WOMEN AND MODERNITY IN INTERIOR DESIGN: A LEGACY OF DESIGN IN SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA FROM THE 1920s TO THE 1960s
Carol A. Morrow
A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT IN FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
© Carol A. Morrow 2005 ABSTRACT
This thesis argues that women were seminal to the development of interior design as a discipline and profession in Sydney, Australia. Covering the period from the 1920s to the 1960s, this study identifies Thea Proctor, Nora McDougall, Margaret Lord, Phyllis Shillito and Mary White as foundational leaders who progressively advanced interior design in Sydney through individual and collective understandings of design. Focussing on their contributions to this development, this study explains complex interrelationships between women and modernity in interior design.
This emergence of the discipline and profession in Sydney situates the initiatives of these five women at a transitional phase of the field’s global development when ‘interior decoration’ is challenged by modern attitudes and artistic theories of ‘design’. Working as individuals, Proctor and her successors advance the profession—previously characterised as a ‘natural’ pursuit for women of ‘taste’ and ‘style’—by their artistic, rational and practical approaches to interior design. At a time when no distinct discipline exists in Sydney, the women offer instruction and forge new directions by reformulating previous overseas traditions: incorporating a wide-range of aesthetic and theoretical conceptions of design, demonstrating common and different approaches to practice, and integrating changes in requisite knowledge and skills in response to their times. The women’s programs are conventional and progressive, common and diverse, universal and particular in content and meaning. Working within a variety of settings, the women importantly establish professional jurisdiction situating interior design in a modernist context. Significantly, their contributions challenge past readings that have diminished the early women of interior design, and at the same time, embody all the conflicts, ruptures, paradoxes and contradictions that are cental to modernity.
This research redresses the lack of institutional history of interior design in Sydney and links theories of modernism and modernity to issues of gender and profession to explain the women’s significant contributions to interior design at a critical juncture of the field’s development. As such, their stories and legacy of design in Sydney contribute to a wider picture of women and modernity in interior design.
ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis has taken six years to complete, weathering and benefiting from a move back to my American homeland after residing in Sydney for over twenty years. Therefore, I would like to acknowledge and thank family, friends and colleagues on both continents as well as the Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Sydney, who have given me continued support and encouragement. As principal supervisor during this time, Associate Professor Robert Freestone has provided continual guidance, scholarly advice and focused critique for which I am truly indebted. I also wish to sincerely acknowledge my co-supervisor, Dr. Catherine de Lorenzo, especially for her assistance with the study’s methodology, close reading and constant support and encouragement.
During my initial research in Australia, many individuals generously contributed material and personal insights that illuminated this study of five women and the early development of interior design in Sydney. These included: Thea Bryant, Jane Burns, Jill Franz, Bronwyn Hanna, Georgina and Dick Hart, Patricia Horsley, Paul Hogben, Heather Johnson, Jon Lang, Faye Langley, Nancy Marshall, Peter McNeil, John McPhee, Helen Morgan, Cameron Sparkes, Deborah Van der Platt, Harry Stephens and Helen Yoxall. In America, I would like to acknowledge Theodore Barber, Caren Martin, John Turpin, and JoAnn Asher Thompson for further materials and insight.
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT...... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iii LIST OF TABLES...... vii LIST OF FIGURES...... viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... x
PART A CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION...... 1 Thesis Statement ...... 1 Research Context ...... 1 Research Aims and Objectives...... 5 Research Methodology ...... 7 Data Sources ...... 12 Chapter Structure...... 13
CHAPTER 2 - THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK PART 1: FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES OF GENDER AND PROFESSION ...... 18 Introduction...... 18 Critical Studies on Women in Art and Design ...... 19 Critical Australian Studies on Interior Decoration and Interior Design...... 26 Profession and Professionalisation of Interior Design...... 31 Conclusion ...... 37
CHAPTER 3 - THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK PART 2: OVERARCHING ISSUES OF MODERNITY ...... 39 Introduction...... 39 Definition and Explanation of ‘Modernisation’ ...... 41 Definition and Explanation of ‘Modernism’...... 53 Definition and Explanation of ‘Modernity’ ...... 67 Conclusion ...... 75
CHAPTER 4 - HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF INTERIOR DESIGN.....81 Introduction...... 81
iv Emergence of Interior Decoration as a Profession...... 82 Paradigm Shift from Interior Decoration to Interior Design ...... 103 Historical Development of Interior Design Education in Sydney...... 112 Professional Organisations for Interior Design in Australia ...... 121 Conclusion ...... 126
PART B CHAPTER 5 - THEA PROCTOR ...... 131 Introduction...... 131 Biographical Background and Basis of Authority ...... 132 Activities and Participation in Interior Decoration and Design ...... 143 Values, Beliefs and Philosophy of Design...... 155 Contribution to Professional Development...... 160 Conclusion ...... 163
CHAPTER 6 - NORA McDOUGALL ...... 166 Introduction...... 166 Biographical Background and Basis of Authority ...... 167 Activities and Participation in Interior Design ...... 171 Values, Beliefs and Philosophy of Design...... 184 Contribution to Professional Development...... 199 Conclusion ...... 201
CHAPTER 7 - MARGARET LORD ...... 205 Introduction...... 205 Biographical Background and Basis of Authority ...... 206 Activities and Participation in Interior Design ...... 230 Lord’s Cultivated Public Image in Australia ...... 235 Values, Beliefs and Philosophy of Design...... 243 Contribution to Professional Development...... 254 Conclusion ...... 256
CHAPTER 8 - PHYLLIS SHILLITO...... 262 Introduction...... 262 Biographical Background and Basis of Authority ...... 263
v Activities and Participation in Interior Design ...... 271 Values, Beliefs and Philosophy of Design...... 282 Contribution to Professional Development...... 293 Conclusion ...... 294
CHAPTER 9 - MARY WHITE ...... 299 Introduction...... 299 Biographical Background and Basis of Authority ...... 300 Activities and Participation in Interior Design ...... 311 Values, Beliefs and Philosophy of Design...... 325 Contribution to Professional Development...... 332 Conclusion ...... 336
PART C CHAPTER 10 - COLLECTIVE ANALYSES...... 341 Introduction...... 341 Reflections on Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession ...... 342 A Critique of Women’s Contributions to Interior Design...... 342 Modernism in Interior Design: Collective Analysis...... 345 Contributions of Five Women to Professional Development ...... 378 Empirical Narrative of Requisite Knowledge: ...... 387 Conclusion ...... 393
CHAPTER 11 - CONCLUSION...... 394 Five Women’s Experience of Modernity in Interior Design ...... 394 Significance of this Research: A Legacy of Design ...... 396 Possibilities for Future Research ...... 400 Concluding Remarks ...... 401
SOURCES...... 403
vi LIST OF TABLES
Table 4.1 Paradigm Shift from Interior Decoration to Interior Design...... 111 Table 4.2 Comparison of Tasks of Interior Decorator/Interior Designer...... 126 Table 6.1 Comparison of Content in McDougall Books on Interior Decoration ...... 178 Table 6.2 Selected Articles and Lectures by Nora McDougall from 1941-1948 ...... 182 Table 6.3 Summary of Students Attending NYSFAA, June 1927-June 1929...193 Table 7.1 Selected Writings by Margaret Lord ...... 215 Table 7.2 Radio Broadcasts by Margaret Lord ...... 218 Table 7.3 Interior Design Projects by Margaret Lord ...... 223 Table 7.4 Lectures by Margaret Lord...... 234 Table 9.1 Important Commissions for Design of Furniture and Interiors by Mary White ...... 314 Table 9.2 Illustrated Lecture Discussions: ‘Aspects of Modern Art’, 1963...... 317 Table 9.3 Mary White School of Art, School of Interior Design...... 319 Table 9.4 Correspondence Course Content—Mary White School of Art ...... 323 Table 10.1 Influential Sources of Modernist Ideas for Five Women from the 1920s to the 1960s...... 347 Table 10.2 Analysis of Women's Dey Features of Modernism in Interior Design ...... 376 Table 10.3 Analysis of Women’s Contributions to Professional Development 387 Table 10.4 Topics/Subjects of Interior Design ...... 391
vii LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 3.1 Multidimensional Framework Establishes Boundaries of Study...... 79 Figure 5.1 Thea Proctor dressed for Costume Ball in Sydney, 1927...... 135 Figure 5.2 Thea Proctor’s Studio ...... 138 Figure 5.3 Thea Proctor's Personal Copy of Arts and Decoration Practical Home Study Course...... 140 Figure 5.4. ‘Still Life Decoration’ by Thea Proctor...... 141 Figure 5.5 Thea Proctor and Roy de Maistre, Painted Furniture for Grace Bros., 1927...... 152 Figure 5.6 Thea Proctor with George W. Lambert, Sydney Ure Smith and Ford Motor Co. representative; ‘Colour Harmony’ selections for the modern motor car, c. 1929...... 154 Figure 6.1 Nora Seton McDougall, c. 1949 ...... 172 Figure 6.2 Cover for Interior Decoration for Australians by Nora S. McDougall, c. 1941...... 173 Figure 6.3 Cover for Make Your House a Home by Nora S. McDougall, 1949.174 Figure 6.4 ‘Before and After Pictures’ Demonstrate Benefits of ‘Modernising’ ...... 176 Figure 6.5 Nora S McDougall, Illustrations and text describing chair positions for comfortable ‘fit’ ...... 179 Figure 6.6 Nora S McDougall, Illustration for 'Orientation of Sun' in Relation to Colour Selections...... 180 Figure 6.7 Nora S McDougall, Illustration for ‘Things Within Easy Reach’...180 Figure 6.8 Facsimile: Summer Session 1928 Courses in House Planning and Decoration...... 188 Figure 6.9 Illustrations of Student Work...... 190 Figure 7.1 Margaret Lord, 1940, Sydney...... 217 Figure 7.2 Illustration of Interior Space designed by Lord ...... 219 Figure 7.3 Lord's Text, Interior Decoration, cover designed by Alistair Morrison, 1944 ...... 221 Figure 7.4 Living Room at ‘Boswell’ (table designed by Lord) ...... 228 Figure 7.5 Three books written by Lord from 1944-1971 pictured with photos of Lord and Wardell on table in living room at ‘Boswell’; Upper left book on the Bauhaus annotated by Lord...... 230 Figure 7.6 Before and After Photos of Renovation of Cruise Liner Monowai, Interior Decoration by Lord ...... 231 Figure 7.7 Lord on return from London, 1940...... 237 Figure 7.8 Lord Pictured as Working ‘Girl’, July 1940...... 237
viii Figure 7.9 Lord Pictured on Cover of ABC Weekly, April 1941...... 238 Figure 7.10 Lord Pictured in Her Potts Point Flat, July 1946 ...... 240 Figure 7.11 Lord Pictured with Denis Winston and Walter Bunning ...... 241 Figure 8.1 Phyllis Shillito ...... 271 Figure 8.2 Students weaving at Design School at ESTC, 1948 ...... 274 Figure 8.3 Model for design of Shoe store by Eve Dutton, 1955...... 276 Figure 8.4 Models by CRTS Student John Harre Studying Interior Design at ESTC, 1948 ...... 277 Figure 8.5 ESTC 2nd Year Student Bill Symes with his Remodel of Boardroom at Ultimo Tech, 1948 ...... 277 Figure 8.6 The Colour Wheel, Devised by Shillito and Illustrated with her Article, ‘Colour tuning’ ...... 279 Figure 9.1 Mary White in Early 1950s...... 303 Figure 9.2 Display Details in SIDA Exhibition Catalogue, 1953 ...... 304 Figure 9.3 Proposed Plans for Development of Arts Centre, Early 1970s...... 309 Figure 9.4 Mary White Photograph of an Interior...... 312 Figure 9.5 Mary White School of Art Correspondence Course Equipment ....322 Figure 9.6 Advertisement, c. 1971 ...... 324 Figure 9.7 Incorporation of SIDA, 24 Sept 1964...... 335 Figure 11.1 Conceptualisation of Personal, Professional, Social and Aesthetic Spheres ...... 396
ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ABC Australian Broadcasting Commission ADB Australian Dictionary of Biography AES Army Education Services AGNSW Art Gallery of New South Wales AID American Institute of Decorators ANU Australian National University ARAIA Associate Royal Australian Institute of Architects ASEA Australian Society for Education through Arts ATDA Australian Textile Design Association COFA College of Fine Arts, Sydney, NSW CRTS Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme DIA Design Institute of Australia ESTC East Sydney Technical College HHT Historic Houses Trust IAAP International Art Association Pass IDAA Interior Design Association of Australia IDIA Industrial Design Institute of Australia IES Illuminating Engineering Society MAAS Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences ML Mitchell Library MOMA Museum of Modern Art, New York NAA National Archives of Australia NAS National Art School, Sydney NSWSA New South Wales State Archives NYSFAA New York School of Fine and Applied Arts NYSID New York School of Interior Design OTEN Open Training & Education Network PBS Public Service Board QAG Queensland Art Gallery QUT Queensland University of Technology RAIA Royal Australian Institute of Architects RIA Royal Institute of Architects RIBA Royal Institute of British Architects RMIT Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology SAF Sydney Arts Foundation SIDA Society of Interior Designers of Australia SLNSW State Library of New South Wales STC Sydney Technical College, Sydney, Australia UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization UNSW University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia UoS University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia UTS University of Technology, Sydney, Australia V&A Victoria & Albert Museum, London WCC World Crafts Council WIAS Women’s Industrial Arts Society
x Introduction Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Thesis Statement
Women were seminal to the development of interior design as a discipline and profession in Sydney. Covering the period from the 1920s-1960s, this study identifies Thea Proctor, Nora McDougall, Margaret Lord, Phyllis Shillito and
Mary White as foundational leaders who progressively advance interior design in
Sydney through individual and collective understandings of design. Focussing on their contributions to this development, this study explains complex interrelationships between women and modernity in interior design.
Research Context
This emergence of the discipline and profession in Sydney situates the initiatives of these five women, from a world perspective, at a transitional phase in the field’s development when ‘interior decoration’ is challenged by modern attitudes and artistic theories of ‘design’. Working as individuals, the women advance the profession—previously characterised as a ‘natural’ pursuit for women of ‘taste’ and ‘style’—by their artistic, rational and practical approaches to interior design.1
This study will argue that at a time when no distinct discipline existed for the field in Sydney, the women forge new directions by reformulating previous
1 Candace Wheeler, ‘Interior Decoration as a Profession for Women, Part 1’, New Outlook N.Y., 6 April 1895, pp. 559-649; Isabelle Anscombe, A Woman’s Touch: Women in Design from 1860-the Present Day, NY: Viking Penguin & London: Virago, 1984; Anthea Callen, ‘Sexual Division of Labour in the Arts and Crafts Movement’, 1989, in Attfield, Judy & Kirkham, Pat, eds. A View from the Interior, Feminism, Women and Design, London: The Women’s Press Ltd, 1989, pp. 151- 164; Anne Massey, Interior Design of the 20thcentury. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 1990 reprinted 1996.
1 Introduction Chapter 1 overseas traditions of instruction (often conservative, outdated and marketed to a distant other), tailoring them to a modern Australian context based on individual experience and understanding of interior design. This understanding incorporates changing conceptions of requisite and critical knowledge for interior design at a time when important aesthetic, stylistic and theoretical changes (modernism) are taking place in design. The women hold both common and different philosophies and approaches to the practice of interior design as demonstrated through their understandings of design.
At the same time within this modernising period, their contributions are mediated by ‘latent’ structures and traditions: as such, their stories embody all of the conflicts, ruptures, paradoxes and contradictions that are central to modernity.
Despite the many progressive changes taking place for women during and after
World War I, their roles and activities remain largely defined and confined by lingering codified notions of nineteenth-century patriarchy.2 Prevailing attitudes associate the female gender with the arts of decoration within a private sphere of domesticity and, under increasing industrialisation and technological development led by a male-dominated élite, this feminine other is deemed subordinate and women’s contributions accordingly inferior to modernisation’s goals.
2 Patriarchy as a concept is not defined singularly but variously by theorists. For instance, the sociologist Anthony Giddens defines patriarchy as ‘the dominance of men over women within the family and in the context of other social institutions’; in Anthony Giddens, Sociology, a brief but critical introduction, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1982, p.128. While feminist art historian Griselda Pollock elaborates on the idea of universal oppression positioning it within other constructs saying, ‘Patriarchy does not refer to the static, oppressive domination of one sex over another, but [is] a web of psycho-social relationships which institute a socially significant difference on the axis of sex which is so deeply located in our very sense of lived, sexual identity that it appears to us natural and unalterable’; in Griselda Pollock, ‘Vision, voice, and power: Feminist art history and Marxism’, Block 6, 1982, p.10.
2 Introduction Chapter 1
The five women of this study both challenge and operate within these notions. Unlike many of the early ‘decorators’ who lacked training, these Sydney- based women attained knowledge of design through formal studies of fine and applied arts. As artistically educated women they gain authority to teach, shaping an understanding of design for the practice of interior design. This understanding is not limited by a prescribed set of ideas and practices from formal study but is informed by wide-ranging sources and diverse life experiences. Importantly, their contributions to the development of interior design are underpinned by shared and shifting values and beliefs that coalesce in common and different philosophies of design.
Through individual efforts and wide-ranging directives, the women initiate programs of study through private art and design classes, popular women’s magazines, radio broadcasts, lecture series, correspondence courses and government-run training programs: their subject directed primarily to women’s interests for use in the home. This study argues that within this environment, progressively, their work advances the field by creating a culture for interior design from which a clientele and profession could emerge. By offering a specialised body of knowledge to a broad sector of people, they instilled an understanding of good design based on the belief that it would benefit all.
In practice, the women’s work transcends usual domestic boundaries, entering commercial arenas and involving community concerns. The women advance professionalism through the establishment of the first society for interior design in Sydney, promoting a code of ethics and new educational standards.
3 Introduction Chapter 1
Through their active participation in a wide range of programs and events for interior design, they direct and guide its future.
Anomalies and disunities prevail during this time of extraordinary events and changes in everyday things. The distress of economic depression and World
War II, in particular, create a paradoxical situation for a field usually concerned with luxury and commodification. Under pressure of modern-day realities, creating a culture for interior design entailed manoeuvring between conditions of wealth and poverty, elite aspirations and functional needs, conservative attitudes and utopian ideals in response to commercial interests and new artistic ideas intended to enhance the lives of an expanded consumer audience and newly developed clientele.
Establishing a specialised discipline for the field also meant cultivating an artistic student body to meet practical needs. This coincided with the directing of females to so-called appropriate subjects in education with alternative purposes in mind: for leisure and personal fulfilment, on the one hand; and training for newly- defined roles in the workplace on the other. The ambiguities and contradictions arising within this culturally constructed environment render implications for women and the field, especially as both seek professional recognition. This recognition is also complicated by post-war reconstruction efforts as the roles of men and women come under reconsideration and as new industrial and commercial interests put pressure on education to redefine the purpose of design and the role of designers.
Beyond consequences of engendered boundaries, a myriad of factors including insufficient funds, tyranny of distance, and lack of opportunity to
4 Introduction Chapter 1 critically research the subject of interior design restrict the potential of these women in their desire and ability to enhance instruction, thus limiting their further contributions to professional development. Alongside continual pressures within and outside the field to expand interior design’s knowledge base, and with advancing age, their participation in subsequent phases diminishes: their significance forgotten as specialised degrees for interior design become officially institutionalised within the government-run education system—a sector still largely controlled by men.
By the mid-1960s, the women’s initial efforts that had forged new directions and mentored new leaders were now replaced by advanced programs of study with future needs in mind. Thus, recognition of these women and their seminal contributions to the discipline and, in turn, profession of interior design in
Sydney has yet to be fully acknowledged and evaluated. This study argues that their foundational work as leaders in the developmental stages established a professional culture for interior design, paved the way for advanced degrees within university settings and, furthermore, situated the study critically within a modernist framework based on their abstract, substantive and procedural knowledge of design. Importantly, through their initiatives and impact on diverse audience of students, homemakers and next generation of teachers, their legacy of design has lived on.
Research Aims and Objectives
The primary aim of this research is to study the development of interior design as a discipline and profession in Sydney, identifying women as foundational leaders
5 Introduction Chapter 1 who progressively advance the field through their understanding of design.
Focusing on their contributions, the main objective of this thesis is to interpret how five Sydney-based women espoused modernity: (a) as active participants in the field’s professional development, especially as educators and authorities on the subject of interior design in its emergent years as a specialist design discipline;
(b) in their understanding of design as representative of the plural artistic and theoretical ideas of their time, defined as modernism(s) in interior design, questioning also to what extent the women’s understanding of design is common, distinct or different from each other’s and, importantly, from prevailing male- dominated (and architecturally driven) representations of the Modern Movement in histories of interior design; and (c) by integrating the women’s individual and collective experiences and contributions as manifest in their legacy of design into the wider picture of women and modernity in interior design.
My research objectives include the development of a methodological framework that contributes to an understanding of the early women’s contributions to interior design through the application of grounded concepts as described within multiple yet interrelated contexts of gender, profession and modernity. This framework both distinguishes external (objective) forces from internalised (subjective) ideas and seeks interconnections that impact on the women and subsequently explain their contributions to the development of interior design as a discipline and profession.
6 Introduction Chapter 1
Research Methodology
This thesis underpinned by qualitative research methodologies combines biography, microhistory and interpretative analysis to explain interrelationships between historical, socio-cultural and theoretical-conceptual contexts. Research is centred on individual and collective experiences and contributions of five Sydney- based women who shape interior design from the 1920s to 1960s. Their selections drawn from extensive research allow insight into the many changes taking place over this transitional period of the field’s development and highlight the diverse issues impacting on interior design within this modernising period. Relevant data on the women have been gathered from primary and secondary sources, including archival material, library collections, private records and interviews with friends, co-workers and family members. Multiple literature reviews investigate issues of gender, profession and modernity that are relevant to the subject of interior design.
