silver foil paper. Anne-Marie Van de Ven, curator for decorative arts and design at The Powerhouse Museum, which acquired one of these peacock designs in its collection in 2002 after a donor found a rare sample in a bin at her local opportunity shop, describes Peacocks as one of Florence’s most mature designs:
This particular print became Florence’s signature design after she posed with it in her business advertisements. In 1976, Jill Wran, wife of newly elected Premier of New South Wales, Neville Wran, decorated the living room of her late Victorian Paddington terrace with Florence’s Peacocks paper in shades of blue on silver. For the Premier’s wife, and other Sydney socialites, it was considered a bold move at the time to use Florence’s papers and that quickly become something of a talking point.
For her new campaign Florence printed the flamboyant peacock pattern on silver foil; the birds were featured in a variety of shades in pink and red. Putting herself in her advertisements was a marketing strategy that harked back to Florence’s days as Bobby Broadhurst and Madame Pellier, when she appeared in the China Press and Town and Country News respectively. But there was something different: the product was now just as flamboyant as the woman.
Florence Broadhurst’s new headquarters was a two-storey, one-thousand-square-metre space that could easily accommodate (just as the advertisement claimed) a jumbled library of hundreds of designs and an elegant showroom that featured over six thousand printed samples. There was ample room for a massive workspace, twenty-five staff members and the clients who dropped in daily. There was a staff room and an upstairs office for Florence. It was also a great place for a party.
THE FINAL
YEARS
1970–1977
‘I lived in my work and I should have lived above it.’
FLORENCE BROADHURST, THE LONDON DIARIES
The official opening of the Florence Broadhurst Wallpaper studio in Paddington was held on 22 November 1969. Sydney’s social set had been anticipating the party for weeks. So had the press. Florence had spent countless hours, days and weeks preparing for the opening of her new headquarters. As well as decorating with potted palms and three-dimensional murals made from tinsel and foil, she had custom-designed reams of wallpaper (that she later gave away at one of her charity events) and issued hand-printed invitations that featured a red swirling print from her collection. Florence also hired a band and a troupe of dancers for entertainment, installed disco balls and laid tables with whole legs of ham, frankfurters, chips and crackers. Wreaths of frangipanis and hibiscus flowers completed the picture.
A newspaper article, aptly titled ‘Palm Trees and Psychedelics’ recorded the hype generated by the event:
There is much buzzing and cooing about town at the moment and general forward looking to next Saturday night, which is the very Hawaiian Luau soiree time at Florence Broadhurst’s wallpaper making studios in Paddington. It’s the most enormous and fascinating place and the high priestess of printed-paper is that flame-haired prima donna of the printing table, the unforgettable Florence. The Black and White Committee of the Royal Blind Society are organising the function. Florence has co-operated to an unbelievable extent, ravaging the Pacific islands for palm trees, printing miles of psychedelic flowery wallpapers and gaying up her vast print rooms for the occasion. She twitters with excitement—as the guests will too on the night to find tables groaning with deliciousness, while Hawaiian music plays and Hawaiian dancers sway (Walford 1969).
To add credibility, glitz and glamour to the event, Florence called on one of her society friends, Lady Hannah Benyon Lloyd-Jones, to officially launch the studio. Lady Hannah was a descendant of the founders of the David Jones department stores in Australia. She was also part of a panel of socialites including newspaper columnist and socialite Nola Dekyvere; ex-international model, television personality and fashion columnist Maggie Tabberer; and high s
ociety milliner Jani Lamotte, otherwise known as ‘the Countess D’Espinay to people who care for titles’ as Daphne Guinness put it so eloquently in the Bulletin in 1968. These panelists were to judge a competition for the best-dressed guest at Florence’s party. The panel’s role was not easy. They had to pick winners for the best hair style, the most glamorous Hawaiian dress and the most exotic Hawaiian shirt from the highly fashionable crowd who had all gone to painstaking lengths to look their best. Guests paraded about the room in kaftans, pant suits, platform shoes and mini-skirts and jostled each other for an opportunity to have their photo taken for the weekend paper.