Ultimately, a multi-dimensional framework establishes the boundaries of this research from which multiple theoretical-conceptual ‘lenses’ seek to give focus, meaning, and substance to the lived experiences and contributions of these women of interior design.3 Research findings are presented and summarised in individual and collective analyses.
The qualitative research approaches and their accompanying strategies and perspectives employed in this thesis have developed criteria for rigor, assumptions, and a set of practices that meaningfully enrich our understanding of the significance of women and modernity in the development of interior design.
3 Norman K. Denzin, & Yvonna S. Lincoln (eds.), ‘Introduction’, The American Tradition in Qualitative Research, Volume I, London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2001, p. xii.
7 Introduction Chapter 1
Biographical histories contextualise individual contributions allowing evaluation against their own time. The use of autobiography follows feminist theory which, importantly, as Jill Seddon and Shulamit Reinharz point out, explores the construction of the female self under patriarchy elucidating in what way an identifiable feminine self is constructed by common and diverse experiences.4
Women’s experience is valid as a means of analysis because, as Rita Felski describes, it reveals previous instances of critics’ ‘blindness to issues of gender in that theories of both the modern and the post-modern have been organized around a masculine norm and pay insufficient attention to the specificity of women’s lives and experiences’, which consequently impact recognition of their contributions.5
This masculine norm is demonstrated particularly in histories of interior design in which the Modern Movement is dominated by the representative contributions of male architects.6
A biographical approach is combined with an investigation into social institutions. My intention is not to treat the women’s experiences in isolation but to interpret the meaning of their experiences and, in turn, the significance of their contributions in light of all the changes taking place in modern (twentieth-century) society as women actively participate or inadvertently are caught up in the same socio-historical phenomena as men. This necessarily looks at a continuum of distinct ideas and features that begins in the nineteenth century with (a) the rise of feminist organisation and activism, (b) increased systemisation of industrial
4 Jill Seddon, ‘Mentioned, but Denied Significance: Women Designers and the ‘Professionalisation of Design in Britain’, Gender & History, vol. 12, no. 2, July 2000, pp. 426-447; and Shulamit Reinharz, ‘Experiential analysis: a contribution to feminist research’, in Gloria Bowles & Renate Duelli Klein, eds., Theories of Women’s Studies, London & NY: Routledge, 1989. 5 Rita Felski, The Gender of Modernity. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995, p.15.
8 Introduction Chapter 1 production, (c) rationalisation and bureaucracy of modern life, (d) institutionalisation of education, (e) the rise of consumerism and (f) the economic hegemony of commodity capitalism, which can be further traced back to eighteenth-century democratic ideals of emancipation and equality and
Enlightenment values of efficiency, good management, rationality, and ‘modern’ progress.7
Recognising the individual yet complex nature of this study, biography is combined with microhistory, an approach that investigates individuals who are often relatively unknown, analysing minute details and dimensions particular to them but which are made redeemable due to their representative characteristics.
Microhistory, first developed in the 1970s, is often synonymous with local history, a narration written from a qualitative rather than quantitative perspective studying the past on a very small scale.8 As found by Carlo Ginzburg, the use of microhistory gives greater insight. He states:
It is on this reduced scale, and probably only on this scale, that we can understand without deterministic reduction, the relationships between systems of beliefs, of values and representations on one side, and the social affiliations on another…it is only by reducing the scale of observation that one comes to realise how many events and connections, of which one is totally unaware, contribute to influencing decisions that are often thought to have been made independently.9
Values are defined here sociologically as ‘acts, customs, and institutions that are regarded in a particular, especially favourable way’ by individuals or
6 For instance, see John Pile, A History of Interior Design, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2000. 7 Ann Ardis, ‘Introduction’, in Ardis & Lewis, eds. Women’s Experience of Modernity 1875-1945, Baltimore MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 2003. Ardis refers to article by Joan Wallach Scott, ‘Experience’ in Feminists Theorize the Political, ed. id. Judith Butler, NY: Routledge, 1992, p. 2. 8 See Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Microhistory: Two or Three things That I Know about It’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 20, no. 1, Autumn, 1993, p. 12; and ‘Microhistory’, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microhistory, p. 1; page last modified 16:53, 26 May 2004. 9 Ginzburg, ibid., p. 22.
9 Introduction Chapter 1 groups of people.10 They are a shared set of beliefs that guide how people conduct themselves or operate their activities. Beliefs imply ‘mental acceptance of something as true’ and are based on reasoning, prejudice, or authority of the source.11 Philosophy refers to the general principles that underlie all knowledge and activity as in a philosophy of design.12
This study draws from social theorists who offer arguments for analysing the more totalising effects of modernity’s social and political structure as modern life came under increasing rationalisation and institutionalisation. While feminist theory clarifies this rationalist structure debating the way in which gender functions to produce and reproduce male domination and female subordination, both sociologists and feminists offer perspectives that reconceptualise this power relationship and, subsequently, (re)value women’s contributions within modernisation’s systemised sphere.
Critical studies and histories on interior decoration, interior design, art and architecture situate women in design within historical and theoretical contexts, bringing to light their relationship with the Modern Movement, i.e. modernism’s history. Significant to these debates is modernism’s so-called subjective relationship to modernisation’s objective aims and ideals. Hilde Heynen’s concepts of modernity in architecture in conjunction with Paul Greenhalgh’s conceptualisation of twelve features of modernism in design provide useful entries into this modernist debate; the latter’s conceptualisation of modernism’s artistic
10 Webster’s New World Dictionary, College Edition, Cleveland and NY: The World Publishing Company, 1996, p.1609. 11 ibid., p. 135. 12 ibid., p. 1099.
10 Introduction Chapter 1 theoretical ideas of this time in particular forming the basis for a critique of women’s modernism in interior design.13
Additional conceptions add to this critique offering richer interpretation of modernism’s meaning as shifts take place in the understanding of design during this modernising period. To measure the five women’s understandings of design against the broader ideas of the time, this study focuses on the women’s interpretations of modernism as evidenced in their contributions to interior design assessing convergences and divergences between their ideas as women, and against prevailing male-dominated representations which constitute norms of the time. This critique evaluates changes overtime and between differing groups of designers. As counterpart to this inquiry into the abstract theoretical ideas of design, this study offers an empirical narrative describing requisite knowledge for the field of interior design during this time. Utilising Joy Potthoff and Bonadine
Woods’ content analysis of topics of interior design education, this study gathers together the women’s topics of teaching for interior design which give insight into core subjects as well as shifts and distinct features in the discipline’s requisite knowledge base as initiated by these women.14
As discussed above, this study utilises multiple theoretical and analytical frameworks, believing that singular or objectivist mainstream approaches are inadequate for research and analysis of this topic of women and modernity in interior design: the complex nature of interior design as a design discipline in
13 Hilde Heynen, Architecture and Modernity, Cambridge, Mass & London: MIT Press, 1999; and Paul Greenhalgh, Modernism in Design, London: Reaktion Books, Ltd, 1990.
11 Introduction Chapter 1 addition to issues of gender and professional recognition necessitating the pluralistic approach. Data relating to the women’s experiences and contributions have been gathered and organised for this study to create meaningful patterns that ultimately demonstrate the transformations taking place for women and the field of interior design during this period of time in Sydney.
Data Sources
Research on the women was drawn primarily from archival data located in public institutions including also individual archives, library resources and private collections. Respectively they include: The Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences
(MAAS), also known as the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney; The Historic Houses
Trust (HHT), Sydney; The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Sydney;
The University of Sydney (UoS), Sydney; Power Library, UoS; University of
New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney; College of Fine Arts (COFA), Sydney; State
Library of New South Wales (SLNSW), Sydney; Mitchell Library, Sydney; New
South Wales State Archives (NSWSA), Sydney; Open Training & Education
Network (OTEN), Sydney; East Sydney Technical College (ESTC); New South
Wales State Registry for Births, Deaths, and Marriages, Sydney; National
Archives of Australia, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory (ACT); The Anna-
Maria and Stephen Kellen Archives, Parson School of Design, New York; private holdings of Thea Bryant, Georgina and Dick Hart, Cameron Sparkes, John
McPhee and Maitland Family History Circle Inc.
14 This evaluation adapts to this purpose Joy K. Potthoff & Bonadine Woods, ‘Content Analysis of Seven Introductory Interior Design Texts Published between 1986-1994’, Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences, Summer 1995, pp. 59-64.
12 Introduction Chapter 1
The sources offer a wide range of material including the women’s writings found in (a) published books, texts and magazines and from private holdings; (b) unpublished notations, outlines and scripts written for public forums, including lectures, broadcasts, instruction and texts; (c) minutes of meetings, school handbooks, exhibition and furniture catalogues, proceedings of governmental and professional groups; (d) learning materials, training and educational programs, student exercises in design; (e) travel details, applications for scholarships and copyright; and (f) photographs of the women and students’ work. This extant material renders great insight into the five women’s experiences and ideas of their time. At the same time, in contrast to this wealth of written, graphic and pictorial material, few records or photographs exist of the women’s professional work, limited by the impermanent nature of interior design itself and by the stringent conditions of wartime and early reconstruction years in Australia. Thus, unlike the relative permanency of architecture or important interiors of their overseas counterparts, little tangible evidence of the work by these early women of Sydney remains for critique. This lack of evidence also contributes to their lack of recognition and evaluation to date.
Chapter Structure
The structure of the thesis unfolds in three parts as follows: Following the
Introduction in this chapter, Part A includes multiple literature reviews in
Chapters 2, 3 and 4. Chapter 2 outlines foundational issues of gender and profession relative to this study followed by a conceptual-theoretical framework of modernity discussed in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 gives historical context to the
13 Introduction Chapter 1 development of interior design. Part B consists of five individual chapters
(Chapters 5-9) describing each of the early women’s biographical history, their participation and activities in interior design, values and beliefs impacting their ideas and philosophies of design and, finally, their significance to professional development of interior design in Sydney. Part C gives collective analyses of the women’s contributions to the development of interior design in Sydney integrating their experiences into a wider history of women and modernity in interior design
(Chapter 10). Chapter 11 discusses the significance of this research and gives final remarks. This complex structure exposes interconnections that impact women and their contributions during this modernising period explaining also their significance to the development of interior design in Sydney.
Chapter 2 discusses foundational issues of gender and profession in the context of interior design that gave impetus to this study. Drawing from previous overseas and Australian critical studies, the main concerns are historical representations and interpretations that have contributed to the current lack of acknowledgement of early women as critical exponents of the profession. In addressing these issues, this chapter substantiates the necessity of investigating more critically the contributions of these early women and concludes by providing theoretical conceptions of profession for the critique of women’s significance to professional development.
Chapter 3 turns to overarching issues of modernity borrowing from Hilde
Heynen’s conceptions of three levels of the modern defining and explaining modernisation and modernism as distinct yet interrelated aspects of modernity.
This study accepts that while investigating identifiable differences within each
14 Introduction Chapter 1 conception, i.e. the socio-economic processes of modernisation understood as the objective conditions of modernity and the subjective ones known as modernism that are connected with personal experiences, artistic activities and theoretical ideas, they cannot be easily separated.15 This chapter ultimately draws together issues of modernity with those of gender and profession to challenge predominating representations of the early women and notions that have relegated them little status and recognition as critical exponents of the profession. To critique these ideas, Paul Greenhalgh’s conceptualisation of twelve features of modernism is discussed as a useful entry into modernist debate for design disciplines and is augmented with additional stances questioning in what way women’s modernism in interior design is common, distinct or different from each other and from modernist (male-dominated and architecturally-driven) arguments represented in histories of interior design.
Chapter 4 narrates the historical development of interior design as it emerges as a discipline and profession from broader world-wide and local Sydney perspectives. This chapter discusses in greater detail motivations behind the emergence of interior design as a specialisation and profession and describes the transformations taking place during this modernising period as the paradigm shifts from interior decoration to interior design. Starting in the nineteenth century, this chapter also outlines an historical path of educational streams and schools that form precedents and knowledge bases for interior design influencing its study and practice. This chapter then focuses further on the development in Sydney to
15 Heynen, op. cit., p.10; these divisions of the modern were posed for architecture and re- positioned for this study of women and interior design.
15 Introduction Chapter 1 position the contributions of five women within a broader educational framework that impacts their initiatives. The chapter attempts to reverse the lack of institutional history for interior design in Sydney: the main focus of which highlights continuances and ruptures that give necessary context to individual women’s chapters (Chapters 5-9).
Chapters 5 through 9 further situate each woman within the development of interior design in Sydney in order of their contributions: Thea Proctor (1879-
1966), Nora McDougall (1900-19??), Margaret Lord (1908-1976), Phyllis Shillito
(1895-1980), and Mary White (1912-1981). Each chapter presents a brief biographical picture giving a synopsis of each woman’s story set within her social milieu, conditions of the time, and personal circumstances. This allows insight into each individual, their so-called inherent creativity; educational background which constitutes acquired knowledge and skills; prevailing and shifting values and beliefs, and individual experiences that collectively underpin and form her
‘authority’ and understanding of interior design. Drawing from sources previously indicated, extensive data generated in the 1920s to 1960s during a significant modernist period combine with anecdotal information from former colleagues, students, family and acquaintances to provide a substantial basis for analysis of the women’s contributions to the modern development of interior design.
Chapter 10 provides collective analyses of the contributions of the five women by first reflecting on foundational issues of gender and profession, and linking them to the women’s experiences of modernity as explained through issues of modernisation and an interpretative analysis of their modernism(s) in interior design. Collective analyses evaluate their significant and progressive
16 Introduction Chapter 1 contributions to professional development also giving an empirical narrative of requisite knowledge as demonstrated in topics of interior design.
Chapter 11 discusses the significance of this research, the five women’s experiences of modernity culminating in a summary of their legacy of design.
These analyses ultimately contribute to the history of interior design giving a wider picture of women and modernity in interior design. This chapter finally offers concluding remarks suggesting possibilities for future research.
17 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK PART 1: FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES OF GENDER AND PROFESSION
Introduction
This chapter is the first of a two-part theoretical framework outlining foundational issues of gender and profession that gave impetus to this study of five Sydney- based women and their contributions to interior design as a discipline and profession from the 1920s to 1960s. Drawing from previous overseas and
Australian critical studies, this review of literature is concerned with historical representations and interpretations of women and their achievements in art and design fields and, importantly, as related to the professional status and development of interior design. Recognising that women have been relegated little status as early exponents of interior design (first known as interior decoration), this chapter establishes the necessity of an investigation into the participation and critical contributions of five Sydney women to professional development. To these ends, this chapter discusses components and actions that define a profession and its professionalisation process, concluding with key criteria that will be utilised in individual and collective analyses of the women’s contributions to the professional development of interior design in Sydney. Ultimately, the chapter interlinks issues of gender and profession which contribute to a critique of women and modernity in interior design.
18 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession Chapter 2
Critical Studies on Women in Art and Design
Over the past few decades, burgeoning literature involving feminist discourse has evolved contributing to a wide range of disciplinary studies. At the same time, feminist discourse on the discipline of interior design remains in its infancy interlinked with scholarly studies on women in the arts and various aspects of design. During the 1980s, biographies and historical recovery projects gained momentum identifying and recognising the achievements of forgotten women artists and designers.1 Increasingly, these studies questioned the historical representation and interpretation of women’s roles examining their participation in artistic activities and suggesting reasons that allowed women to emerge as professional artists and designers.2
In 1984 Isabelle Anscombe led the way, providing a basis upon which the subject of women and design could be investigated. Contextualising the subject of women designers to the modern house and its furnishings, she described their contributions from Victorian times to the turn of the century as women gained entrance into workshops and schools:
1 See R.B. Fisher, Syrie Maugham, London, 1978 and Dallas, 1979; E. Brown, Sixty Years of Interior Design, The World of McMillen, New York, 1982; J. Smith, Elsie de Wolfe: A life in the high style. NY: Atheneum, 1982; C. Varney, The Draper Touch: The high life and high style of Dorothy Draper: NY:Prentice Hall, 1988; J. Esten and R. B. Gilbert, Manhattan Style, Boston, 1990; N. Campbell and C. Seebohm, Elsie de Wolfe, A Decorative Life, U.S.A., 1992. 2 Isabelle Anscombe, A Woman’s Touch: Women in Design from 1860-the Present Day, NY: Viking Penguin, 1984; Judy Attfield & Pat Kirkham, eds., A View from the Interior, Feminism, Women and Design, London: The Women’s Press Ltd., 1989; Anthea Callen, ‘Sexual Division of Labour in the Arts and Crafts Movement’, 1989; in Attfield & Kirkham, op. cit., pp. 151-164; Joan Kerr., Heritage, The National Women’s Art Book, Sydney: Fine Art Press, 1995; Kirkham & Sparke., ‘ “A Woman’s Place”?: Women interior designers – 1900-1950’, in Pat Kirkham, ed., Women Designers in the USA, 1900-2000: Diversity and difference: Jacqueline M. Atkins…[et al], 2000; Jill Seddon, ‘Mentioned, but Denied Significance: Women Designers and the ‘Professionalisation of Design in Britain’, Gender & History, vol. 12, no. 2, July 2000, pp. 426- 447; John Turpin, ‘Omitted, Devalued, Ignored’, Journal of Interior Design, vol. 27, no.1, 2001, pp. 1-11.
19 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession Chapter 2
Before the 1860s women had little or no place in the workshops and manufacturies which produced furniture, metalwork, textiles, glass and ceramics, nor did they have much direct control over the choice and purchase of such items for the home. Their entry into design education and practice coincided with their emergence as patrons, clients and customers at the turn of the century.3
Design for women, at this time, primarily meant their participation in refined and delicate decorative arts such as embroidery, believed by Victorian standards to be an appropriately graceful preoccupation. Avenal Mitchell and
Helen Morgan tell how this domestic training in the decorative arts contrasted to academic training in the fine arts which, according to prevailing attitudes, required ambition and strength and purpose of vision suited only to men.4 In her study of women designers in Britain from 1920 to 1951, Jill Seddon acknowledges also how the ‘deep-rooted idea that training in art or design was merely an extension of traditional feminine accomplishments’ made it relatively easy since the late nineteenth century for middle-class young women to enter art schools. She also points out how this pre-World War I entrance was significant to the training of future designers and craftswomen and especially important to the professionalisation of design in early twentieth-century Britain.5 At the same time,
Seddon notes how in spite of increasing state support for design and recognition of its importance to post-war reconstruction efforts—which also gained design
3 Anscombe, op cit., p. 11; Anscombe also points out that historians in the past have primarily concentrated on the ‘artist’ over that of the ‘designer’. 4 Avenal Mitchell, Thea Proctor (1879-1966): Aspects of Elitism 1921 to 1940, unpublished Fine Arts IV Thesis, University of Sydney, 1980; also see Anscombe, op. cit.; and Helen Morgan, Thea Proctor, Her career before 1921 and the question of her aesthetic reputation, MA (Honours) Thesis, 2 Volumes, University of Melbourne, 1994. 5 Seddon, op. cit., p. 428.
20 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession Chapter 2 professional status (and acknowledgement for the achievements of male designers)—the position of women designers was still marginalised.6
Seddon’s analysis of ‘the professional’ and how women relate to such a concept was prompted by feminist debate on the politics of gender, as presented in
Judy Attfield and Pat Kirkham’s earlier anthology of essays. The anthology presenting multiple feminist views on the subject of women and design history had grown out of the authors’ frustration with books on women and design that did ‘little more than add a few women’s names into an orthodox and problematic design history’.7 Their intent was to apply a feminist perspective that would
‘transform familiar terrain into an unexplored world’ by revealing the socially constructed nature of history and alert us to differences other than gender.8 The collection of writings also broke down traditional barriers in art history by focusing on the practical arts, i.e. designed objects that surround us and form part of our culture rather than the fine arts which held special status and were exhibited in places such as museums and art galleries.
In 1991, Patricia Grimshaw wrote of how the writing of women’s history in Australia first emerged ‘as a forceful voice…in the wake of the women’s liberation movement’, which was first organised around the year 1969 in Sydney and Melbourne.9 Initially, this incorporated women’s experiences in an attempt to fill the gaps of mainstream accounts. Within this vein, a major study was undertaken by Joan Kerr bringing to light the works of many previously unknown
6 ibid. 7 Attfield & Kirkham, op. cit., p. 1. 8 ibid., p. 3.
21 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession Chapter 2 or unacknowledged Australian women artists. In seeking to rewrite art history in
Australia, Kerr’s efforts culminated in her book, Heritage, The National Women’s
Art Book.10 The extensive endeavour accompanied by an exhibition of works at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) significantly added to a body of research about women’s contributions to the arts, but also refuelled old debates regarding the writing of women’s history and in what way their contributions were critical to art and design.
Feminist scholars from the mid-1970s had extended historical accounts by challenging ‘the central canons of relevance that had prioritised men’s experience’ exploring important theoretical positions.11 Following this, Bronwyn Hanna analysed reasons for absence and presence of early women architects (the usual domain of men) in New South Wales (NSW) using a tripartite approach to historiography, described as liberal feminism, socialist feminism and postmodern feminism.12 The tripartite perspective, borrowed from other feminist scholars
Elizabeth Grosz and Louise Johnson, focused on issues of: (a) sexism or individual acts of discrimination, (b) patriarchy and capitalism as systemic structures of oppression and (c) phallocentrism or the means by which language and representation construct and differentiate women and femininity.13 Each
9 Patricia Grimshaw, ‘Writing the History of Australian Women’, p. 151, in Karen Offen, Ruth Roach Pierson & Jane Rendell, eds., Writing Women’s History International Perspectives, London: Macmillan,1991, pp. 151-169. 10 Joan Kerr, Heritage, The National Women’s Art Book, Sydney: Fine Arts Press, 1995. 11 Grimshaw, op cit., p. 151. 12 Bronwyn Hanna, ‘Absence and Presence: A Historiography of Early Women Architects in New South Wales’, PhD Thesis, Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales, 1999, p. 23. 13 ibid., p. 24; Hanna refers to philosopher Elizabeth Grosz 1989 and geographer Louise Johnson 1989.
22 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession Chapter 2 perspective has resonance for this study as evidenced in the women’s stories, experiences and identities as artists, interior decorators and designers.
In Anscombe’s earlier interpretative-contextual (postmodern feminist) approach to the study of women artists and designers, she found not only limitations but opportunities for women noting how their participation in the decorative arts—spawned by the Arts and Crafts Movement that flourished from the late-nineteenth century past the turn of the century—had created an alternate avenue for them to produce art. Thus, women welcomed the movement because ‘it allowed them to be active, creative and professional’ even if they were dependent on a father, brother or husband.14 At the same time, advancements for women were gradual and as described tied to social conventions:
By the end of the First World War, women had sufficiently infiltrated the world of design to be able to take an equal place with male designers in the new movements, schools and professional opportunities which then emerged. Through the early ideals of the Modern Movement, women gained access to workshops, schools and professional training and, most importantly, were gradually allowed by the social conventions of the day to put their “traditional” skills—a woman’s touch about the home—to commercial use. 15
The growing independence for women was a key theme in the gradual transition of women’s roles from home to workplace which in turn brought into focus issues of amateur activities versus professional work. Anscombe contends that even though women’s achievements were ‘limited to a realm of domesticity’ and, by association, belittled by the idea that it was natural for a woman to demonstrate good taste, by designing for the home women were ‘professional
14 Anscombe, op. cit., p. 12. 15 ibid.
23 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession Chapter 2 designers by default’.16 The advancement of women was a central motivating factor for the emergent ‘profession’ of interior decoration. Suffragette Candace
Wheeler discussed the possibilities as early as 1895.17
Anne Massey links professionalism to perceived female traits in a positive sense in relation to the practice of interior decoration, saying ‘because of the consultative nature of the work it has been one of the few professions in which women have led and excelled’.18 Seddon also found that professional and social standing were recognised at the time because women’s pursuits in interior decoration combined the attributes of the well-educated woman who was
‘accustomed to a good standard of living and to having beautiful things about her’.19 She also believed that the Arts and Crafts Movement ‘allowed for some blurring of the boundaries between designer and consumer, and amateur and professional’.20
Lisa Koenigsberg, in her analysis of late nineteenth-century women writers on the subject of domestic architecture (which included interior decoration), placed value on women critics’ work because it supported a profession dominated by men. This recognised women ‘as valuable intermediaries between their readers and the professional establishment’ in spite of the fact that they were untrained.21
As advocates of the architectural profession’s views, the women writers came to share architectural status and, by association, the writers inadvertently
16 ibid., p. 14. 17 Candace Wheeler, ‘Interior Decoration as a Profession for Women, Part 1.’ New Outlook N.Y., 6 April 1895, p. 559. 18 Anne Massey, Interior Design in the 20th Century, London: Thames & Hudson, 1990, p. 123. 19 Mrs. Maufe, ‘House Decoration’, Women’s Employment, no. 24, 15 August 1924, p. 3, quoted in Seddon, op. cit., p. 430. 20 Seddon, op. cit., p. 429.
24 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession Chapter 2
‘professionalized domesticity’.22 Koenigsberg also conferred professional status on the women because they were paid for their work. Remuneration removed the taint of mere amateur status.
Ironically, each writer in recognising women’s professional contributions unwittingly entrenched notions of interior decoration as a natural pursuit for women and to complement those of men. By traditional patriarchal readings this continues to diminish women’s achievements and consequently their status as professional designers.
In his study of the interior design profession, John Turpin addressed the issue of diminished status questioning whether interior design history itself has embedded gender biases in the interpretation and writing of texts on the history of the profession.23 He suggests that histories have marginalised the achievements of women in interior design as compared to representations of men by (a) their omission from the narrative, (b) the devaluing of their work, and (c) that these women have been ignored by a perpetuation of gender stereotyping and the language used to describe them.
Turpin, in his review of five histories of interior design, summarises that while the majority of the texts reveal embedded gender biases, brief moments of
‘evidence of a more feminist approach’ appear in Tate and Smith, and Massey.24
21 Lisa Koenigsberg, Professionalizing Domesticity: A Tradition of American Women Writers on Architecture, 1848-1913, PhD thesis, Yale University, 1987. 22 ibid. Others who discuss this issue include Christine Piotrowski, Professional Practice for Interior Designers, 3rd ed., NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2001; Massey, op. cit.; and Campbell & Seebohm, op cit. 23 Turpin, op. cit., p. 2; The five texts are: Sherrill Whiton, Interior Design and Decoration, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1974, 4th ed.; Victoria Ball, Architecture and Interior Design, NY: Wiley & Sons, 1980; A. Tate & C. Smith, Interior Design in the 20th Century, NY: Harper & Row, 1986; Massey, op. cit.; John Pile, Interior Design, NY: Harry N. Abrams, 1995. 24 ibid., p. 7.
25 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession Chapter 2
The evidence or so-called ‘gender sensitivity’ revisits three common subjects: (a) women’s contributions to the development of interior design, (b) recognition of women’s unique traits employed in their practices which was interlinked with society’s perception of the ‘interior decorator’ and (c) a specific connection between decorating and entertaining, both associated with the female gender.25
Turpin concludes that in the writing of interior design history the image of the lady decorator or society decorator has overshadowed investigation into important changes that early women instigated within the professional development of the field. Each study prompts further individual inquiry regarding the details and critical nature of women’s contributions.
Critical Australian Studies on Interior Decoration and Interior Design
To date, two significant studies on the early phase of interior design in Australia have emerged.26 The first study by Michaela Richards is a monographic study readapted for a book, establishing Marion Hall Best as a national heroine of modernist avant-garde interior design. This recognition of Best raised a consciousness of the field in Australian academic study linking women and modernism in interior design opening the way for further research on the subject.
A second study by Peter McNeil redresses the lack of literature on interior design, particularly critical discourse on the subject, by beginning his study with an extensive literature review of design history for Australia. This was undertaken
25 ibid. 26 Michaela Richards, Making the Modern Interior: Marion Hall Best and Australian Interior Design 1945-1965, M.A. Thesis, Department of Fine Arts, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 1993; and Peter McNeil, Designing Women: Gender, Modernism, and Interior
26 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession Chapter 2 in part to justify his topic, as considerable disinterest for the subject (interior decoration and interior design) was held within a Fine Arts department due to its perceived inferior status as a practical discipline as compared to the elevated status of fine arts.27
McNeil’s early research of general design histories for Australia sought out mention of interior design and concluded with the following range of key points:28
1) No survey of design history exists for Australia.29 2) The histories that do exist are inseparably bound up with design practice as commentary that frequently comes from the same practicing hands. 3) The history of writing about the decorative arts runs parallel with the rise of collecting and connoisseurship and is dominated by expository works that are object-based. 4) Although books from the 1920s onward exist of architectural accounts by architects, decorative art publications, furniture histories, pattern/style manuals, but rarely look at interiors or interior design. 5) The first critical discourse on interior design is Robin Boyd in 1950s30 6) While Archer’s Building a Nation considers interior design, it shifts from ‘location to location, matching fragments of text from novels and letter to an eclectic set of images in an impressionistic manner’.31 7) Art historians who have researched aspects of the Australian interior mainly do so with regards to painting.
Decoration in Sydney, c.1920-40, M.A. Thesis, Department of Fine Arts, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 1993. 27 Dr. Erika Esau, 28 Apr 1999. 28 Peter McNeil, ‘Rarely Looking In: the Writing of Australian Design History, c.1900-1990’, Journal of Australian Studies, no. 44, March 1995, pp. 48-63. 29 ibid., McNeil, however, does acknowledge Tony Fry’s ‘landmark publication’, Design History Australia, A Source Text in Methods and Resources, Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1988, p. 62, which he says provides ‘an overview of the field’. See subsequent to this study, Michael Bogel, Design in Australia 1880-1970, Sydney: Craftsman House & G=B Arts International, 1998. 30 Robin Boyd, Australia’s Home: Its Origins, Its Builders and Occupiers, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1952. 31 Quoted in McNeil, op. cit., 1995, p. 61, which was drawn from McNeil’s 1993 MA Thesis, op. cit. Archer’s book Building a Nation, first published in 1987 by William Collins Pty. Ltd., Sydney was republished in 1996 and retitled, The Great Australian Dream: The History of the Australian House, Harper Collins Publishers Australia.
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McNeil incorporated into his subsequent research a textual analysis approach—taking note of historian Tony Fry’s concern over how design history should be written—and further justified his work within a framework of contemporary feminist theory, positioning women within Sydney’s modernist context.32
McNeil raised critical issues impacting on the development of the profession: (a) the female decorator’s sexuality as social network; (b) an understanding that the profession provided ‘single women who did not choose marriage, with both independence and respectability’; (c) tensions between notions of amateur and professional status based on distinctions between art and trade (consumerism); (d) the ‘trained’ ‘rational’ professional, i.e. the architect
(male) and the ‘untrained’ intuitive decorator (female); and (e) a feminine construct that linked fashion and modern decoration, fashion and women, women and modern design.33 The first issues established a context under which women operated in design by the inter-war period and, the latter, questioned the status of design restricted by the feminine connection. McNeil, like Turpin, pointed out how history has embedded certain notions of the feminine with decoration, denigrating both in favour of the new (male) rationalism:
The discourse of decorating did not merely reflect artistic hierarchies, but produced the parallel denigration of women and applied art, feeding into each other at every turn. Decorating could be kept down by the association with the feminine…through association with a less professional and supposedly intuitive activity. By the 1940s design was professionalized and colonized by architects and the emerging brand of industrial designer. A new model emerged which was opposed to both the taste of the 1920s and early 1930s and the feminized amateur practice
32 ibid., p. 63; McNeil tells how Tony Fry, op. cit., favoured new methodologies to writing design histories that were textual analysis of verbal and visual documents in lieu of ‘connoisseurship and the designer-as-hero models…[seen to be] class-bound’. 33 McNeil, op. cit., 1993, p. 635.
28 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession Chapter 2
which dominated interior decoration in the inter-war period. “Decoration” became the disparaged term which was expunged from the discourse of post-World War II modern architecture and design, and the cultural production of a generation of women artists and designers demoted accordingly. 34
This reading hinted at the impact of modernism on design but ironically did not allow for the significance of the emergent modern woman who was trained in art and design and who had begun to take the lead in new developments.
Seddon, on the other hand, had recognised the importance of the woman as a designer, contrasting her new role against past notions of woman as consumer, but didn’t delve into the growing significance of women and modernism as a key element in women’s recognition.
The myriad issues raised in these overseas and Australian studies provide significant historical and critical foundations for the study of interior design in
Sydney especially in the recognition and status of women as professional designers. Seddon’s use of biography and autobiography as a means of allowing a reassessment of the relationship of individuals to professional structures importantly verified the usefulness of this approach. At the same time, none of the studies examined the nature or significance of training and education for women, nor delved into the distinct body of knowledge or theoretical bases informing early women’s understandings of design in an interior design context. Nor did the studies identify foundational leaders for interior design and critically examine their contributions to the emergent discipline and profession. Even Seddon concluded in her study of women and the British design profession that ‘analysis of women’s membership of, and participation in, the major institutions, from
34 ibid., p. 652.
29 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession Chapter 2 training through to professional practice, has demonstrated that they did not achieve key roles in the shaping of their profession’.35 This conclusion arrived out of the author’s emphasis on their significance in professional organisation rather than in the work itself or its theoretical underpinnings. This prompts critical inquiry into what constitutes significant difference in professional development.
A third Australian study by Jill Franz offers yet another perspective of significance for this thesis which focuses on the conception of design in interior design practice. Being concerned that the potential for the current discipline and the profession of interior design to enhance human life was ‘constrained by the lack of explicit interpretative-contextual understanding of design’, Franz employed a phenomenographic point of view researching how contemporary designers design and found that ‘designers understand (or experience) design in at least four different ways: experientially; structurally; in production; or in retail terms’.36 Of immediate interest to me was how this understanding of design was reflected in or perpetuated by past systems of design training or practices for interior design and why this might be important to the field’s professional development. Following on from Franz’s invitation for further research of an individual nature, my attention as suggested turned to identifying ‘individual contributing factors’ impacting the conception of design in an interior design context.37
35 Seddon, op. cit., p. 444. 36 Jill Franz, A Phenomenographic Study of Design in the Interior Design Context, PhD Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 1997, pp. v.-vi. 37 ibid., p. 12.
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The conception of design accordingly became central to this study of women and their contributions to professional development of interior design in
Sydney. This necessitated an identification of key criteria defining a profession relative to an analysis of the early women’s contributions to professional development. Importantly, asking in what way women’s positioning as constructed by broader societal forces within and outside established domains could be linked to a culture of professionalism. How were the women’s understandings of design critical to professional development, significant to their acknowledgement as foundational leaders and amenable to change overtime?
Profession and Professionalisation of Interior Design
Originally, professions were associated with the ‘learned’ of society, especially those engaged in medicine, law or theology, who obtained specific knowledge which they passed on to the public through noble service. Profession is defined generally as ‘a vocation or occupation requiring advanced training in some liberal art or science, and usually involving mental rather than manual work’.38
Professional refers to a person who is belonging to one of the professions or who is engaged in or worthy of the high standards of a profession, alternately as opposed to amateur activity, whose work is crucial to his or her economic livelihood.39 Professionals are also associated with individuals who abide by personal or professional standards set by organising bodies, professional clubs, societies or associations. Professionalism suggests a range of attributes, from quality judgements to mere social status.
38 Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, College Edition, Cleveland & NY: The World Publishing Company, 1966, p. 1163.
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Historians and writers of interior design have used the terms profession, professional, professionalism and professionalisation various times in their description and discussion of the field’s emergence, its practice and education. For instance, the society decorator Elsie de Wolfe is credited as one of the first individuals to bring the ‘concept of professionalism’ to interior decoration by receiving a fee for design services rather than a commission on the sale of furniture.40 This popular definition recognises economic advancement of women as they took their place in the workforce, but does little to advance notions of professional status or authority. Other writers have reflected on the emergent interior design profession through the rise of specialised publications and organisations,41 current perceptions of professionalism comparing professional standards of interior design against architecture,42 and analysing the field’s professional status based on the inclusion of abstract knowledge which is deemed a critical theoretical component of profession.43 Each has framed their study on a notion of profession which has become critically and theoretically defined by criteria that set standards for respective disciplines.
This study draws from scholars writing on the subject of professions who, since the 1960s, have generally used agreed-upon components to categorise professions, differentiating them from occupations, further explaining the concept
39 ibid. 40 Piotrowski, op. cit., p.8, citing Campbell & Seebohm; also see Massey, op. cit. 41 Kathryn Dethier, ‘The Early American Journals of Interiors: Reflections of an Emerging Profession’, Journal of Interior Design Education and Research, vol. 17, no. 1, 1991, pp. 37-42. 42Craig Birdsong & Patti Lawlor, ‘Perceptions of Professionalism: Interior Design Practitioners Working for the Top 100 Firms’, Journal of Interior Design Education and Research, vol. 27, no.1, 2001, pp. 20-34; and Buie Harwood, ‘Comparing the Standards in Interior Design and Architecture to Assess Similarities and Differences’, Journal of Interior Design Education and Research, vol. 17, no.1, 1991, pp. 5-18.
32 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession Chapter 2 of profession by linking key criteria to a larger social structure.44 Richard Hall, for instance, expanded upon Ernest Greenwood’s basic list of components to further explain interrelated notions of profession as they operated within society.45 These components include (a) systematic theory that can be either theoretical or applied, but is based on research; (b) professional authority which enables a professional to dictate what is ‘good or bad’ for a client; (c) sanctions from the community that are both formal and informal, and given through training and education criteria and standards, including credentialing; (d) codes of ethics that are formally and informally enforced, and (e) professional culture which includes language and symbols that differentiate the professionals from ‘outsiders’.
Scholars such as Andrew Abbott use a systems approach, the strength of which is the manner in which the model, similarly to Hall’s reveals a ‘complex mass of contingent forces’ implied by the term ‘profession’.46 Using professional jurisdiction as the unit of analysis, Abbott states that the professional model’s
‘fundamental postulates’ are (a) that the essence of a profession is its work, not its organisation; (b) that many variables affect the content and control of the work; and (c) that professions exist in an interrelated system.47
43 Caren Samter Martin, Professionalization: Architecture, Interior Decoration, and Interior Design as Defined by Abbott, M.A. Thesis, University of Minnesota, 1998. 44 For instance, see A. M. Carr-Saunders & P. A. Wilson, The Professions. London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1933; Carr-Saunders & Wilson, Professionalization in Historical Perspective. In: Vollmer and Mills, eds. Professionalization. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc.; Ernest Greenwood, The elements of professionalization, 1966, in Vollmer and Mills, eds. op. cit.; and Richard Hall, Occupations and the Social Structure. 2nd ed., Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1975. 45 Paraphrased from Nancy Marshall, ‘Into the Third Millennium: Neocorporatism, the State and the Urban Planning Profession”, PhD Thesis, Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales, 2000, citing Hall, op. cit., pp. 73-75. 46 Andrew Abbott, The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press Ltd., 1988, p. 316. 47 ibid., p. 112.
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This definition further allows for changing and recurrent patterns of activity, content base and relationships among individuals and groups within and outside a profession. This is significant as it takes into account multiple factors influencing what constitutes professional activity.
To give further context to the process of professionalisation, Harold
Wilensky offers a model giving a series of first steps that, historically, an occupation takes to become a profession.48 They are:
1) Activity becomes a full-time occupation, followed by:
2) Establishment of first training school
3) Establishment of first university school
4) Establishment of first local professional association
5) Establishment of first national association
6) Establishment of first state License law
7) Establishment of a formal code of ethics
Wilensky’s model emphasises that the process of professionalisation is subject to contemporary and historical context and is aligned with institutionalisation of practice, education and jurisdiction. Although the ordering of steps can vary within each model and in practice, each establishes key criteria and identifies systematic sequences that define profession and the processes of professionalisation.49
48 Harold Wilensky, ‘The Professionalization of Everyone?’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 70, no. 2, 1964, p. 178. 49 The concept of licensing/registration/certification of the professional interior designer is based on the need to protect health, safety and welfare of the general public. The concept of licensing interior design emerged in the United States as early as the 1950s when attempts were made to pass legislation for the state licensing of interior designers. Although unsuccessful at the time, renewed efforts in the early 1980s achieved the goal of state licensing in various states and with
34 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession Chapter 2
Caren Martin’s 1998 examination of the practices of architecture, interior decoration and interior design to determine which were ‘professions’ utilised
Abbott’s theory of professionalisation reemphasising the process from a societal standpoint or ‘how modern societies institutionalize expertise’.50 Martin examined the relationship that centres on core issues or characteristics of a profession – namely, education, ethics and jurisdiction.
In this model, as Martin points out, each characteristic refers to an aspect of professionalism. Education, the foundation for a profession, is specifically defined as the precise avenue of learning and instruction (formal), as well as experiential learning (informal). Ethics constitutes the moral or proper method in which a profession is practiced. Education and ethics define the profession from within and are made operational as internal actions are taken by the practice to frame jurisdiction in its move towards professional status. Jurisdiction refers to the when, where, and how a profession exists, for what purpose and the milieu in which it exists. As noted previously, Abbott tells how professional jurisdictions are affected by external (objective) societal forces and professions are created and maintained or eliminated within boundaries defined by the work they do within an evolutionary, unstable environment. As such, not only does the concept of profession change or adapt with the times, but the jurisdiction a profession operates within accordingly is subject to outside forces and continual change.
two possible forms – title registration and practice registration; see Birdsong & Lawlor, op. cit., pp. 22-23. 50 Martin, op. cit., citing Abbott, op. cit., p.xii. This thesis uses both Australian and American spellings of modernisation/modernization; industrialisation/industrialization, urbanisation/urbanization, democratisation/democratization, etc. Australian usage is used unless quoted from American based texts; the [sic] will not be further interjected.
35 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession Chapter 2
Martin, from a present-day perspective, was particularly interested in how jurisdiction is maintained through education pointing out that, ‘in all examples of professionalization offered by Abbott, whether medicine, law, or engineering, the terms of membership were established through formalized education followed by juried examination as a form of confirmation of abstract knowledge’.51
Significantly, she suggests that although not specifically labelled in Abbott’s process of professionalisation, there is an implied ‘identification of abstract knowledge as the signpost of a true profession, defining its jurisdictional boundaries through the control of knowledge and skill sets’.52 Martin’s emphasis on abstract knowledge as the basis of a profession’s jurisdictional claims indicated a crucial defining issue for recognition of the early women and their contributions to interior design. Subsequently, abstract knowledge was significant and could be linked to their conceptions of design.
Martin made a further point regarding professional status by connecting education and examination to institutional positioning and duration of interior design programs, believing abstract knowledge was primarily located within ‘the foundation for university education’ which was the usual setting of architecture and interior design professions. In contrast, she found the inclusion of abstract knowledge lacking in courses of interior decoration which are:
currently taught at the technical or community college level in most instances...[and which were] always based in or tightly coupled with a sales or merchandising focus…[and] that most degrees [in interior decoration today] are actually certificates and are attained in two years or less.53
51 ibid., p. 48. 52 ibid., p. 46. 53 ibid.
36 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession Chapter 2
Martin concluded that based on the effect on the boundaries between jurisdictions, the function and stratification within them and the maintenance of professional status, ‘both the profession of architecture and interior design are theoretically based…[however] the [same] theoretical basis of architecture and interior design does not exist for the practice of interior decoration’.54 This finding, posited in terms of present-day standards, inadvertently diminished by name and practice, the early profession which was known as interior decoration and its practitioners referred to as interior decorators. This signalled identity as an issue interlinked with jurisdiction and professional status.