The party set a precendent that was a tough act to follow but parties at Florence’s new headquarters became a regular event on the Sydney social calendar. Most of the gatherings were impromptu, while others—such as her annual Christmas bash—took an age to organise. To keep everything fun, Florence always chose a theme. They ranged from wild sixties psychedelia, to lavish costume parties where invitees were handed a canvas and a paint pot on their arrival and were told to paint each other’s portraits. At yet another of Florence’s parties guests were invited to bring along photos of themselves as a baby and Florence offered a prize for most identifiable photograph.
Florence always encouraged her guests to dress up and have fun. As one reporter put it in 1971:
The Christmas Spirit abounded in double force at Florence Broadhurst’s exciting studios. It was champagne and carols and a late welcome home for Mrs June Golian who sparkled in her silver pants suit. A happy colorful crowd had difficulty keeping up with the fantastic colors of Florence’s blinds, foil papers and hand-printed curtain materials. But Mrs Anthony Golian and her husband looked marvellous, ‘I’m wearing my Indian bedspread which I’ve just run up…’ and with it she tied a brilliant red gypsy scarf around her flowing blonde hair. A great contrast to her husband’s white suit worn with a blue shirt and paisley tie. Jocelyn Diethelm was in garden printed voile, and Elsa Jacoby in a giant patterned mu-mu with golden hoze nozzles threaded on orange silk around her neck.
Another article in the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1971 read: ‘Designer Florence Broadhurst’s beautifully decorated studio in Paddington was the setting for a cocktail party…Guests really dressed up. Even the men, usually happy to let the ladies take fashion honours went colourful and swinging.’
Florence’s parties were part of her scheme to infiltrate the society set and thus turn her wallpapers into a high-end commodity. Advertisements for her wallpaper in Vogue magazine now read ‘Wallpaper for Glamorous Living’.
Just the year before, in June 1968, Sally and her brother Justin Fitzpatrick had chauffeured their beloved Florence to the opening night of the Australian production of ‘Hair’, which featured the Australian actor Reg Livermore and American singer Marcia Hines. Jim Sharman, the director of the Sydney show, had kindly given Sally tickets for the controversial ‘American tribal rock musical’, which was written by two New York actors, Gerome Ragni and James Rado. It was being staged in a Kings Cross theatre. As Sally explained:
Jim Sharman tutored my sister Kate at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney and he was a good friend. I had a spare ticket and so I thought the show would be right up Flo’s alley, so we decided to make a night of it and have a bit of fun.
In 1968, ‘Hair’ was a musical that challenged almost every established social norm. It contained drug use, free love and foul language. It opposed the Vietnam War and confronted the issue of inter-racial relations. But it was the infamous nude scene, which lasted between forty seconds and four minutes, depending on who was in the audience, that aroused the most public and press interest. As Jim Sharman explained:
You had a very puritanical society being confronted with something that was very loud in expressing the need for sexual liberation and I think that if there was a central issue that confronted people it was that one.
It was exactly that sort of response that Harry M. Miller, the entrepreneurial mastermind and producer of the show, was after. He transformed the controversy into publicity.
On the opening night, Sally, Justin and Florence met in a Kings Cross bar. According to Sally:
There was a real buzz in the air. Everyone who had tickets was dressed up to the nines and was really excited about the event as it had been the focus of so much attention. We started drinking cocktails about two hours before the show was set to kick off, and we bumped into all sorts of people who had tickets, including Leslie Walford who had rocked up in a full-length fur coat. Florence squealed when she saw him; she simply adored Leslie. We had a few drinks with him and a whole bunch of other people who decided that we looked like we were having fun. It felt like we were drinking cocktails for an eternity. By the time the show was set to start, we were extremely tipsy as we tottered across the road to the theatre.