Conclusion
This review of literature has raised multiple interrelated issues of gender and profession for the study of the early women and their contributions to interior design. Significantly, these included (a) re-evaluation of stereotyped images of the female decorator and identities that have overshadowed critical analysis of women’s contributions to the development of the profession, (b) investigation into the changing and recurrent milieu (jurisdiction) in which the early women operated and their initiatives in framing this jurisdiction through education and ethics and (c) women’s understanding (experience) of design which constitutes critical theoretical and applied knowledge important to professional development and jurisdiction.
Accordingly, to address issues concerning women’s significance and their critical contributions to the professional development of interior design, this
54 ibid.
37 Theoretical Framework Part 1: Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession Chapter 2 chapter concludes by identifying key criteria that will be used to evaluate individual (Chapters 5-9) and collective contributions of five women to professional development of interior design in Sydney from the 1920s to 1960s
(Chapter 10). The criteria puts into perspective the process of professionalisation as occupations become professions by outlining a series of actions that individuals and groups take to define profession and key components that set standards in order to frame and maintain jurisdiction. This set of criteria recognises that concepts of profession can change over time and that professions and professional status are subject to broader societal forces. The criteria used in this study to evaluate the women’s contributions to professional development are as follows:
1) First training established, followed by first schools, then university education as steps in the professionalisation process.
2) Systematic theory either theoretical (abstract) or applied, especially, based on research.
3) Professional authority which enables a professional to dictate what is ‘good or bad’ for a client.
4) Community sanction received both formally and informally, and given through training and education criteria and standards, including credentialing.
5) Professional association and code of ethics formally and informally enforced.
6) Professional culture and identity which includes language and symbols that differentiate professionals from ‘outsiders’.
38 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK PART 2: OVERARCHING ISSUES OF MODERNITY
Introduction
This chapter provides the second of a two-part theoretical framework for the study of women and modernity in interior design. Using Hilde Heynen’s conceptions of the modern as a springboard, the chapter defines and explains overarching and interrelated aspects of modernisation, modernism(s) and modernity that are relevant to this study of women and interior design during a modernising period of the field’s development.1 This investigation identifies key features and debates for each conception, further discussing the evolution of these ideas and their significance in relation to women and the professional development of interior design.
The chapter first defines and explains modernisation from a broad perspective before honing in on its relevance to women. The study identifies conflicts, contradictions and paradoxes within concepts of modernisation, bringing to the forefront issues of patriarchy, and explaining values attached to differentiated, engendered and institutionalised spheres. Secondly, the chapter defines modernism in terms of the abstract theoretical and artistic features which provoked claims for aesthetic autonomy in relation to societal modernisation and cultural modernity. Modernism’s history provides background to these debates and through its representation periodises the ‘Modern Movement’ for art and
1 Hilde Heynen, Architecture and Modernity, Cambridge, Mass. & London: MIT Press, 1999.
39 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 design fields.2 This study briefly engages with the historiography of women designer’s contribution to modernism.
Paul Greenhalgh’s conceptualisation of twelve features of modernism in design provides a useful entry into a number of modernist debates for design fields and forms the basis for a critique of modernism in interior design. Additional interpretations of modernism reveal the simultaneously conflicting, plural and transitional nature of modernism(s) which contribute to a richer critique of modernism in interior design. Individual and collective analyses of women’s conceptions of modernism in interior design will follow in Chapters 5 to 9 and
Chapter 10, respectively. These conceptions will ultimately be linked to critical and requisite knowledge of interior design.
Building on the societal (or systemic) models of modernisation and the more individualistic impetus behind theorising modernism, this chapter finally seeks to define and explain modernity in relation to interior design in Australia. Described by Hilde Heynen as ‘the typical features of modern times and to the way that these features are experienced by the individual’,3 this chapter investigates modernity in relation to the experiences of five Sydney-based women and conditions under which interior design developed from 1920s to 1960s.
This review of literature ultimately is concerned with explaining complex interrelationships impacting the development of interior design as a specialised field, emergent profession and engendered domain for women. The chapter’s
2 The term the ‘Modern Movement’ was coined in 1936 by Nichols Pevsner, Pioneers of the Modern Movement from William Morris to Walter Gropius, later published as Pioneers of Modern Design from William Morris to Walter Gropius, NY: Museum of Modern Art, 1949, 2nd ed., Pevsner traces the sources of the movement from William Morris to Walter Gropius. 3 Heynen, op. cit., p. 10.
40 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 intent is to draw together issues of gender and profession previously discussed with overarching issues of modernity that contribute to an analysis of five women as leaders who gave shape to interior design as a discipline and profession.
Ultimately, their stories and legacy contribute to a wider picture of women and modernity in interior design.
Definition and Explanation of ‘Modernisation’
Modernization is used to describe the process of social development, the main features of which are technological advances and industrialization, urbanization and population explosions, the rise of bureaucracy and increasingly powerful national states, an enormous expansion of mass communication systems, democratization, and an expanding (capitalist) world market.4
Definition of Modernisation
The term modernisation in a general sense refers to becoming modern or conforming to present-day practice, standards or taste. Specifically, it is characterised by technological, economic and social changes of industrially- advanced societies that resulted from forces that can be traced to two great revolutions of eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe. From the first—the
French Revolution of 1789—democratic ideals of universal liberty and equality were fostered. From the second—the so-called ‘Industrial Revolution’— industrialisation propelled by the rise of science and the availability of capital meant production by machine. Modernisation also meant (a) growing cities and new kinds of urbanisation; (b) organisation of labour and specialisation of productive work; (c) new distribution means; increased trans-oceanic
4 ibid.
41 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 transportation and communication; (d) an increasing abundance of goods, entrepreneurs, and customers; (e) new educational requirements; (f) rising middle classes; and (g) new patterns of social relationships.
Dominant Principles of Modernisation
Modernisation theory refers to dominant principles that are linked to its democratic ideals and industrial aims. Significant to these is the notion of
‘development’ which, as David Harrison points out, ‘is inevitably linked to some idea of progress, which involves a change, perhaps an evolution, from one state to another, both of which may be “real” or idealized’.5 Harrison uses Durkheim’s explanation in which: ‘societies evolve from lower to higher stages, and move from the simple and undifferentiated to the more complex’ as demonstrated in
Western industrialised society, with its highly developed division of labour.6
Notions of development embody a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ in which there is a presumed ‘advantage and superiority’ attached to progress by ‘intellectuals, planners and politicians who have been socialized’, meaning indoctrinated, into the values and actions of a modernist position.7
Accordingly, in the process of modernisation, it is the educated élites’
‘appointed task’ to actively draw people away from tradition and to drag them into a modern twentieth-century sector that is ‘industrial, capital-intensive and highly rational’.8 Rationalisation, a form of intellectual reasoning, within this argument is
5 David Harrison, The Sociology of Modernization & Development, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988, p. 153. 6 ibid., p. 3. Harrison notes that some of the main elements of nineteenth-century evolutionary theory can be seen in the work of Durkheim, especially in The Division of Labour in Society (1964, first published 1893). 7 ibid., p. 151. 8 ibid., pp. 149-151.
42 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 further linked to the philosophical concept of structural functionalism and systems of action that are deemed as ‘necessary, habitual, and internalized aspects of the wider value system’ of a modernist society.9 Peter Bürger adds, drawing from the social theorist Max Weber (1864-1920), that:
the distinctive mark of capitalist societies…lies in the fact that in these societies the process…[of] rationalization comes to full development. This process concerns, on the one hand the faculty to dominate things by calculation, on the other, the systematization of world-views and, finally, the elaboration of a systematic way of life.10
According to this argument, the principle of rationalisation shapes all areas of human activity in the Western capitalist world.
Modernisation is also cast as universalising in its impact, holding out the promise of progressively increasing wealth through the political economy of capitalism for the celebration of human creativity, scientific discovery and the pursuit of intellectual excellence.11 Jürgen Habermas refers to these aims and ideals as the ‘project of modernity’ which brought into focus the rational intentions of Enlightenment thinkers ‘to develop objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art according to their inner logic…this project intended [at the same time] to release the cognitive potentials of each of these domains from their esoteric forms’ and put these knowledges to use for practical purposes.12 As such, modernisation’s intention is to utilise the accumulation of
9 ibid., pp. 9-10. 10 Peter Bürger, The Decline of Modernism, Oxford: Polity Press, 1991, p. 3. 11 See Terry Smith, ‘Modernity’, in Jane Turner, ed., Dictionary of Art, NY: MacMillan & Co., pp. 777-9; and Jürgen Habermas, ‘Modernity – An Incomplete Project’, in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti- Aesthetic, Essays on Postmodern Culture, pp. 3-15; originally published as ‘Modernity Versus Postmodernity’, in New German Critique 22, Winter 1983, p. 81. 12 ibid.
43 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 specialised culture (abstract and applied knowledge) for the enrichment and rational organisation of everyday life.
Although universalising in its ambitions, Alan Swingewood points to a
Weberian argument that explains how as a result of rationalised systems a pluralist structure of differentiated value spheres emerged:
…modernity begins precisely with the progressive rationalisation of institutions and culture, [also] with the breakup of a unified, dominant world-view and value system and the emergence of a pluralist structure of differentiated “value spheres”, including the political and the economic, the intellectual and the scientific, and the aesthetic and the “erotic” (the personal sphere).13
Inherent within this account is the idea that modern society is no longer characterised by an overarching ideology previously expressed in unified world- views of religion and metaphysics, but is separated by a network of autonomous spheres, each with an accompanying set of competing values. Each activity is judged by inherent values within.
Weber refers to this concept of differentiated value spheres as ‘cultural modernity’ which is further characterised by institutionalisation of each sphere.
Habermas further explains how within this institutionalisation of distinct spheres
(also referred to as fields or domains) a culture of professionalisation was fostered:
Since the 18th century, the problems inherited from these older world- views [of religion and the metaphysical] could be arranged so as to fall under specific aspects of validity: truth, normative rightness, authenticity and beauty. They could then be handled as questions of knowledge, or of justice and morality, or of taste. Scientific discourse, theories of morality, jurisprudence, and the production and criticism of art could in turn be institutionalized. Each domain of culture could be made to correspond to
13 Alan Swingewood, Cultural Theory and the Problem of Modernity, London: MacMillan Press, 1998, p. 25. Italics are my emphasis.
44 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3
cultural professions in which problems could be dealt with as the concerns of special experts. 14
Thus, Habermas explains that as new developments took place in areas such as science, art, law and morality, the attachment of different values became assigned to separate spheres. These valued spheres, in turn, were connected with their institutionalisation under the control of special experts. The rise of experts, correspondingly, was linked with a process of professionalisation within each cultural domain, the domains dominated by distinct principles and structures.
Habermas acknowledges that while this institutionalisation of separate domains was instrumental in the development of professions and establishment of a professional culture in turn promoting and defining specialist knowledge for each domain, at the same time, with increasing differentiation and specialisation under the control of experts, a distance grew ‘between the culture of experts and that of the larger public’, resulting in everyday praxis becoming devalued.15 This put into jeopardy the intentions of Enlightenment thinkers to put to practical purposes the potential of specialist knowledge.
Habermas’ concern with increasing instrumental rationality was its threat to ‘the life-world’ whose traditional substance—already devalued—would become more and more impoverished.16 The life-world (a conception first introduced by Schutz) was taken up by Habermas to propose how this impoverishment could be modified to relate back to a broader social system.
Habermas’ aim was to establish new connections which would steer societal
14 Habermas, op. cit., p. 9. 15 ibid. 16 ibid.
45 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 modernisation in another direction and curb the growing tide of cultural impoverishment. This was to be achieved by a relinking of modern culture with everyday praxis that still depended on ‘vital heritages, but would be impoverished through mere traditionalism’.17 Habermas’ ultimate concern in the reconnecting of specialist knowledge with everyday praxis resided in the possibility of completing the project of modernity.
These arguments in praise of modernisation’s predominant features, i.e. notions of development, progress and advancement, increasing rationalisation giving rise to pluralist structures and systems, specialised domains and, subsequently, the dilemmas of institutionalisation and professionalisation under the control of experts, add complexity and ambiguity to the critique of the early women as foundational leaders in the development of interior design. Especially, in that these women were neither totally part of modernisation’s rational universalising aims nor were they and their specialised engendered sphere and everyday practices as interior decorators and designers removed from its processes. Differentiated value spheres made problematic the roles and positions of women and brought into focus prevailing representations and interpretations that omit or ignore the early women as critical exponents of interior design, devalue their work and relegate them little professional status. At question is not only how this occurred but how this study of five women and their relationship to these features of modernisation can give new perspective to their seminal roles in the development of interior design as a discipline and profession.
17 ibid.
46 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3
Modernisation and Women: The Consequence of Differentiated Spheres
Explanation of the modernisation problem for women is usually connected with the development of capitalism whereby from the late-eighteenth century onwards, as Harrison point out, ‘a corresponding bias on the part of male-dominated theorists, planners, and politicians resulted in sexual divisions of labour and distinct fields associated with women’s traditional work’.18 Aurelia Armstrong traces the preoccupation with sex as a controlling feature as it emerged and took hold in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries referencing Foucault’s first volume of The History of Sexuality, explaining that ‘sex and sexuality became crucial political issues in a society concerned with managing and directing the life of individuals and of populations’.19
The engendering of domains is distinguished as constructed through cultural and social systems. As Bonnie Kime Scott tells, gender unlike sex is not
‘a biological fact determined at conception’ but one that is imposed by society and, although both men and women participate in the social and cultural systems of gender, it is ‘more imposed’ upon women, ‘more disqualifying’, ‘more intriguing’ and ‘stimulating to their creativity’.20 Rita Felski adds to this argument that ‘gender affects not just the factual content of historical knowledge—what is included and what gets left out—but also the philosophical assumptions
18 Harrison, op. cit., p. 152. 19 Aurelia Armstrong, ‘Foucault and Feminism’. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, University of Queensland, http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/f/foucfem.htm, c. 2003, p. 3. Armstrong refers to Foucault’s account of what the spread of what is referred to as bio-power in his first volume of The History of Sexuality. 20 Bonnie Kime Scott, ed., The Gender of Modernism, Bloomington and Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 1990, pp. 2-3.
47 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 underlying our interpretations of the nature and meaning of social processes’.21
This suggests we must be wary of the construction of historical knowledge and cognisant of the fact that as Harrison suggests, ‘women’s voices have been ignored more systematically than those of men’.22 As a consequence, women’s work has been more ignored and more disqualified than men’s.
It is widely accepted that this representation of women’s work resulted from changes taking place during the latter stages of the nineteenth century when under increasing pressure of industrialisation and urbanisation home and workplace split and an association arose between women and domesticity, in which work in the domestic domain was deemed subordinate, and thus, inferior to that of men’s conducted within the public sphere.
The preoccupation with sexual distinction during the modernising years of the 1880s-1920s and its associated ‘competing factors’, as argued by Marianne
DeKoven, grew with the advent of the modern woman.23 Sexual distinction became an expression of male modernist fear of women’s new power, exemplified by the modern woman who, dedicated to emancipation and equality, did not accept traditional distinctions and lingering ideas based on sex and sexuality but challenged them. This ‘New Woman’, described as independent, usually single rather than married, educated, (relatively) sexually liberated, was ‘oriented more toward productive life in the public sphere than toward reproductive life in the
21 Rita Felski, The Gender of Modernity, Cambridge, Mass & London: Harvard University Press, 1995, p. 1. 22 Harrison. op. cit., p. 152. 23 Marianne DeKoven, ‘Modernism and Gender’, p. 174, in M. Levenson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 174-193.
48 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 home’.24 Her aspirations, supposedly inspired by Virginia Woolf’s ‘Professions for Women’, were those of the ‘empowered new modern woman’ who was dedicated to the advancement of women, their education and entrance into the professions.25
Yet, this new modern woman while choosing entrance into the public sphere was required to use her so-called natural feminine traits, talents and traditional jurisdictions alongside newly acquired knowledge and rationalised processes to advance both within and outside private and public domains.
Women’s simultaneous acceptance and rejection of traditional structures and systems even empowerment by them thus suggest a more complex situation existed with regard to entrenched patriarchal relationships. Feminist art historian
Griselda Pollock offers some explanation saying:
Patriarchy does not refer to the static, oppressive domination of one sex over another, but a web of psycho-social relationships which institute a socially significant difference on the axis of sex which is so deeply located in our very sense of lived sexual identity that it appears to us natural and unalterable.26
This suggests patriarchy operates on conscious and unconscious levels.
Thus, as the domain of interior decoration came to be constructed by men as being ‘feminine’, women accepted this culturally constructed direction as an opportunity to advance. Thus, they accepted and valued interior decoration as a natural career and means of empowerment. Through their active participation, they could forge new directions within the engendered and specialised domain by which they would mark progress. At the same time, their participation within the
24 ibid. 25 ibid. 26 Griselda Pollock, ‘Vision, Voice, and Power: Feminist Art History and Marxism’, Block 6, 1982, p. 10.
49 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 newly defined profession and its developments would not (could not) remain static and tied to past traditions but would advance within the context of the time: their contributions and achievements not isolated but interdependent on other developments. Of significance would be the reassessment of the arts and artist in society.
Modernisation and the Development of an Engendered Design Specialisation
The rise of ‘interior decoration’ at the end of the nineteenth century as a new occupation (profession) for women emerged at the same time as the development of other design specialisations. In the early twentieth century and following the arguments of John Ruskin (as in Political Economy of Art, 1857), Roger Fry, in his influential book Vision and Design (1920 productions), raised concern over the great number of artists in existence without opportunity to expand and function in a system devoid of aristocratic patronage. In his deliberations, Fry lamented the current system of the ‘plutocrat’ (described as the wealthy but uneducated consumer without taste for art), coupled with the pseudo-system of art appreciation of the nineteenth century that valued art as mere symbols of social distinction. He also questioned the future of artists who no longer had the advantage of élite patronage and suggested that if the skills of the artist as a
‘creator of purely ideal and abstract works’ could be applied to the ordinary objects of everyday life, both artist and production would benefit as follows:
…if we [look to the applied arts and] suppose a state in which all the ordinary objects of daily life – our chairs and tables, our carpets and pottery – expressed something of this reasonableness instead of a crazy and vapid fantasy, the artist as a pure creator might become, not indeed
50 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3
of less importance – rather more – but a less acute necessity to our general living than he is to-day. 27
The ‘reasonableness’ or use of artistic knowledge and skill that Fry referred to was central to modernist design reform movements of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe. The initiatives, led primarily by men, were associated first with Aesthetic and Arts & Crafts movements in
England and later with the Werkbund and famed Bauhaus schools in Germany.
They addressed aesthetic, social, economic and increasingly technological concerns for the arts and its systems of production. The intention was to improve standards by counteracting (controlling) the effects of unprecedented industrial expansion, a rising uneducated middle-class consumer, the proliferation of product that expressed little artistic or technical merit and a rising number of artists who could apply their knowledge and skill to the creation and production of everyday objects and living. To ensure standards, education and training were required.
Connected to these initiatives was the problem of institutionalising art which differentiated between what Bernard Smith refers to as ‘special art’, i.e. the fine arts that were elevated and associated with élite status in society and ‘useful’ arts, identified as practical activities involving the production of functional or utilitarian goods made for the masses.28 The latter made art a quasi-autonomous activity that operated within the socio-economic realm of the new industrialised society, as Smith further relates:
From an economic viewpoint this was but another case of the division of labour stimulated by the rise of the bourgeoisie and the development of
27 Roger Fry, Vision and Design, London: Chatto & Windus, 1920, pp. 42-43. 28 Bernard Smith, Modernism’s History, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1998.
51 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3
industrial society. Art was work of a special kind, a kind of creative or spiritual labour, to be distinguished from mundane work. The fine arts were to be distinguished from the ‘useful’ arts.29
Although many women had gained entrance to art and design schools since the late nineteenth century learning artistic principles and techniques, their work was largely associated with amateur artistic activities of watercolour painting, sketching, china painting and metalwork or confined to decorative design work learning practical skills, such as embroidery, textile weaving and pottery primarily intended for personal development and use rather than for professional or economic advantage; their training situated variously within the fine arts academy system or crafts-based design schools. Accordingly, their productions and training were both part of and removed from design reform initiatives usually lagging behind responses to the larger aims of modernisation whereby industrialisation translated to the production of goods for the masses.
As interior decoration was identified as an ideal profession for women, specialised training became a concern—measured especially against standards in architecture which was the established domain of men. Suffragette Candace
Wheeler noted as early as 1895 in her article, Interior Decoration as a Profession for Women, the limitations of entrenched divisions while also accepting prevailing attitudes that associated artistic women with the new profession:
…perhaps the very appropriateness of…[interior decoration] to a woman’s capacity may be misleading and mischievous, since it is very likely to prevent the serious and comprehensive study without which no profession can be worthily followed or its practice genuinely respected…Interior decoration, at its best, certainly demands very varied and exact knowledge…it requires the gifts of the artist as well as those of the woman, and it requires much special training.30
29 ibid., p. 32. 30 Candace Wheeler, ‘Interior Decoration as a Profession for Women, Part 1’, New Outlook, N.Y., 6 April 1895, p. 559.
52 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3
Conscious of new demands, Wheeler further warned that to attain professional status equal to that which men had already gained, women required the benefit of formal training—one that set standards by teaching principles rather than mere small facts. This training entailed systematically acquired knowledge that would establish women’s new rational (theoretical, artistic and practical) authority.
By their actions and specialised expertise, modern women could advance by participating in modernisation’s processes of development. In modernising their chosen field of interior decoration and subsequently interior design, women would mark progress by their contributions by addressing the many changes taking place. This would be achieved by connecting specialist expert knowledge to modern everyday praxis and needs. Critical to this process of advancement and professional development was the acquisition of specialist knowledge and understanding of larger principles that set standards for the profession rather than mere small facts. This setting of standards (their responses) connected to modernism are referred to in this paper as the abstract and applied artistic theoretical ideas of design.
Definition and Explanation of ‘Modernism’
Modernism is defined as ‘the generic term for those theoretical and artistic ideas about modernity that aim to enable men and women to assume control over the changes that are taking place in the work by which they are to be changed’.31
31 Heynen, op. cit., p. 10; Heynen uses Marshall Berman’s definition of modernism; who also indicates that modernisms have a more specialised definition for individual disciplines.
53 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3
Definition of Modernism
Modernism, generally, refers to the so-called subjective theoretical and artistic ideas, pursuits and responses of artists, writers, musicians, architects and designers who working individually and collectively seek to create, challenge and represent the ideas of their time through their work.32 It is the term applied to the ‘invention and the effective pursuit of artistic strategies that seek not just close but essential connections to the powerful forces of social modernity’.33 Modernism, as such, is described as the ‘aesthetic logic’ of a modernising society, built on principles of differentiation and autonomy and often sees itself as counteracting certain negative aspects of modernisation, i.e. the selfish and pernicious ends of commerce, nationalism, industrialisation, and an impersonalising urbanisation.34
From the outset, modernism was a declaration against its predecessor’s ideas, in particular, the excesses of the Victorian era. A typical strategy of modernists was as Terry Smith points out, ‘to provoke the shock of the new, to reveal the present as replete with blindingly self-evident value and, at the same instant, to consign the recent past to anachronism’.35 In avant-garde forms, modernist art insisted on the ‘necessity of art’s autonomy, its experimentality’.36
Modernism’s association with the work of art and the artist’s assumed ‘aura of creativity, of dedication to art for art’s sake, in order to produce a cultural object
32 See Terry Smith, ‘Modernism’, in Jane Turner, ed., Dictionary of Art, 1996, pp. 775-7; Paul Greenhalgh, Modernism in Design, London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 1990; and John Pile., A History of Interior Design. NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2000. 33 Smith, ibid., p. 775. 34Swingewood, 1998, op. cit., and Art Berman, Preface to Modernism, Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994. 35 Smith, op. cit., p. 776. 36 Terry Smith, ‘Modernity’, in Jane Turner, ed., op. cit. p. 778.
54 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 that would be original, unique, and hence eminently marketable at a monopoly price’ would, as David Harvey states, result in an aesthetically informed activity—one often seen as highly individualistic, aristocratic, and disdainful, particularly of popular culture.37 Modernism assumed an élite idea.
Modernism was revolutionary and reactionary. As a condition of postmodernity, Harvey at the same time tells how modernism fused high art and popular culture, utopian ideals and purposeful aims: its ends intended to meet new conditions of modern production, circulation and consumption. As such, modernism was absorbed by and fascinated with diverse elements and oppositions of its times—this mirrored in its plurality and complexity to the degree that, as
Harvey continues, ‘modernism internalized its own maelstrom of ambiguities, contradictions, and pulsating aesthetic changes at the same time as it sought to affect the aesthetics of daily life’.38 This meant that modernism could not be simply defined and prompted necessary questions for this study of women and interior design: How could (should) modernism in interior design be defined?
Where does interior design as a specialised design profession reside within modernism’s history? Where do women contribution’s fit within this history and how can they be evaluated?
Modernism’s History and Key Debates
Modernism is not confined to or defined by one starting point, single idea or discipline. Some early usages of the term ‘modernism’, Terry Smith explains,
37 David Harvey, ‘Modernity and Modernism’, The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989, p. 22. 38 ibid.
55 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 surfaced in literature in the ‘context of the recurrent battle between the new and the old…in 1737 Jonathan Swift complained to Alexander Pope about “the corruption of English by those Scribblers, who send us over their trash in Prose and Verse, with abominable curtailings and quaint modernisms”.’39 Bernard
Smith dates the ‘first of the modernisms of Modernity’ in Europe to the
Renaissance and Reformation (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) when the status of art and the artist in society were first linked to dilemmas of modern artistic production under pressure of continual change.40 H. H. Arnason cites similar reasons but establishes the early nineteenth century as modernism’s beginning for the fine arts when a culmination of separate developments took place:
…shifts in patterns of patronage, in the role of the French Academy, in the system of art instruction, in the artist’s position in society and, especially, in the artist’s attitude toward artistic means and issues – toward subject matter, expression, and literary content, toward color [sic], drawing, and the problem of the nature and purpose of a work of art.41
Paul Greenhalgh situates modernism for design fields within two chronological phases starting at the outset of World War I and continuing to the early 1970s defining it as ‘the artistic and theoretical aims’ of architects, artists and designers of the ‘Modern Movement’.42 The first more idealistic phase, he labels the ‘Pioneer phase…opening amid the deafening thunder of the guns of the
First World War and closing with the demise of the key movements between 1929 and 1933’.43 This phase, accordingly, was essentially a set of ideas, a vision of
39 Terry Smith, op. cit., 1996, p. 776. 40 Bernard Smith., op. cit., 1998, pp. 16-17. 41 H. H. Arnason. A History of Modern Art, London: Thames & Hudson, 1981, first published in 1969, p.13. 42Greenhalgh, op cit., p. 2. 43 ibid.
56 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 how the designed world could transform human consciousness and improve material conditions. The second phase, referred to as the International Style,44 opening in the early 1930s ‘rolled on’ until the end of the 1970s, and was principally concerned with the appearance of things and with their manufacture.45
This latter phase is distinguished as less an idea than a style and a technology marked by confusing years of transition from one state to another, with varying levels of pure modernism developing in various countries. Although Greenhalgh does not talk specifically of interior design, this timeframe and set of ideas aptly coincide with the active period of five women who are the focus of this study.
John Pile, in his History of Interior Design, also correlates modernism with the Modern Movement but traces the aesthetic ‘impulses of modernism’ for the twentieth century to ‘a return to the consistency of style (but not the specifics of detail) of the eighteenth century’. This logical starting point relates to the rational return to ‘consistency of character, order and logic in concepts, and elegance and restraint in detail’ so that a sense of unity prevailed.46 Thus, Pile subscribes to a modern rationalist definition.
Modern design in the twentieth century developed through a range of ideas emanating from nineteenth-century artistic and technological movements responding to aesthetic, functional and social aims and everyday needs. Ideals of beauty, truth to material and production prevailed alongside rising debates concerning the importance of pure form defined as design. Design was intended to
44 The International Style was defined by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Phillip Johnson, The International Style, 1966, NY: W. W. Norton & Co. first published in 1932 under the title The International Style: Architecture since 1922. 45 ibid. 46 Pile, op. cit. 2000, p. 153.
57 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 counteract burgeoning production of ill-conceived objects distributed through an extensive international exhibition system and marketed to a broadened consumer audience. The term design became aligned with a modernist narrative that took root from the 1920s onwards, spread through writings of art critics, notably those of Clive Bell (published in Art, 1914) and Roger Fry (Vision and Design, 1920) in
England, and later by American art critic Clement Greenberg in the 1960s.
This modernist critique of the arts fostered a principle of aesthetic autonomy that importantly privileged (valued) a formalist (visual form) aesthetic over a socio-historical one that had been traditional to studies of the arts, architecture and decorative design.47 A formal aesthetic became an essential element of modern art and design entrenched by ideological movements who by the early twentieth century proclaimed form and its organisation ‘not only as avant garde but as its raison d’etre’.48 Modernism’s ideas were promoted through the creation of new art markets such as the Armory Show, New York in 1913, as well as through the international exhibition system of which the Paris L’Exposition
Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes of 1925 was most
47 Bernard Smith, op. cit., p. 32; Smith traces the formalist aesthetic historically to eighteenth century modernist discourse explaining that one line of this aesthetic descent may be traced through the discourse developed by the German historians of art during the nineteenth century, in particular through Winckelmann’s concept of style that like Hogarth (1697-1794) before him had reduced aesthetic value to a question of visual form. Historians, he says, became increasingly aware that the visual arts, though a relatively autonomous activity, nevertheless issued from society. However, despite the possibility of a social history of art by the end of the century their intensely dialectical discourse came down, for all practical purposes, in favour of a formalist aesthetic. 48 Joy M. Malnar & Frank Volvarka, The Interior Dimension, NY: Van Nostrand, 1992. The authors discuss two notions of form in design relative to the design of interior space. One understanding of ‘form’ (design as an aesthetic) is independent yet part of ‘a design-continuum’ and, the other understanding of ‘form’ (design in a practical sense as an applied process) ‘operates as programmatic tool’: the first concept relating to an abstract idea manifest in visual form that was initially reserved for the fine arts and the second aspect of design as an organisational tool for the practical arts.
58 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 important to modern design, and later with the opening of the Museum of Modern
Art (MOMA) in 1931.
The French term ‘Moderne’ was used to promote modern design which came to be understood as ‘a designation for a new style [Art Deco and streamlined styles]…which in English took on the name Modernistic’.49 In Pile’s account, the new post World War I style was not strongly concerned with issues of functionalism or technology but merely incorporated the new artistic patterns and materials of the times. This styling references for instance the furniture of luxury designers such as Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann (1879-1933) and Jean-Michel Frank
(1895-1951) who made use of simplified forms drawing from new directions in modern art but who also maintained the use of fine craftsmanship and rich materials appealing to a wealthy clientele. The names Moderne and Modernistic,
Pile states, distinguished the work as modern which simply meant recent or current. This differentiated the work from traditional period styles, on the one hand, but also from the earlier experimental work of avant garde and pure modernism—characterised by rational logic and simplicity of form. In the fine arts by the 1960s, ‘modernism’ became the umbrella used by historians and critics for mainstream tendencies in twentieth-century abstract art as diverse as Symbolism,
Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, Constructivism, Surrealism, Futurism, New
Realism, Minimalism and others.50
In architecture, modernism translated conceptually and formally through its significant ideas. These ideas were first addressed in 1936 by Nikolaus Pevsner
49 Pile, op. cit. 2000, p. 290. 50 Terry Smith, op. cit. 1996.
59 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 who immortalised modernism’s architectural ‘pioneers’, later in Sigfried
Giedion’s ‘space/time’ critique of 1941, and Reyner Banham’s ‘technic’ of architecture of 1962, all of which were indebted to Louis Sullivan’s
‘functionalism’ which held reign as the basis of modern architecture and design.51
Through MOMA, art aficionado Alfred H. Barr Jr. promoted modernism’s shared attributes as represented in the International Style through new architecture and the modern doctrine of the already famous Bauhaus school. Through teachers, artists, designers and architects who escaped Nazi Germany to settle in America,
England, Australia and other countries, modern ideas and ideals spread.
The pioneering architects Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), Walter
Gropius (1881-1969), Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) and Le Corbusier (1887-
1965) in particular gained status as the originators of the modern movement credited with defining ‘new directions with such clarity and force that their principles and practices came to dominate in the name of modernism’.52 These modern masters have subsequently become embedded in histories of architecture representing also modernism in interior design. Pile also acknowledges the work of industrial designers such as Raymond Loewy (1893-1986) and Russell Wright
(1904-76) for their contributions to modern design.
In contrast to these modern (male) architectural and industrial design exemplars, Pile associates the early interior designers (known as interior
51 Nicholas Pevsner, op. cit.; Sigfried Giedion, Space Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Traditionalism, 1941, 5th ed., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967; Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1962, 2nd ed., London: Butterworth, 1988; as discussed by Paul Alan Johnson, The Theory of Architecture, Concepts, Themes, & Practices, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1994, p. 9. 52 Pile, op. cit. 2000, p. 266.
60 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 decorators) with past traditions referring to the rise of the interior decorator and the profession of interior decoration as a ‘Reaction to Modernism’, which he says developed to fill the need for ‘design specialists who had the knowledge and skill to produce rooms in styles appropriate’ to the eclectic architecture of the day.53
Pile identifies Elsie de Wolfe, Ruby Ross Woods, Eleanor McMillen, Rose
Cumming, mentioning briefly Nancy McClelland, Elsie Cobb Wilson, Francis
Elkins, Syrie Maugham, and Dorothy Draper amongst these practitioners.54 Pile briefly acknowledges modern women designers Eileen Gray (1878-1976), Lily
Reich (1885-1947), Gunta Stölzl (1897-1983), and Marianne Brandt (1893-1983) who entered the Bauhaus studios and have more recently gained attention for their modern interiors, furniture, textiles and metalwork, but essentially for Pile, no identity exists for modernism in interior design outside an architectural history.
The distancing of the early decorator’s work from modernism as defined through a classic modernist critique of form, function and technic has contributed to the early women’s lack of acknowledgement as modern exponents of interior design.55 Therefore, critical inquiry into the early women’s significance poses questions: In what way was their understanding of design common to or different from the classic modernist (architecturally-driven) critique and how could these women’s theoretical artistic ideas (modernism) in interior design be evaluated?
53 ibid., p. 255. 54 ibid., p. 324. 55 Stanley Abercrombie, A Century of Interior Design 1900-2000. NY: Rizzoli, 2003; in his recent history of interior design includes the contributions of women and educators for interior design as well as gives notations on the professional progress for the field.
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Towards a Richer Critique of Modernism in Interior Design
Paul Greenhalgh provides a useful critique for design fields describing his conceptualisation through twelve features of modernism in design. Although and because Greenhalgh does not mention interior design focusing primarily on architecture, the framework provides a valuable basis for a critique of the five
Sydney-based women and their conceptions of design. Active in interior design from the 1920s to 1960s in Sydney, the women and thus their conceptions of design parallel the artistic and theoretical ideas, ideals and aims of the Modern
Movement as described by Greenhalgh. Subsequently, this allows analysis of convergences and divergences between individuals and groups of designers. The features and a brief description of each in turn—drawn from the author—follow his order. Collectively they encompass the aesthetic, social and technological aims and ideals of modernists during this modernising time. They are as follows:
1) Decompartmentalisation of human experience. The single most important ideal of the modernists was to break down ‘barriers between aesthetics, technics, and society, in order that an appropriate design of the highest visual and practical quality could be produced for the mass of the population’.56
2) Social morality. As a feature of modernism, social morality was intended to improve the conditions of the population and, as such, was a statement of the social aims of the age.
3) Truth as a moral value. This transposed into being simultaneously an aesthetic quality. ‘Truth as an ideal led, therefore, to a wholesale rejection of decoration, especially when it was perceived to be an element added after the major constructional work had taken place. Decoration could only mask the structural and spatial honesty of the object.’57
56 Greenhalgh, op. cit., p. 8. 57 ibid., p. 9.
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4) The total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk). In the Modernist world, the various visual arts would work in conjunction in order to create a total work of art. ‘The fine, applied, decorative and design arts should be a single continuum, allowing for their different practical functions and production techniques…[The Bauhaus in particular] resented the privileged status enjoyed by some arts over others.’58
5) Technology. ‘Technology had to be used in its most advanced forms in order to facilitate economy and, from this, availability. Mass production and prefabrication were embraced as being the means through which Modernism would arrive on the streets. Beyond this, the standardisation of components would allow for the rapid erection and repair of objects.’59
6) Function. ‘The successful functioning of all designed produce was deemed of great importance’. Connected to functioning was rationalism, quoting Walter Gropius: ‘In the conviction that household appliances and furnishings must be rationally related to each other, the Bauhaus is seeking—by systematic, practical and theoretical research in the formal, technical and economic fields—to derive the design of an object from its natural functions and relationships.’60
7) Progress. The concept of progress was a central driving force. ‘Modernists believed in the idea of aesthetic advance, rather than simply of aesthetic change.’61
8) Anti-historicism. As the majority of ornament was historical, anti-historicism was synonymous with anti-decoration. ‘Anti- historicism also led to a redefinition of the meaning of the word “style”. Prior to the twentieth century, styles were associated with particular periods or cultural groups and used in order to reflect their meaning in the object. It had been previously inconceivable that a designer could have his own style, or that an object of aesthetic value could have no style.’62
9) Abstraction—the key aesthetic device employed by the majority of designers. Abstract art eliminated figurative and symbolic elements in favour of the manipulation of ‘pure’ form. ‘The search for purity was closely related to the idea of truth…The
58 ibid., p. 10. 59 ibid. 60 ibid., quoting Gropius, Principles of Bauhaus Production, Dessau, 1926. 61 ibid., p. 11. 62 ibid.
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abstract form of an object was normally developed within the parameters of the structure, rather than as an addition to it.’63
10) Internationalism/universality—two ideas that meant virtually the same thing for Pioneer Moderns. The objective of internationalism and universality was timelessness without place which had both a political and aesthetic rationale. If barriers between disciplines and classes of consumer were to be eliminated, and historical styles as indicators of chronological divides were to be proscribed, then inevitably national differences had to go. The Modern Movement was unavoidably internationalist in outlook and sought universal human consciousness. Universal principles consciously avoided describing the social circumstances that prevailed when they were created.64
11) Transformation of consciousness. Design was perceived to have the ability to transform the consciousness of those who were brought into contact with it, having the potential to not only improve their environmental conditions, but also to shift their psychological outlook. This gained momentum with the ascendancy of Gestalt psychology in the first two decades of the new century and afterward with the Behaviourists who supported determinist ideas of design.
12) Theology. The Pioneer phase had a theological intensity about it: ‘A great epoch has begun,/There exists a new spirit.’ Numerous members of the DeStijl and Bauhaus communities practised theosophy and the Purists were infected with a Platonism that bordered on the mystical. This reinforced the idea that design was not related to styles, but was a way of seeing the world.65
As evidenced in these ideas of modernism, the modernist vision in design while indebted to an early formalist critique and its notion of aesthetic autonomy that privileged visual form, modernism’s meaning is dependent on a multiplicity of ideas connected to modernisation’s societal aims and ideals.
63 ibid., p. 12. 64 ibid., p. 14. 65 ibid. Greenhalgh quotes from Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus.
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With the advent of postmodernism, writers and theorists further discouraged modernist ideas of purity, simplicity, logic, distinct periods or movements to define modernism, seeing it as an evolutionary or transitional phenomenon. As Richard Sheppard found, modernism did not express some singular ‘worldview or a period style or a set of structural categories which marks the whole length and breadth of a period’ but was evolutionary, usually reacting to particular events and wider intensive issues:
Modernism not only evolved from, reacted against and anticipated a multiplicity of other artistic phenomena, it also developed out of a complex of socio-historical experiences, of which the shocks caused by the modern megalopolis and the Great War were simply the most violent.66
Bradbury and McFarlane had noted earlier modernism’s oppositional yet ever-shifting nature in terms of an aesthetic sensibility. The authors noted the move away from representational realism towards abstract and autotelic art forms with a high degree of aesthetic self-consciousness characterised by an aesthetic of radical innovation, fragmentation and shock where familiar formal and linguistic conventions were broken and paradox celebrated.67 In attempting to summarise a definition of modernism, they declared its complexity, plurality and even contradictory nature:
Modernism was in most countries an extraordinary compound of the futuristic and the nihilistic, the revolutionary and the conservative, the naturalistic and the symbolistic, the romantic and the classical. It was a celebration of a technological age and a condemnation of it; an excited acceptance of the belief that the old regimes of culture were over, and a deep despairing in the face of that fear; a mixture of convictions that the new forms were escapes from historicism and the pressures of the time
66 Richard Sheppard, in Steve Giles, ed., Theorizing Modernism: Essays in Critical Theory. London: Routledge, 1993, p. 4. Sheppard in turn quotes Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act, Ithaca, 1981, p. 27. 67 Bradbury & McFarlane, ‘The Name and Nature of Modernism’, in Modernism 1890-1930, 1976, pp. 19-55.
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with convictions that they were precisely the living expressions of these things.68
To make further sense of modernism’s meaning, writers and historians, such as Art Berman, Joy Malnar and Frank Vodvarka, have connected modernism’s aims and ideals to the larger, underlying and often oppositional philosophical ideas that influenced intellectual and aesthetic movements of modern times.69 These ideas were first introduced into the community by writers and artists under a variety of terms and are outlined as follows: Classicism principled by objectivity, formal balance, simplicity, order and restraint and its companion formalism; idealism which strives for things to be as they should be; utopianism driven by the visionary idealist’s belief in schemes producing perfection in social or political conditions; humanism characterised by its emphasis on human interests rather than on the natural world or religion; romanticism with its implication of feelings over fact, unrestrained sensuousness and necessity to escape from the realities of life; individualism believing in individual character and freedom not restricted by governmental or social regulation, made operational through empiricism that gave rise to the experimental method, observation and experience; rationalism that sees reason or intellect over the senses as the source of knowledge; functionalism and structural functionalism, emphasising the necessity of adapting structure of design to function, motivated by capitalism’s economic system dominated by production, distribution, competition and profit.
68 ibid., p. 46. 69 Art Berman, Preface to Modernism. Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994; and Malnar & Vodvarka, op. cit., discuss these terms variously. I have further defined each idea as relevant to this study, Webster’s New World Dictionary, Cleveland & New York: The World Publishing Company, 1966.
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Within this context of plurality and contradiction, a richer definition and meaning to modernism is made possible. My intention is to utilise Greenhalgh’s conceptualisation of twelve features of modernism in design as a basis of analysis allowing for further interpretation as underpinned by larger, philosophical ideas relevant to each woman’s ideas of modernism within the context of interior design. In this way, the researcher believes a more comprehensive critique of modernism in interior design will emerge.
Definition and Explanation of ‘Modernity’
Modernity refers to the typical features of modern times and to the way that these features are experienced by the individual…Modernity is what gives the present the specific quality that makes it different from the past and points the way toward the future…[modernity is] described as being a break with tradition. 70
Definition of Modernity
Modernity is the term applied to the cultural condition of modern times, to the experiences of space and time and of the individual. It is the shared experience of others and is characterised by change. Modernity synthesises the conceptual nature of social institutions and their systems referred to as the powerful objective
(external) forces of modernisation and those of human action defined as the subjective (internalised) theoretical artistic ideas and responses of individuals known as modernism. Modernity is more than merely the state of being modern or the opposition between old and new, past and present, the Romanticists and the
70 Heynen, op. cit.; pp. 8-9. Heynen adapts Marshall Berman’s concept of the modern in which he abandons a sense of the wholeness, so that modernity bifurcates into two distinct concepts, modernism and modernisation, the aesthetic-artistic and the societal.