Even though it did not take long for the threesome to find their seats, Florence missed the entire show. As Sally retold the story:
The moment the curtains went up and the lights went on, Florence passed out and she slept soundly throughout the whole performance. It was absolutely hilarious! Her head lolled back in her seat and she snored extremely loudly. People all around us were looking at Florence and trying to control their fits of laughter. Here we were at this supposedly wild, outrageous musical, yet Florence was the one capturing everyone’s attention as she snored her head off. When the show finally finished and the curtain closed, Florence woke with a start and said, ‘What? What? Who? Who? Oh…fabulous, fabulous, just fabulous, darling.’
•
Florence, who was now in her seventies, could not have been happier in her new environment. The abundance of space was a luxury. She allocated the downstairs space to designing, printing, washing screens and storage, and upstairs to showing off her wares. The lower level of the factory was divided into three separate work areas: a large wallpaper manufacturing space, a central workroom used for drawing, designing and photography, and a space toward the rear for cutting and mixing vinyl. The upper level of the factory featured an eighteen-metre-long showroom, which included a spacious, elegant reception (with an impressive curved counter) concealed with silk-screened glass panels, an office and a staffroom with a washroom, toilet and kitchenette that was accessed via a narrow staircase toward the rear of the building. The showroom was a chaotic tangle of printing screens, rolls of paper, bookshelves, desks and partitions. According to Ben Fitzpatrick, who described the studio-factory as a ‘fantastic place to work with an electric atmosphere’, Florence seldom came downstairs into the work environment of the building:
Her zone was upstairs, entertaining the clients. She brought them down from time to time, once or twice a day, just to show off and show them how the wallpaper was produced. Other than that, she was out to one of her charity or social lunches and that was about the only time we ever saw her.
One of the clients who dropped in from time to time was Maggie Tabberer. She recalled:
I remember having a look through the place and there was literally stuff everywhere. I doubt many people could have worked in all the mess and chaos, but Florence obviously had a method to her madness.
One of these methods was to keep rolls of wallpaper in shelves that lined one end of the upstairs showroom. In front of the shelves was a row of easels that featured Florence’s artwork, which by now had progressed to a zany pop-art style. These canvases blocked direct access to the wallpaper, as Sally Fitzpatrick explained:
It was a strategic move on Flo’s part to sell her art. It worked, because not many clients walked out of the studio-factory without one of Flo’s paintings under their arm. And as soon as one of her artworks sold, Florence would simply replace it with another one that she had stashed at home. She seemed to have a constant supply.
Another of Florence’s methods was to keep a hand-printed record of all the orders she received for her wallpapers. On 17 November 1972 she wrote in a red notebook, which is now tattered and worn:
13 galaxy foil
5 daisy chain
7 brocade
5 birds
1 b/w pomegranates
1 texture foil
1 bamboo
3 yasmin
9 big tree
3 roman horses
Florence’s showroom was a magnet for visitors and impromptu staff meetings. It was perpetually filled with clients, friends and acquaintances who either dropped in to rifle through sample books, chat about decorating ideas, catch up on idle gossip or simply indulge in a glass of sherry or two. Sally reckoned that on most days of the week, Florence would start drinking at around one or two in the afternoon:
Courvoisier was her drink of choice. She’d make a cognac cocktail for herself and hand me a gin and tonic. I’d barely had a drink before I started working there, after all I was only seventeen when I started, but Flo soon taught me how to drink and swear.
On other occasions, Sally recalled that Florence would pop open bottles of champagne, invite her attorney and select staff members up to her office and declare that she had arranged to leave shares in Florence Broadhurst Wallpapers to them. As Sally pointed out with a chuckle:
Florence used this little party antic as an incentive for her long-term staff to stay on board. She’d give them a glass of sparkling wine and thrust a piece of paper at them that her attorney had drafted and she had signed. I’m sure there are a few people around who still have their piece of paper and are wondering what to do with it!
A Life By Design Page 12