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Classicists or volatile relationship between high art and mass culture.71 Neither, as
Art Berman believes, should modernity be confused with modern life: unlike modern life, which is characterised by all its hecticness and activities, modernity is the particular values, beliefs, and dispositions concerned with theoretical foundations, practices and aims of society.72
Modernity, thus, includes certain intellectual and artistic movements, political directions, and socio-economic trends. It involves the setting of optimistic social goals and, as such, is defined by the social aims of individuals who are not only consciously but self-consciously aware of their actions and responses. Defined as the accumulating impact of the powerful forces of modernisation that ruptured traditional modes of life and introduced new, novel and rational forms of social organisation, modernity is the result of the many and diverse changes taking place in modern society which not only directed but transformed individuals, whole societies, ideologies, social structures and environments into a modernist position.73 This totalising effect with its intention to unify mankind however, as Marshall Berman claims:
[a] paradoxical unity, a unity of disunity…of perpetual disintegration and renewal, of struggle and contradiction, of ambiguity and anguish. To be modern is to be part of a universe in which, as Marx said, “all that is solid melts into air”.’74
71 Giddens. op. cit., 1990; Art Berman, op. cit., 1994; Smith, op. cit., 1996. 72 Art Berman, op. cit., 1994. 73 Swingewood. op. cit.; Terry Smith, op. cit., 1996; Giddens, op. cit.. 74 Harvey, op. cit., p. 11; quotes Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity, 1983, London: Verso.
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Modernity’s History and Key Debates
Like modernism, there is no consensus regarding modernity’s actual location in historical time or its meaning which can be something different in the work of political and artistic theorists, historians, sociologists and philosophers. For Matei
Calinescu, modernity is marked by historical relativism and ambiguity.75 Frisby says it points to ‘a discontinuous experience of time, space and causality’.76
Harvey insists ‘modernity can have no respect for its own past…the transitoriness of things makes it difficult to preserve any sense of historical continuity…[it] is characterized by a never-ending process of internal ruptures and fragmentations within itself’.77
Swingewood, on the other hand, notes,
…a number of writers have traced its origins back to the Middle Ages to the concepts of modernitus – modern times – and modernity – men of today (the philologist Erich Auerback noted fourteen different meanings in Latin), to the famous seventeenth-century dispute between the “Ancients” and the “Moderns” and, more pertinently, to the Renaissance discovery of time and the differentiation of history into the Ancient, Medieval and Modern periods.78
Felski adds,
…whereas a political theorist may situate the origins of modernity in the seventeenth century, and the work of Hobbes, a literary critic is just as likely to claim that modernity has its birth in the mid or late nineteenth century.79
Habermas tells how,
…people considered themselves modern during the period of Charles the Great in the 12th century…the term “modern” appeared and reappeared
75 Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism, 1987, 2nd ed., Durham: Duke University Press. 76 Frisby, op. cit., 1986, p. 4. 77 Harvey, op. cit., pp. 11-12. 78 Swingewood, op. cit., p. 138. 79 Felski, op cit., p. 12.
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exactly during periods in Europe when the consciousness of a new epoch formed itself through a relationship with the ancients.80
But, this notion of ‘modern’ as a comparison with the past ‘dissolved with the ideals of the French Enlightenment, specifically, as inspired by modern science, in the infinite progress of knowledge and in the infinite advance towards social and moral betterment’.81 Swingewood says that by the end of the eighteenth century, modernity was established as a concept of society, its ideals absorbed into separate (economic, philosophical and cultural) spheres rooted in a sense of historical time:
…its development conceived in terms of a dynamic unfolding process of distinct evolutionary stages (economic for Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson, philosophical and cultural for Kant and Condorcet). The contemporary meaning of modernity…[was] imbricated in Enlightenment reason, the belief in progress, empirical science and positivism. Modernity [signified] a culture of innovation, a rational ethos challenging traditions and rituals in the name of critical thought, empirical knowledge and humanism. 82
By the nineteenth century, the notion of modernity was rooted in modern- city life and the effects of all the new experiences, feelings, thoughts, desires, social and work relationships, burgeoning of commodities, crowds,
‘phantasmagorias’, new modes of fashion, of media, of the arts, and environments on individuals.83 Yet, as Karl Marx (1818-1883) described in his political account,
The Communist Manifesto of 1848, under constantly revolutionising social
80 Habermas, op. cit., p. 4. 81 ibid. 82 Swingewood, op. cit., p. 138. Also see Harry Bracken in Richard Popkin, ed., The History of Western Philosophy. Columbia University Press, London: Plimico Edition, 1999, p. 341, who writes of the debates between the rationalists (who hold that knowledge is in whole or part dependent on mental structures) and the empiricists (who hold, following Aristotle, that “there is nothing in the intellect which is not first in the senses”) has been with us since Plato’s time. Michael Allen in same publication writes, ‘humanism greatly influenced almost all Renaissance philosophy, though humanism was not itself a philosophy but a curriculum, a pedagogy, and a cultural attitude stressing classical literature language, and history’, p. 292. 83 Smith, op. cit., 1996.
70 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 conditions propelled by the Industrial Revolution and its capitalist system of exchange, the realities of change did not hold out the same promise for all:
Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all newly formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. 84
The notion of modern progress and advancement of society had not rendered the working-class (or women) equality—socially or economically. Instead, a sense of insecurity, fragmentation, ephemerality and chaotic change was recognised as a condition of modern society.
French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) wrote of this distinct experience using the term ‘modernity’ in his seminal essay, ‘The painter of modern life’ (published in 1863). In Baudelaire’s characterisation, he references its object (art) as new, ever-changing and dynamic. Described as aesthetic modernity, it has as its focus a changed consciousness of time expressing itself through metaphors of the vanguard and the avant-garde.85 This avant-garde
‘understands itself as invading unknown territory, exposing itself to the dangers of sudden, shocking encounters, conquering an as yet unoccupied future’.86 Such is the tentative nature of modern life and the experiences of its uncertainties.
The experience of the artist in Baudelaire’s essay is portrayed as the flaneur, the dandy. He both paints and is caught up in what Baudelaire describes as the typical features of modern life: ‘the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it
84 ibid., p. 777. 85 Habermas, op. cit.; Swingewood, op. cit.; Harvey, 1987, op. cit. 86 Habermas, op. cit., p. 5.
71 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 is the one half of art, the other being the eternal and immutable’.87 In its duality, modernity captures the transitoriness of the time. Both the individual and his production are transformed by the newness of the present while still attached to the ideals of an eternal past.
Much is made of Baudelaire’s dandy who is the ‘embodiment’ of this new culture: he is ‘haughty’, ‘patrician’ and ‘aggressive’, the outsider caught up in a period of historical transformation ‘when democracy has not yet become all- powerful, and when aristocracy is only partially weakened and discredited.’88 The fleeting nature of modernity’s reality means that the artist is not just aware but self-consciously aware of living in and with perpetual flux. Importantly, new value is placed on elusiveness, ephemerality, transitoriness, and fragmentation.
Accordingly, focus on the fragmentary and fleeting nature of reality negates the realisation of a rationalised totalising whole with its increasing growth of autonomous spheres, in favour of an emphasis on the microcosm and the micrological, the individual and his interrelationships with the new as found in the writings.
Habermas explains this aesthetic experience linking it to cultural modernity, in which art, aesthetics, and its practice are interrelated within the domain of beautiful objects and the practitioner’s institutionalised social experience.89 The institutionalisation of art as a social experience created an important avenue for artists (especially women artists) to both practice (work) and experience the domain of beauty.
87 Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life, 1863. 88 Swingewood, op. cit., p. 141. 89 Habermas, op. cit., p. 10.
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Bound up in arguments of cultural and aesthetic modernity is the heroic role of the artist who, as Harvey tells, ‘must not only comprehend the spirit of his age but also initiate the process of changing it’.90 In cultural modernity, the modern artist has a creative role in society to play defining the essence of humanity. But it is here with the artist’s modernist project of modernity that
Harvey encounters ‘troubling’ aspects which he relates to modernism’s history.
Harvey teases out artistic debates by tracing the dilemma of the artist’s task to enact change within society through art to the eighteenth century’s exploration of aesthetics as a separate realm of cognition. He tells how a radical shift from a rational and instrumentalist strategy to a more consciously aesthetic one for realising Enlightenment aims took place when Rousseau replaced Déscarte’s famous maxim, ‘I think therefore I exist’ with ‘I feel therefore I exist’.91 The significance of this argument resides in the recognition that aesthetics (aesthetic judgement) was separate and distinct from practical reason (moral judgement) and understanding (scientific knowledge) but was also ‘the necessary but problematic bridge between the two’.92 This brings into focus the inevitable opposing and ever-shifting positions regarding the nature and relationship of art, science and morality as separate but interrelated spheres in which individuals must operate in society.
But also underlying the eighteenth century debate (and recurring ones since) on art and aesthetics was how to explain the differences in the variety of cultural artefacts produced under differing social conditions, all of which
90 Harvey, op. cit., p. 19. 91 ibid. 92 ibid.
73 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 expressed some common sentiment of beauty. Bernard Smith, as previously discussed, relates the dilemma to a principle of aesthetic autonomy which he traces to eighteenth century modernist discourse that valued a formalist (visual form) aesthetic over a socio-historical one.93
Aesthetic modernity was also interlinked with modernisation’s institutionalisation of art through differentiation made between ‘special’ art, i.e. the fine arts that were associated as an élite activity garnering elevated status in society, and the practical or ‘useful’ arts, which were identified as activities involving the production of functional or mass-produced utilitarian goods.94 These concepts of aesthetic and cultural modernity translated to the artist’s training and to arguments concerning definition, status and engendered divisions of labour that ensued for the artist (especially women) as definitions of decorator, designer and architect came under scrutiny and pressure within a capitalist-based market system that promoted rapid industrialisation and consumerism as part of artistic production.
For all the contributions made to our understanding of modernity by so many leading thinkers in the twentieth century, few have bothered to consider the role of women as active agents in the discourse. Rita Felski, however, in her study
The Gender of Modernity, asks:
How would our understanding of modernity…[be changed] if instead of taking the male experience as paradigmatic, we were to look instead at texts written [contributions] primarily by women? And what if the feminine phenomena, often seen as having a secondary or marginal status, were given a central importance in the analysis of the culture of modernity: What difference would such a procedure make? 95
93 Bernard Smith, Modernism’s History, 1998, Sydney: UNSW Press, p. 32. 94 ibid. 95 Felski, op. cit., p. 10.
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This study of five Sydney-based women, who from the 1920s to the 1960s shape interior design as a discipline and profession, takes on board this challenging question of differences in women’s experience of modernity through a detailed look at their work in the development of interior design, drawing together their personal experiences, social and work activities, and their theoretical ideas under socio-historical processes of their times.
Conclusion
This chapter has provided theoretical and philosophical contexts necessary for a critique of women and modernity in interior design, defining and explaining overarching issues of modernity and relating them to previous issues of gender and profession in Chapter 2. Distinguishing between concepts of modernisation, modernism and modernity, this chapter has discussed complex interrelations impacting the development of interior design as a specialised field, emergent profession and engendered domain for women linking the development philosophically and in practice to the many changes taking place both globally and locally for capitalist industrialised societies.
The problematic of women within modernisation’s progressivist processes has been raised here. In contrast to readings that see women as victims of some oppressive system, the researcher is casting them as the new educated élite caught up in the same ambitions and processes as men who take up a self-appointed task to actively draw people away from tradition towards a modernist position.
Although acknowledging that late nineteenth-century patterns of urbanisation, industrialisation and engendered divisions of labour, split home from
75 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 workplace, domestic from public spheres and women’s work from men’s, this study questions the relevance of inferences that women’s work associated with the home was subordinate to men’s or that men alone operated in the esteemed public sphere. Therefore, the researcher suggests that previous notions that have relegated little status to women and their work in the arts must be re-examined in light of all the transformations taking place in society by the early twentieth century.
Also acknowledged is that advancement (professional and economic) for women still meant operating within a quasi-system of patriarchy where men controlled fields numerically dominated by women. In the early twentieth century women gradually gained the benefits of greater access to education resulting from reform movements from the latter stages of the nineteenth century. As democratised education and highly rationalised systems of education were established by planners, the arts were also separated into liberal (fine) arts which held élite status from technical (practical) arts largely intended for the benefit of production, directing a vast contingent of artists including women into areas of study deemed appropriate to their so-called natural talents and social status.
Artistic women often joined the workforce as teachers where they would organise and formulate new fields of study, such as interior decoration. Essentially, under increasing systems of rationalisation, modernisation for women meant development within a culture of specialisation and differentiated value spheres.
Modernisation was also linked to institutionalisation of separate domains that by the late nineteenth century had fostered the rise of professions promoting in turn specialist knowledge for each domain. To advance and gain entrance into
76 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 the professions, women’s active involvement in new developments, especially as cultural experts, was required. Recognising that professionalisation of occupations relied on specialist knowledge and abstract principles, this chapter has investigated the meaning of modernism, positioning interior design within this history and questioning prevailing interpretations that cast modern male architects as its singular representatives. To establish a basis for this critique of five Sydney- based women and their understanding of modernist design, this chapter has investigated a range of debates on modernism, bringing to light interpretations that extend its definition beyond notions of an innovative and heroic formalist avant- garde in favour of a model that attests to modernism’s complexity, plurality, contradictory and transitional nature.
Paul Greenhalgh’s conceptualisation of twelve features of modernism in design provides a basis for the critique of five women and their modernism(s) in interior design, its dominant features being representative of many artistic and theoretical ideas prevalent during the Inter-War years and lingering into the 1970s.
This model will operate in conjunction with other interpretations that reconnect modernism’s meaning to larger, philosophical ideas underlying modernisation’s aims and ideals. Individual and collective analyses of women’s conceptions of modernism in interior design will follow in biographical Chapters 5 through 9 and in concluding Chapter 10. This critique will explore commonalities, ambiguities, contradictions, convergences and divergences in their ideas of design as manifest in programs of instruction. These understandings of design are ultimately linked to critical and requisite knowledge of interior design.
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Finally, this chapter has defined and explained modernity as a synthesis of modernisation and modernism relating its meaning to the accumulating effects of contradictions, conflicts and paradoxes that reside within society’s broader aims and ambitions, especially as individuals experience everyday and extraordinary events of modern life. By examining modernity’s history and discourses surrounding enormous social, political, economic and technological changes taking place that transformed societies, individuals and their productions globally and locally, further questions have come to the forefront. What relationships exist between particular values, beliefs, and dispositions concerned with theoretical foundations, practices and aims of a modern society and the notions of progress, emancipation and empowerment of women?
This chapter has raised principal issues bound up within the aesthetic experience of modernity, the institutionalisation of art, the artist’s training and status which scrutinised the purpose of art, and made distinctions between special
(fine) art and practical (useful) art and their relationship to design. This study questions a range of familiar dichotomies that place in opposition modernity and tradition, intellect and emotion, design and decoration, underpinned by long- standing distinctions between aesthetics defined as art (subjective, creative and innovative) and science (deemed objective, technical and rational with logic-based thinking and systematically applied processes). At the same time, this study argues that these ideas were intertwined with notions of ‘design’ as special knowledge and as such become essential professionalising elements in the formation of design disciplines. While this is not revelatory, it needs clarification with regard to the contributions of the early women and their contributions to
78 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3 interior design. As illustrated in Figure 1, a multidimensional framework establishes the boundaries of this study drawing together issues of Chapter 2
(gender and profession) and Chapter 3 (modernity as a synthesis of modernisation and modernism), which ultimately offer a richer critique of women and modernity in interior design.
Theoretical Framework
Gender Profession
Design
Modernity
Figure 3.1 Multidimensional Framework Establishes Boundaries of Study
The relationship of women’s ideas and work with increasing technologies were translated as industrial advancement and concerns for morality and ethics were issued from society. These distinctions and ideas are further investigated in
Chapter 4 which gives background to the emergence of the profession and discipline and the transformation of interior decoration to interior design.
79 Theoretical Framework Part 2: Overarching Issues of Modernity Chapter 3
This study ultimately challenges notions that have relegated women’s domesticity to the realm of conservatism and tradition, labelled their emergence into the public sphere as radical and new and have kept them within the margins of interior design’s history of modernism. This study questions what difference would it make if the feminine phenomenon was made central to the analysis of modernity by connecting issues of gender to the rising culture of professions and recognition of the women as critically significant to the development of interior design through the central issue of design.
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CHAPTER 4
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF INTERIOR DESIGN
The study of interior decoration [as interior design was first known] has fared less well than most other areas of design history.1 —Peter McNeil 1994
Introduction
Before turning to individual chapters on the five women who are the focus of this study, this chapter provides historical context to the development of interior design as a distinct field, discipline and profession. Drawing on key design histories, professional material, and texts on the subject, this literature review utilises alternate names of the field—interior decoration, interior design and interior architecture—embedded within arguments to expose issues relevant to this development and study of women and modernity in interior design.
The chapter unfolds as follows: firstly, ‘Emergence of Interior Decoration as a Profession’ seeks socio-economic, cultural, political, and technological motivations and responses that explain the historical roots of the field. Drawing together numerous arguments, this chapter discusses the emergence of interior decoration as a distinct ‘profession’ separate from architecture focussing initially on issues other than gender, then integrating the debates as it becomes identified as an ideal field and natural profession for women. Subsequently, ‘Paradigm shift from Interior Decoration to Interior Design’ brings to light various issues
1 Peter McNeil, ‘Designing Women: Gender, Sexuality and the Interior Decorator, c.1890-1940’, Art History, 1994, vol. 17, no. 4, Dec., p. 631.
81 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 underpinning this change. The chapter, then, turns to ‘Historical Development of
Interior Design Education in Sydney’, discussing underlying philosophies in
Australian education and social ideologies that impact the development of interior design, identifying also streams of training and education and key individuals significant to the emergent discipline in Sydney. Finally, ‘Professional
Associations for Interior Design in Australia’ describes the formation of professional organisations for interior design in Melbourne and Sydney, bringing to light conditions and jurisdiction under which they emerge and operate.
Concluding remarks summarise relevant issues impacting five Sydney-based women and the development of interior design from the 1920s to 1960s.
Emergence of Interior Decoration as a Profession
Embedded in all of the changes of modernisation were the seeds of interior design as a distinct artistic field and specialised design discipline. From the outset its territory was far-reaching, as Massey informs, ‘The history of interior design comprises architecture, design, the fine arts, decoration, even social and economic history.’2 While there is no consensus regarding the first professional interior designers, it is generally accepted that a separate identity from architecture emerged in the nineteenth century.
2 Anne Massey, Interior Design of the 20th Century, New York & London: Thames and Hudson, 1990, reprint 1996, p. 6.
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Elite Beginnings of Interior Decoration: Status and Patronage
Interior design’s early beginnings were referred to as interior decoration. Gere and
Whiteway express reasons for the early name based on the following early precepts of practice:
It is no coincidence that the term “interior decoration” should have been coined at the very beginning of the nineteenth century. An indication of the way this new preoccupation would develop can be inferred from the decorating activities of Thomas Hope, whose schemes for his own Duchess Street mansion were published in 1807 in his Household Furniture and Interior Decoration - a prophetic title indeed…Hope’s decorating precepts were based on his belief that everything should be adorned with emblems and symbols connected to the uses to which they are applied…derived from classical mythology…distinctive forms such as the Klismos chair…easily assimilated into fashionable interiors.3
This practice of interior decoration inferred by association an historical, decorative and fashionable approach to interior design. Gere and Whiteway further suggest, in opening his rooms for display to the English public, Hope implied a lesson in taste which appealed to a clientele seeking status. Interior decoration was conceived at this time as ‘an independent art’ promoted through the publication of highly influential colour-illustrated volumes of works devised by royal architects and decorators, such as those who had worked to embellish
Carlton House and Brighton in England.4 Its esteemed nature resided in artistic schemes, wall decoration and period style furnishings crafted from the highest quality material by skilled artists and artisans intended for royal and aristocratic patrons.
3 C. Gere & M. Whiteway, Nineteenth-Century Design from Pugin to MacKintosh, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd, 1993, p. 16. 4 ibid., p. 17.
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A system of patronage prevailed at this time that cultivated connoisseurship which can be traced, as Robbie Blakemore discusses, to the
Italian Renaissance (1460-1600) when the arts were significantly advanced ‘under the tutelage of powerful families, many members of which were well versed in classical architecture and theory.’5 Patronage conveyed added status and gave long-term employment to the artist, architect or decorator. At this time, academies of art and architecture were established which prescribed official standards of taste to all aspects of art, including practice and appreciation which, in turn, promoted a penchant for collecting rare objects and antiquities. The early hallmarks of interior decoration based on élite cultural education and wealthy patronage guaranteed artistic production, social status, high quality of material and craftsmanship, preference for historical (classical) style, all of which constituted good taste. While these associations linger today within aspects of interior design, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, they were increasingly challenged with industrialisation and a newly expanded market and clientele.
Industrialisation’s New and Expanded Market
With the rise of the middle classes following the so-called Industrial Revolution that first took place in Britain at the end of the eighteenth century, wealth and power shifted away from the aristocratic classes. In turn, production methods shifted from the commissioning of one-off designs for a wealthy clientele to mass- produced ‘art manufactures’ intended for sale to a broad ranging audience.
5 Robbie Blakemore, History of Interior Design and Furniture, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1997, p. 83.
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This expanded audience, unlike their élite predecessor, was often culturally and artistically uneducated. As a result, they provided no guiding hand in the establishment of taste. Instead, their requirements for interior fitments were motivated by practical considerations based on use and comfort, or conversely, on romantic ideals and a pretentiousness redolent with preconceived notions of opulence and exoticism. As past systems of patronage gave way to new commercial arrangements, the task of new production was taken up by manufacturers who borrowed from historical models rather than create new artistic inventions, reinterpreting them in machine-made productions that bowed to consumer fetish and fancy and often appealed to an owner’s newly acquired social and economic status. With profit rather than art in mind, these productions often resulted in ill-conceived goods and interior decoration became more closely associated with commerce, industry and trade.
In addition to the manufacturer’s role, various divisions of responsibility to build, furnish and decorate a house distributed work between the architect, builder, product designer and decorator. Gere and Whiteway point out, once the architect and builder had completed the building, ‘the usual process was to hand the completed structure over to a professional decorating firm’ who would work out the interior schemes.6 This practice of specialised responsibility would, as
Peter Fould suggests, result in the creation of ‘exclusive professional compartments.’7 Differentiation of responsibilities coupled with a proliferation of
6 Gere & Whiteway, op. cit., p. 8. 7 ibid., quoting Peter Fould in ‘Foreward’.
85 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 product provided a lucrative market for the rise of the artistic businessman as merchants of interior decoration.
Merchants of Mass Production and Mass Consumption
From the mid-nineteenth century, mass produced goods were made available to a broader group, particularly in England and its colonies, through decorating firms such as Gillow Co., the Crace family, and Lyon, Cottier & Co. Although past decorators, like Hope, had become wary of the increasing use of machine production by these fashionable firms, their influence, as Gere and Whiteway point out, was waning ‘too fragmentary and diffused to affect the subsequent development of industry and domestic manufactures, the route through which
Victorian designers were to make their fullest impact’.8 Mass production and mass consumption increasingly became a condition for the new occupation of interior decoration.
Penny Sparke bases her main thesis on this premise stating that within the framework of industrial capitalism that created contemporary Western society, and continues to dominate it, design is characterised by a dual alliance with both mass production and mass consumption and that these two phenomena have determined nearly all of its manifestations.9 Andrew Montana also tells how, ‘the
1851 International Exhibition [first of its kind held in London] played a large part in the mid-to-late Victorian patterns of consumerism’, especially with its directed
8 Gere & Whiteway, op. cit., p. 20. 9 Penny Sparke, An Introduction to Design & Culture in the Twentieth Century, London: Allen & Unwin, 1986.
86 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 focus on the exhibition object.10 Interior decoration became synonymous with upholstery, textiles, glass, ceramics, paintings and object d’art that flooded the market through the phenomenon of world exhibitions. McCorquodale also suggests that mass production made it virtually impossible for the modern-day architect or decorator to design every feature of a room.11
In Australia in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, interior decoration
(interior schemes, furniture and fittings) was provided by luxury trading firms such as Lyon, Cottier & Co. and decorator businessmen, like (a) the Scots James and Hugh Paterson, John Lamb Lyon and J. Ross Anderson; (b) the Englishmen
Phil Goatcher, B. J. Grice, and H. H. Groth; and (c) the Americans J. Althouse, F.
A. Geiger, and J. Clay Beeler for the more well-off home.12 Artistic productions ranged from custom goods to imported mass-produced items. By the twentieth century, home furnishings and department stores offered decorating services to a broad clientele. Just as the luxury firm’s success in the past had relied upon its association with art, artistic furnishings, and architecture, department (retail) stores employed artistic advisers, consultants and decorators to promote their products and services to a modern residential clientele. Each firm’s commercial success often meant pandering to the buyer’s uneducated notion of grandeur, comfort or fashion to the detriment of good design.
10 Andrew Montana, The Art Movement in Australia, Carlton South VIC: Melbourne University Press, 2000, p. 83. 11 Charles McCorquodale, The History of Interior Decoration, Oxford: Phaidon, 1983, p. 7. 12 Ian Evans, The Australian Home, Sydney: The Flannel Flower Press, 1983, gives background to the nineteenth century traders and businessmen.
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Early Technological Advancements
Technological advances also paved the way for the rise of interior decoration as a distinct field. Among the many developments in science and technology during the nineteenth century, building techniques had removed restrictions that exterior requirements had previously made on interior spaces. Walls could now exist as two distinct elements—a concrete load-bearing frame and a lightweight infill- cladding panel for climate control and decorative effect. The invention of a reinforced concrete frame system in 1892 by the Frenchman Francois Hennebique allowed treatment of the exterior structural shell as separate to the interior lining.
This treatment effectively separated the function and role of the architect from the interior decorator and furnishings designer, who no longer necessarily required building structural knowledge.
At the same time, this development gave rise to a depiction of interior decoration as the superficial application of decorative elements independent of the building’s structural shell. Coupled with the abundance of commodities that catered to varying tastes and budgets, split by differing roles and functions, the decorator’s interior and the architect’s exterior relinquished in idea and practiced the notion that architecture and interior decoration together constituted fully integrated design. With rising divisions between the work of architects and interior decorators complicated by a proliferation of consumer choice (provoked by mass production that became increasingly ill-conceived in the Victorian era), design reformers initiated measures to restore ‘good’ design and raise standards of public taste, turning to education to lead the way.
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Early Design Reform Movements
As early as 1807, Thomas Hope had recognised the need to raise the standard of art instruction for the artisan publishing ‘A Letter on Instruction in Design’ in the
Artist by which ‘he initiated the English nineteenth century effort to improve standards of design by education.’13 Hope would be among the many design reformists, including Owen Jones, Christopher Dresser and Charlies Eastlake, who recognised a need to impart a method, as well as, examples of good design to the practitioner.
A need for design reform had been advanced at the 1835 Select Committee on Arts and Manufacturer in London. In 1846, the painter Richard Redgrave wrote to the British Prime Minister Lord John Russell: ‘It is in the application of design that manufacturing industry is most deficient as compared with the advance in other directions.’14 Design reform fostered the notion that ‘design’ would clean up the mess created by the industrial revolution, and that art education was the necessary structure for this reform. The initiative to provide training—promoted as furthering progress for the masses—reconciled, as Whitford tells, the ‘creative artists and the industrial world’.15 Early individuals included John Ruskin and
William Morris in England and Herman Muthesius and Gottfried Semper in
Germany. These were followed by later reformers, Henry van de Velde in
Belgium, Peter Behrens and Walter Gropius in Germany, and educational institutions, Deutscher Werkbund and infamous Bauhaus school.
13 Simon Jervis, The Penguin Dictionary of Design and Designers, London: Penguin Books, 1984, p. 238. 14 Gere & Whiteway, op. cit., p. 63. 15 Frank Whitford, ed., The Bauhaus Masters & Students by Themselves, London: Conrad Octopus, 1992, p. 12.
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For the early reformers, the question of artistic standards was inextricably bound up with wider aesthetics and functionalism, as it was with moral problems of sincerity and truth. Above all, design reform represented the possibility of art for all people. As Whitford relays in his comprehensive account, ‘William Morris thought it dishonest for machine-made goods to pretend they were hand-made, while John Ruskin went further in his belief that the machine itself was a source of evil and social ills.’16 Morris also believed that ‘in order to have a living school of Art, the public in general must be interested in Art; it must be a part of their lives; something which they can no more do without than water or lighting.’17 At the same time, the irreversible advances made in the Industrial Revolution required a new kind of craftsman trained to understand and exploit the machine’s potential in an aesthetically sensitive way.
One of the most influential to embrace this vision was Gottfried Semper, coining the German word Kunstgewerbe (an equivalent to the English ‘arts and crafts’ phrase). Semper, who in 1849 fled to England as a political refugee, was:
alarmed by the industrially produced goods on display at the Great International Exhibition in London of 1851...[and] believed that the only way of producing a new breed of artist-craftsman capable of responding to the special demands of the machine was through a new kind of art education. The traditional craftsman who both conceived and made his products had to be replaced by someone who conceived and described what would be produced by others with the aid of the machine: a designer.18
The new art education had as its focus design and, by understanding design, the new designer would conquer the special demands of the machine and improve public taste.
16 Whitford, op. ct., p. 12. 17 ibid., p. 20, quoting William Morris, Arts and Crafts Circular Letter, 1896. 18 ibid., p. 13.
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Until the middle of the nineteenth century artists and craftsmen continued to learn their trades without the aid of machines. Painters and sculptors still acquired their skills in the refined and élitist atmosphere of academies while craftsmen learned by example within an apprenticeship system. The academies encouraged specialisation and the belief that the ‘fine arts’ were different from and superior to the crafts.19 Semper was one of many who believed that the barriers the academic system had erected between the ‘fine arts’ and the crafts were artificial and damaging. The academies themselves had become self- indulgent and decadent, surmising that ‘basically the great art academies are little more than institutions…isolated…from the people.’20 Old academic traditions were no longer suitable for the new social conditions. At issue were present day needs, as explained by Semper:
The academies established by the State educate people to produce art in the grand style, but even if we overlook the broad mass of mediocre talents, the number of highly gifted individuals far exceeds the demand for their services. Only the very few succeed in realizing the ambitious dreams of their youth, and then only at the expense of reality because they are obliged to negate the present and conjure up fantasies of the past.21
Semper’s ideas were among the first to produce a new kind of democratised art education in nineteenth-century Europe, beginning in England and spreading rapidly to the Continent and especially to German-speaking countries.
The ideals of the early design reformers conflicted with the emergent and pretentious middle-class clientele that was reluctant to give up elaborate historical fantasies that were perceived as élite. Thus, a perpetuation of traditional
19 ibid. 20 ibid., p. 19, quoting Gottfried Semper, ‘Wissenschaft, Industrie und Kunst’, 1852. 21 ibid.
91 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 furnishings, usually not authentic and often ill-conceived, continued well into the twentieth century: a stylistic approach dominating the type of knowledge required for the practice of interior decoration. At the same time, among the critical onlookers, distinctions were being made between the popular confusion of styles
(new productions) and correct principles of good taste found in earlier exemplars of classical style, particularly eighteenth-century French and Italian antiques as first promoted by Edith Wharton, a yet unknown author writing on the subject of interior decoration in collaboration with New England architect Ogden Codman
Jr. A new consciousness of interior decoration was underway and women would be at the forefront.
Interior Decoration as a ‘True Field’ for Women
In the nineteenth century, the occupations of decorator and architect were largely the domain of men. At the same time, a proliferation of decorating manuals and books on house decoration increasingly began to associate interior decoration with the roles of women. As Massey discovered in her research, numerous advice manuals associated interior decoration with a woman’s required knowledge of rigid and crucial codes of social intercourse governing home starting with Mrs.
Beeton’s Book of Household Management, first published in England in 1861, and
Mrs. E.B. Duffey’s What a Woman Should Know, published in America in
1871.22 By the late nineteenth century, mere interest in the decoration of houses became more critical with well-defined precepts on how to decorate houses. Of extraordinary success was Wharton and Codman’s book, The Decoration of
22 Massey, op. cit., p. 7.
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Houses, 1898. This exemplar, designated as one of the first books to stimulate serious discussion on interior decoration, stressed the application of principles and offered a systematic approach to interior decoration in the home.23
Wharton was a member of New York society and cognoscenti of the finer things of life in an artistic sense, while Codman lent his knowledge concerning historic detail and architecture. Wharton saw ‘house decoration as a branch of architecture’ and insisted that good decoration was ‘getting the bones of the thing right’.24 In her opening statement, she made known the proper approach to decorating, ‘Rooms may be decorated in two ways: by a superficial application of ornament totally independent of structure, or by means of those architectural features which are part of the organism of every house, inside as well as out’.25
Wharton found the second approach superior which unwittingly fuelled divisions between the practices of interior decoration and architecture. At the same time,
Wharton was also reeling against the ‘confused and extravagant’ profusion of nineteenth-century production that ignored ‘the application of principles based on common sense and regulated by the laws of harmony and proportion’.26 A return to principles as manifested in eighteenth-century French and Italian classicism was required.
At the time of Wharton’s book, interior decoration as a ‘profession’ with distinct training had yet to emerge. Training offered at this time—instigated by
23 See Judy Attfield & Pat Kirkham, eds., A View from the Interior, Feminism Women and Design, London: The Women’s Press Ltd, 1989; and Isabelle Anscombe, A Woman’s Touch: Women in Design from 1860 to the Present Day, New York: Viking Penguin, 1984. 24 Edith Wharton & Ogden Codman Jr., The Decoration of Houses, London: Charles Scribner’s Sons N.Y., & B.J. Batsford, 1898, p. xix. 25 ibid. 26 ibid.
93 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 design reform movements in Arts and Crafts workshops and Beaux Arts—related to general design training focusing on drawing, colour, modelling and skilful techniques in the application of ornament and artistic surface decoration for the work of the builder, decorator, upholsterer, cabinet-maker and architect. The
Beaux Arts movement had reunited the design of interior and exterior in architectural training, but women were still largely excluded from this form of education. Wharton’s book clearly set out precepts within its systematic approach of how to proceed with a plan for the decoration of an interior based on components and types of rooms in a home.
Also at this time, amateur decorators who had no training whatsoever emerged, establishing careers in interior decoration. The former actress Elsie de
Wolfe is credited as the first to operate like a professional by charging for her services.27 Through her social connections, de Wolfe acquired prestigious commissions like the New York Colony Club, the first women’s club, and the ground floor of the Frick Mansion. As Massey suggests, the opening of de
Wolfe’s decorating shop in New York around 1904 and the publishing of The
House in Good Taste in 1913 proved that women in interior decorating could actually make a living and support themselves independently. The domestic role of the woman in the home now extended to a paid position in the labour market, securing professional status based on remuneration, social background and experiential knowledge although deplete of specific training or formal education in principles.
27 For instance, see Massey, op. cit.
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Being professional meant a quasi-professionalism which did not place the
‘decorator’ on the same educated plane as the ‘architect’. This was distinguished, however, from being amateur which meant being unpaid as well as being without formal education. Women’s participation in interior decoration engendered the field and identified it as a feminine domain, yet the requirements for specialist education were not yet satisfied.
Interior Decoration as a Career for Women: The Australian Paradigm
The idea that interior decoration offered a career for women in Australia gained attention in the 1920s, some 25 to 30 years later than in America. The translation of Wheeler’s desire for wide education for interior decoration, however, would have an even longer incubation period. Offered as an alternative career to the more unusual prospect of architecture, the general explanation for ‘women’s neglect to enter’ the architecture profession was the inseparable nature of the theoretical and constructive, while ‘women would probably be good at design and decorative detail…[it was believed and promoted that they were]…not interested in the practical side, in the constructive work’.28 At issue also was the ineligibility of (most) women into architectural schools due to their lack of prerequisite subjects: namely, chemistry, physics and mathematics. While ‘boys usually study’ those subjects, ‘girls who foresee no future use for them often ignore them or treat them lightly’.29 At the same time, as reported in Adelaide’s The Woman’s Record in 1922, conscientious of the new roles of the working women elevated the
28 Edith Napier Birks, ‘Careers for Women, No. 13-Domestic Architecture’, The Woman’s Record, vol. 3, no. 3, 6 September 1922, Adelaide, p. 9. 29 ibid.
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‘skilled opinion’ of the woman decorator—who gave ‘expert advice on colours and types and convenience, and “the suitable” in general’—as opposed to the
‘untrained imagination’ of the housewife.30
In the 1930s, the Australian Town and Country summarised the knowledge and skill required of the expert woman decorator. She must have (a) an innate artistic sense of interior decoration with its sense of line and form, balance and proportion; (b) the learned knowledge of periods in architecture and furniture; (c) design in textiles, in painting, and the appropriate use of woods in building and in furniture; and (d) the right selections of colour, wallpapers, floor coverings and fabrics combined with scientific knowledge, practical understanding, and recognition of value.31 The rhetoric of science in interior decoration elevated the artistic practice as did the new notion that the woman decorator had extended her ability beyond the home setting and working on occasion in conjunction with the architect (presumedly male). As reported, Mrs. Ruth Lane Poole ‘was entrusted with the huge undertaking of overseeing much of the furnishing of Yarralumla, the residence of the Governor-General at Canberra’ and ‘Mrs. Guy Smith, a
Melbourne woman’ was working with the architect on colour-schemes and furnishings ‘for large city buildings’.32
The path to acquiring expertise for the interior decorator was not yet established by formal education in colleges or universities in Australia. It was largely located within the realm of architects, usually male, who advised their
30 ‘The Editor’s notes’, The Woman’s Record, vol. 3, no. 3, 6 September 1922, Adelaide, front page. 31 F. Kay Ross, ‘Fortune Favours Expert Woman, Interior Decoration as a Career for Girls, in Herself, Australian Town and Country, vol. 2, no. 3, 5 July 1930, p. 13.
96 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 clients on furnishing and decorating their homes or out of large furniture stores attended by male decorators.33 Gradually, women took up positions in exclusive furnishing firms, often out of personal tragedy, perhaps on the death of a husband, because she was ‘accustomed in her own home to the handling of good furniture and beautiful things’.34 At this time, interior decorating was still portrayed as a charming profession for the cultivated, clever woman who could advise on form and colour and the harmonious selection and placement of furniture which she could apply to either home or public building.35 Practice preceded the establishment of a distinct discipline (formal education) evolving out of assumed knowledge and experience augmented by art instruction, manuals and books on interior decoration for the home. Wanting was specialised education that would sufficiently establish interior decoration as a profession.
Necessity of Specialised Education for the Professional Practice
As early as 1894 in England, Charles Campbell of the decorating firm Campbell,
Smith & Co. defined the necessary training for the interior decorator including art and architecture with an emphasis on the pragmatic. He remarked:
I consider a proper architectural training, as well as an educated eye for colour and form, essentially necessary to the art of a decorator, and I think, our art schools would show more practical results were this a part of the education. As it is, a student from South Kensington is of little use to us until he has spent two or three years in learning what he might well have acquired there.36
32 I. M. Brodie, ‘Interior Decoration, Advisory Work as a Career for Women, The Australian Woman’s Mirror, vol. 6, no. 49, 28 October, 1930, p. 12. 33 Cecily Adams, From the Diary of an Australian Decorator, Brookvale NSW: Child & Henry Publishing Pty. Ltd., 1986, p. 12; Cecily Adams joined Beard Watson’s furnishing store in George Street, Sydney, several years after World War II. 34 Brodie, op. cit., p. 12. 35 ibid. 36 Gere & Whiteway, op. cit., p. 7, quoting from The Topical Times, 17 November 1894.
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In Campbell’s account, he acknowledges the dual necessity of formal and experiential training for this practical art. Nina de Angeli Walls in her study of art, industry and women’s education at Moore College of Art and Design in
Philadelphia tells how worldwide initiatives were under way to promote education for women in the arts as early as 1863, quoting from early advocate Virginia
Penny:
There is no department of the…arts – painting, sculpture, architecture, or manufacturing design – in which woman may not run an equal race with man, if she takes the same trouble and care to fit herself for it and…is faithful to her own interests and her profession.’37
Anscombe also noted in her research that democratised education which began in the nineteenth century benefited women artists from the outset through the initiatives of design educators and theorists, especially, movements linked with the Arts and Crafts, noting particularly the philosophy of W. R. Lethaby which enabled women to successfully integrate art with the design of everyday things.38
Suffragette and artist Candace Wheeler in 1895 had recognised the necessity of professional education for interior decoration believing: ‘Interior decoration, at its best, certainly demands very varied and exact knowledge…it requires the gifts of the artist as well as those of the woman, and it requires much special training.’39
37 Nina Walls de Angeli, Art, Industry, and Women’s Education in Philadelphia, Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 2001, quoting Virginia Penny, The Employment of Women: A Cyclopedia of Women’s Work, Boston: Walker, Wise, 1863, p. 59. 38 Also see Harriet & Vetta Goldstein, The Art of Everyday Life, NY: The MacMillan Company, 1925; This design philosophy became widespread as evidenced and elucidated later in texts, such as the American-educated Goldstein’s 1925 book for the study of interior design. Their text defined the importance of good taste, and gave systematic instruction on structural (meaning compositional) and decorative design in its application to the house, furniture and fashion under the theme of ‘the art of everyday things’ signposted World War II era education under the banner of modern design; with thanks to Caren Martin and Denise Guerin for sharing this with me. 39 Candace Wheeler, ‘Interior Decoration as a Profession for Women, Part 1.’ New Outlook N.Y., 6 April 1895, p. 559.
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For some feminists, the rise of interior design as a profession in America corresponds with the success of the Women’s Movement.40 From the late nineteenth century, women artists seeking advancement like Candace Wheeler promoted interior decoration as a ‘true field’, warning at the same time that the power to practice it successfully came only ‘if women will educate themselves for it.’41 Wheeler measured the success of achieving a good interior against two benchmarks: first, against architecture at its best; and second, against men who
(unlike women) had the advantage of a cultivated education based on wide knowledge, well-directed study and principles.42
Wheeler noted that besides an instinctive ‘artistic gift and ability’, the individual required thorough training in the understanding of ‘form’, both to draw and model it, a very highly developed ‘color sense’, an ‘exhaustive familiarity’ with the literature of the art, and a ‘knowledge of its practice’ extending back through all the varied styles of centuries and periods and generations.43 Real excellence embodied decoration as ‘an art and not [just] as a pretty arrangement of curtains, carpets, and furniture’.44 Thus, it was art, its history, principles and practical knowledge that would elevate interior decoration to the same superior plane as the successful efforts of an architect.
Of crucial importance for women contemplating interior decoration as a profession was ‘how to get this wider knowledge’. Wheeler outlined the difficulties ‘caused by sex’: (a) a general want of serious preparation among
40 Jo Ann Asher Thompson, 21 Feb 2000. 41 Wheeler, op cit., p. 559. 42 ibid., p. 560. 43 ibid., p. 559. 44 ibid.
99 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 women for professions of any kind, (b) the uncertainty of continuance in any work other than that of ‘general manager of family interests’, and (c) availability of special education. Wheeler further clarified this educational dilemma:
…there is no course of decorative study in any of our colleges, as there is of architecture, and no school of art which carries this preparation further than the acquisition of different elements which must be afterward combined in a whole, and carried forward as a whole, if the student wishes to master the art in its entirety. The woman student must get drawing and color [sic] and modelling in an art school of some sort; she must get historical reading and example in consequence of friendly suggestion or by virtue of her own reasoning powers; she must combine these things in her own inexperienced way and learn by her own failures the true principles which finally gives a certainty and mastery of it in her practice.45
Wheeler concluded that the results gained from this ‘unauthoritative’ system were
‘often false and mischievous.’ 46 Thus, students should be authoritatively trained at colleges and schools of art—domains largely controlled by men.
Although Wharton and Codman’s systematic approach based on correct principles of taste and the Art and Crafts integrative approach to the art on everyday things represented a shift away from ‘a women’s touch’, the so-called natural and intuitive approach to designing intimate and charming spaces as portrayed in Elsie de Wolfe’s The House in Good Taste of 1913 would be by men like Frank Alvah Parsons that would first professionalise interior decoration through formal education. Parson’s formation of a program was set within the
Department of Interior Architecture and Decoration at the New York School of
Fine and Applied Arts (NYSFAA) (renamed 1941, Parsons School of Design).
The school was originally founded in 1896 by William Merritt Chase to teach painting. By 1906, the school offered courses in interior decoration and, by 1913,
45 ibid., p. 649. 46 ibid.
100 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 its prospectus claimed ‘Interior decoration…like architecture, has reached the dignity of a profession’; students drew elevations, learned the history of art and studied constructive and decorative architecture.47 Parsons’ influential approach underpinned by modern educational philosophy would spread nationally and internationally. Nora Seton McDougall (Chapter 6) attended the school from 1927 to 1927 to 1928.
Also significant in the establishment of education for interior decoration and design in America was Augustus Sherrill Whiton. The architect, trained at
Columbia University and École des Beaux-Arts, conceived and wrote a series of
Home Study Catalogues in the Decorative Arts. This first catalogue was published in 1916. After many requests for classes based on his popular series, by 1924
Whiton opened his first school called New York School of Interior Decoration
(NYSID). In 1937, Lippincott assembled the series of catalogues into a book,
Elements of Interior Decoration. The popular book, reissued in 1944, followed by new editions in 1951, 1957, and 1963 retitled Elements of Interior Design and
Decoration, has subsequently been used to educate multiple generations of interior design students—the title indicating the transition from interior decoration to interior design during this time.48
Whiton’s series of home study manuals were not alone. Their popularity rose particularly as women pursued the study. For many women, training and education was often limited to short periods of attendance at classes or through
47 Esten & Gilbert, 1990, p. 6, quoted in Peter McNeil, op. cit., p. 639. 48 Sherrill Whiton & Stanley Abercrombie, Interior Design and Decoration, Upper Saddle River, NY: Prentice Hall, 2002, 5th ed., p. xxv. In 1972, a further revision by son Sherrill “Pete” Whiton, Jr. was published simply as Interior Design and Decoration.
101 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 correspondence courses which addressed the problem of distance. Thea Proctor
(Chapter 5) studied the subject by correspondence. The 1920s’ text procured for the course, ARTS and DECORATION Practical Home Study Course in Interior
Decoration, consisted of a series of home lessons with exercises.49 Heavily influenced by its directors, historian Harold Donaldson Eberlein and interior decorator Nancy V. McClelland, the course arrived in Australia soon after its release: Proctor is believed to have acquired the first known copy in Sydney.50
By the late 1930s, this conservative and traditional approach informing the education of interior decoration came under scrutiny. Also under debate was the name the profession had adopted from inception—interior decoration. At the
Seventh Annual Conference and first held on education by The American Institute of Decorators (AID) in January 1938 at Chicago, educational requirements and identity were linked and discussed in relation to professional status for the accredited practitioner and higher standards of requirements for students of interior architecture and decoration.
Among the impressive contingent of delegates, Lázló Moholy-Nagy of the
New Bauhaus, Chicago, quite perplexingly questioned the official title,
49 Harold Eberlein & Nancy McClelland, ARTS and DECORATION Practical Home Study Course in Interior Decoration, NY: Judd Magazines Inc. and Arts and Decoration Pub. Co. Inc., Copyright 1922, with additional revised sections 1923, 1926, 1927. This book remains in the possession of Thea Bryant and was kindly loaned to this writer. Later known editions of this book include supplements dated 1937 and revised sections 1938. 50 ibid., also see Massey, op. cit., pp. 128-9, who gives background to Nancy McClelland (1876- 1959) who had established the decorating section for Wanamakers Department Store, New York, in 1913, the first of its type in America, and in 1922 went on to establish a decorating firm which specialised in the accurate recreation of period interiors for the domestic market and museums. Eberlein was the author of numerous historical books including H. D. Eberlein, The Villas of Florence and Tuscany, Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott, 1922; H. D. Eberlein, A. McClure and E. S. Holloway, Practical Book of Interior Decoration, Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott, 1919; H. D. Eberlein & A. McClure, Practical Book Early American Arts & Crafts, Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott, 1919.
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‘decorator’ - a name he said was ‘very unfortunate’.51 The modernist was more consoled by the definition offered in the Institute’s publication which stated: ‘A decorator is one who by training and experience is qualified to plan, design and execute interiors and their furnishings, and to supervise the various arts and crafts essential to their completion’.52 Even though the keywords ‘plan, design and execute’ suggested the work of the decorator indeed followed a systematic process based on established principles, the practice was preoccupied with its traditional emphasis on product. The significance of assessing new educational requirements and identity would become central in the paradigm shift from interior decoration to interior design.
Paradigm Shift from Interior Decoration to Interior Design
Interior decoration no longer holds the same esteem as it once did. It is often linked to a lack of critical knowledge as witnessed in current research by Caren
Martin who concluded in her evaluation of three practices as professions that the incorporation of abstract knowledge found in current teachings of architecture and interior design is absent from interior decoration.53 While Martin’s conclusion reflects continued development of standards for the field, it has also distanced us
51 ‘Proceedings, Seventh Annual Conference’, The American Institute of Decorators, Chicago: 1938, p. 5; also of note according to Alain Findeli in ‘Design Education and Industry: The Laborious Beginnings of the Institute of Design in Chicago in 1944’, translated by Charlotte Benton, Journal of Design History, vol. 4, no. 2, The Design Historical Society, 1991, pp. 97-113; Moholy-Nagy newly arrived in America had been invited by the Chicago Association of Arts and Industries in 1937 to found a school of industrial design modelled ‘on Bauhaus lines’. 52 ‘Proceedings, Seventh Annual Conference’, op. cit., p. 5. 53 See Caren Martin, Professionalization: Interior Decoration, Interior Design & Architecture as Defined by Abbott, MA Thesis, 1998, University of Minnesota, UMI ProQuest Digital Dissertations, Pub No. AAT 1392667, p. 293.
103 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 from pursuing critical inquiry into the content and critical ideas of the field of interior decoration.
Other studies examining key literature on domestic interiors and interior design during a ‘seminal period between 1750 and 1950’ have noted how each of the terms interior decoration and interior design appear at ‘historically significant junctures of new social and technological achievements.’54 Within this transformation, the following ten recurring decorative qualities or themes were uncovered that capture the spirit of their times: antiquity, grandeur, opulence, elegance, romanticism, fantasy, intimacy, simplicity, comfort, and modernity.
These themes were indicative of aesthetic and philosophical shifts taking place over this period of time.55 The author also found biases toward the subject of interior decoration embedded within books, illustrated journals and popular magazines, based on associations with domesticity, fashion, and popularity which are summarised as follows:
1) Because home decoration was considered a domestic art, and therefore a lesser art, books treating this subject usually had a broader focus.
2) Interior decoration was long allied to architecture, and 18th century books covered the topic as a subsidiary issue, with discussions tied to architectural problem-solving.
3) Most of these books discuss general theory, record archaeological discoveries and reconstructions of ancient rooms and buildings, or simply visually document existing interiors of public edifices and private dwellings of nobility.
4) It was only in the 19th century that publications began to assume a more consumer-oriented focus. Fashion in interior decoration could
54 Artful Interiors, Rooms with a View, Nov 16, 1996-Mar 29, 1997, New York, The New York Public Library, Edna Barnes Salomon Room, Center for the Humanities. 55 ibid.
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be followed in contemporary periodicals, which noted the changes in furnishings and stirred popular interest in styles and trends.
5) The Victorian era produced a spate of books for personal and professional study. They were meant to provide greater guidance in the composition of decorative effects. Manuals offering decorating advice grew in popularity from the late nineteenth century well into the twentieth century.
6) Between the world wars, the renewed interior design profession produced a wealth of new magazines and other literature that sparked ideas, shaped ‘good taste’ and, by the beginning of World War II, reinforced the concept of make-do and do-it-yourself home improvement. 56
Ambiguity exists today regarding the treatment of interior decoration as a subject in histories of interior design, discussing it as part of architecture (e.g.
McCorquodale, 1983), separate from architecture (e.g. Pile, 2002), distinct from fine arts (e.g. Arnanson, 1981) or ignored altogether (e.g. Ball, 1980), defining instead architecture (as the art and science of building), interior design (as part of architectural design), and decoration (as something added for its aesthetic quality).
From an educational perspective, the identity with design over decoration forms one of the strongest reasons for the retention of preliminary courses on fundamental art principles (usually called elements and principles of design) instilled in programs of design and architecture from the early twentieth century onwards and, largely through the philosophical and pedagogical influence of the
Bauhaus and its followers.
56 ibid.
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Influence of the Bauhaus
Although design was central to reform initiatives of the late-nineteenth century spreading through Arts and Crafts Movements in England, the École des Beaux
Arts in France and proliferating in technical education systems, by the early twentieth century, the Bauhaus reigned.57 Many believe, like Anscombe, that
‘modern design was born at the Bauhaus, where all the former disciplines of the applied arts were linked with art and architecture to form a new approach to the teaching and practice of design’.58 Not only was Bauhaus influence dominant during its operation from 1919 to 1933, but its tentacles continued to spread to
England, America, throughout Europe, parts of Asia and including Australia in architecture, graphic design, industrial design and interior design programs well into the mid-to-late twentieth century.59 Provided by its pedagogy, the impact of
Bauhaus modernism was significant in the shift to a modernist design philosophy, theory and practice for design fields. Under Gropius’ leadership in particular, a rationalist philosophy was implemented through the systematic teaching of construction and materials, form and design.
57 See Quentin Hughes, ‘Before the Bauhaus, The experiment at the Liverpool School of Architecture and Applied Arts’, Architectural History, 1982, vol. 25, pp. 102-113. Hughes, for instance, argues that the significance of the Bauhaus should be understood as including progressive influences from earlier design reformists. He found that the ideas of earlier English reform leaders associated with the Liverpool School reflect many of the same philosophical ideals and key issues of the Bauhaus. Also see Whitford, op. cit., pp. 14-15; quoting Gropius who acknowledged that the conception of the Bauhaus drew on many sources, ‘It owed something to the general debates about the crafts and industrialisation, about the distinctions between artists and artisans, and about the role of ornament and design. It owed something to the small number of art schools reformed prior to WWI and to the ideas of the Werkbund. It owed a considerable amount to Henry van de Velde.’ 58 Anscombe, op cit., p. 12. 59 The Bauhaus fame and influence in design education was gained in two ways: through its notable teachers - architects Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; artists Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feninger, Joseph Albers; artist- typographers Herbert Bayer and Schawinsky; textile designers Anni Albers and Gunta Stölzl; theatre designer Oscar Schlemmer, and visual designer Lázló Moholy-Nagy; and through
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Central to the Bauhaus pedagogical model was the first-year Preliminary
Course and studio workshops. Drawing, colour theory, mural painting, furniture design, textile weaving, ceramics and metalwork, lighting and photography formed the basis of course subjects supporting architecture that was central to its aims. The foundational course was meant to unlock and encourage the creative potential of the individual. The degree to which it was more theoretical or practical, intuitive or rational was highly dependent on its teachers. Under Johann
Itten, a spiritual [Mazdanzan] philosophy was applied to practice encompassing the subjective and emotional aspects of artistic creativity. However, this shifted to a more rational approach following his resignation in 1923 under pressure from
Gropius who explained: ‘The artistic presumption which we wanted to suppress is more rampant than ever.’60 Gropius regarded design as a logical, systematic and teachable discipline as distinct from art that was distinguished as being based on creative intuition.61 With the appointment of Moholy-Nagy and Josef Albers to the Preliminary Course, the rational and functional were stressed.62
Although the compositional aspects of art had been re-established with earlier design reform movements and their focus on pattern-making, the Bauhaus’ highly publicised back-to-basics model for design education instigated a modern
continuous promotion achieved by publication and exhibition. But of greatest importance to design education was their approach to teaching. 60 Whitford, op. cit., p. 139, quoting from a memorandum sent to Masters of Form, 13 Mar 1923. 61 Anita Cross, ‘The educational background to the Bauhaus’, Design Studies, vol. 4, no., 1 Jan, 1983, p. 44; Cross believes Gropius misunderstood the significance of Itten’s pedagogical approach and thus denied recognition to Itten’s theories and methods of teaching art and design that reflected many of the free general educational theories and philosophies prevalent in the early years of the twentieth century. Cross identifies key individuals or methods of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that include the American John Dewey and his problem method, The Dalton Laboratory Plan conceived by American Helen Parkhurst, the Italian Montessori Method focusing on motor, sensory and language education, the Finnish ‘Sloyd’ system of Handwork training and activity, and the German Werkbund which aimed at linking art and industry. 62 Whitford, op. cit., p. 35.
107 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 approach to designing interiors. This, in turn, shifted the study away from historical style towards a study of form and a structural functionalism exploring essential formal elements and their organisation, materials, structures and the construction of objects and spaces in relation to their function. Understanding design also meant thinking like a designer, thus, design (although interpreted variously) became the hallmark of professionalism.
Professional Rivalry Within and Outside Interior Design
With the advent of the Modern Movement, the term ‘decorator fell into disrepute’ conjuring up notions of tradition, the use of period style and the application of taste as opposed to design which signified innovation, creative skills, knowledge of new materials and a rational systematic approach linked with technologies and construction.63 With lingering notions of interior decoration as a ‘natural’ pursuit for gifted women of good taste and associations with furnishings salespeople who catered to a mass consumer society, an idea arose that the decorator was inferior, practicing without theoretical and technical knowledge (principles of form and knowledge of structure). Modernists within and outside the field pushed for a new name ‘interior design’ and ‘interior designer’ to distinguish themselves.
As evidenced in a mid-century Australian publication, Interior Decoration for Salespeople, No. II, of the Retail Trader’s Training Institute of New South
Wales, attempts were made to explain in public differences between the ‘interior decorator’ ‘interior designer’, and ‘interior architect’:
63 Arnold Friedmann, John Pile, & Forrest Wilson, Interior Design: An Introduction to Architectural Interiors, NY: American Elsevier, Inc., 1970, p. 191.
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The decorator in the generally accepted meaning of the word, finds furniture, draperies, paints and ornaments to fulfil the scheme he has planned…The new interior designers have turned to the modern painters to learn how to “bring up” certain portions of a surface with warm colour, or to “push back” an unnecessary form with receding colour…to those decorators who work with architect and builder to achieve unity of design in interior and exterior, the term interior architect is usually applied.64
The interior architect was also concerned with the architectural form more than with the draperies and floor coverings with an emphasis on structural design referred to as the ‘exploitation of the geometrical form…[and] the drastic logic of artist-technologist design’.65 This privileged the building over objects within and unwittingly importance based on tangible assets over ideas.
By 1937, growing pressure had also ensued from the architectural profession to reconnect the interior and exterior. Clive Entwistle, clarifying the argument from the modern architect’s perspective, ‘the term “interior design” is largely a definition of convenience since, in any given instance, the interior of a building may be the logical determination of the exterior structure, and each be dependent upon the other.’66 A growing consciousness of professional divisions was emerging within and outside the field fuelled by modernist attitudes and theoretical positions concerning the design of interiors. Professional boundaries were distinguished based on theory, practice and ideological difference. At the same time, within the field there existed a middle ground that moved towards a modernist position without totally relinquishing the past.
64Interior Decoration for Salespeople, No. II, c.1940s-1950s, Retail Trader’s Training Institute of New South Wales, p. 6. 65 ibid., p. 7. 66 Clive Entwistle, ‘An Approach to Interior Design’, The Architectural Review Supplement, vol. 82, Dec 1937, p. 225.
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Ideological Splits—Transitional and Modern— Emotional and Intellectual
In 1957, Betty Pepis’ Guide to Interior Decoration acknowledged how the modern had begun to permeate the notion of traditional style and taste in interior decoration. Pepis noted the ‘interesting contrast’ of architect-designed versus interior decorator-designed interiors that had emerged as early as 1927, where the two disciplines ‘did not see eye-to-eye’, resulting in a ‘kind of split personality’ in the attitude about what constituted taste in the home.67 Pepis’ described two prevailing types of modern design ideologies.
On the one hand, there were the Parisian Art Nouveau and Art Moderne traditions that blended the traditional and the modern. Alternatively, there was a break with the past in the matter of superficial decoration and shape as interpreted from the architectural and structural concepts of the Bauhaus. Pepis characterised the contrast by an emotional as opposed to intellectual approach to interior design, further entrenching stereotypes of the two professions. Pepis made no judgment over which approach was better, only that both existed to satisfy the needs of different ‘personalities’, but importantly, she noted that ‘architects and decorators are trained to completely different types of thinking…the first stress structure (of
Necessity) and the others emphasize historical perspective, [thus] a reconciliation between the two seems well-nigh impossible’.68 This polarisation of the architect’s so-called intellectual conception of design versus the decorator’s quasi- historicism and surface treatment as predominant criteria marked two extremes in
67 Betty Pepis, Betty Pepis’ Guide to Interior Decoration, NY: Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 1957, p. 12. 68 Pepis, op. cit., p. 21.
110 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 practice and education but hardly explained the complex history of the field and its many developments as reflected in Table 4.1.
Table 4.1 Paradigm Shift from Interior Decoration to Interior Design
DATE NAME HALLMARKS OF PROFESSION AND PRACTICE Characteristics of Production/ Patronage/ Century Identity Interiors & Practice Process /Materials Clientele
Late 18th- Interior Historical &Decorative Hand-crafted Royalty Early 19th Decoration & Independent art One-off production Aristocrats Architecture Fashion & Taste Quality material Wealthy landed Connoisseurship Antiquities gentry Late 19th Interior Confusion of styles Mass machine Wealthy city & Decoration Romantic opulence production country people Conspicuous Decorative Industrialist consumption architectural Aesthete Comfort & use elements & Return to 18th century furnishings classicism New materials & Decorative design technologies Early 20th Interior Quasi-historicism Antiques Upper-middle Decoration Design Reproductions classes Moderne New luxury Expanded Modernistic productions consumer New forms applied to audience surfaces/objects Early 20th Interior Modernism Handcrafted and Upper middle Design Organic/Inorganic machine production classes Innovation Natural materials Retail Rhetoric of science Technology new consumer Form & function materials and New Re-unite interior & systems commercial exterior clientele Structure & technic Plan & design Mid 20th Interior Design over decoration Handcrafted & Wide-ranging Design & Everyday things machine production audience Interior Integration of Natural & new including Architecture building/objects materials well-off & Interior/exterior Technology & ‘ordinary’ Artist technologist systems people
Without elevating or devaluing any one tradition or practice over the other but rather identifying hallmarks attached to each era, this literature review has outlined diverse factors that prompted the paradigm shift from interior decoration
111 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 to interior design from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century when significant technological advancements and social changes took place.
Historical Development of Interior Design Education in Sydney
This study argues that the development of interior design as a distinct discipline in
Sydney began in the early 1920s, yet its history is intertwined with pedagogical aims of the nineteenth century for art and design education, linked especially with lingering attitudes concerning role and position of women in society.
Pedagogical Underpinnings—Development of an Interior Design Discipline
Phillip Candy tells of one of the earliest principles in the development of schools for art and technical education in Australia: namely, ‘self-education’ which was seen as the ‘key to a better and more enlightened society, where work and leisure were intertwined.’69 This, in turn, was connected with the traditional idea of a cultivated class—one that represented ‘the natural repository of the manners, tastes, tone, and to a certain extent, of the principles of a country.’70 Women, in particular, were believed to uphold these ideals and, in keeping with their natural inclinations, were directed to studies of art and decorative design. Ibbotson, writing on the history of technical training, adds to this socio-cultural history, telling how the rise of technical training in Australia is a history of two streams of education: one for the élite and one for the people.71 As educational platforms
69 Philip Candy, ‘The Light of Heaven itself’: The Contribution of the Institutes to Australia’s Cultural History’, In: Philip Candy & John Laurent, eds., Pioneering Culture: Mechanics’ Institutes and Schools of Art in Australia, Adelaide: Auslib Press, 1994, p. 21. 70 ibid. 71 P. J. Ibbotson, ‘TAFE and Its Origins’, Occasional Papers – Office of ACT Further Education, Department of Education and Youth Affairs, Canberra, ACT, no. 13, Aug 1983, p. 2.
112 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 were being established, this dichotomy underpinned two divisions in education: general (liberal arts) education established at universities and technical (practical) training situated in technical colleges.
The attainment of higher education for women was gained slowly in
Australia. Its advantage was not commonly recognised for women as compared for men, with the right to enter the traditional professions (medicine, law, and later, architecture) often denied or limited to a few. Initial success came in 1876
(March 28) when academic work began at Adelaide University where women were admitted to classes from the start, others followed in Australia.72 Tied to educational advancement for women was their position in society and roles in the home and workplace. The Socialist Workers Women’s Rights group of Australia in 1919 argued:
The oppression of women provided an economic benefit to the capitalists. Women were exploited as wage workers at lower rates than men…[because as historian Manning Clark points out] women could be pushed back into the house during an economic downturn…the division of labour in the home was not…a product of the biological differences between men and women…[but] created by society to maintain the second-class status of women.73
Opinions were divided on what constituted women’s roles and rights held not only by men but also by women. Conservative women’s organisations (led particularly by the churches) accepted the role of women in the home which was
72 Anthony Barker, What Happened When, A Chronology of Australia from 1788, St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2000. In 1883, Julia Margaret (Bella) Guerin (1858-1923) became the first woman to graduate from an Australian university, The University of Melbourne, receiving a BA degree. The University of Melbourne admitted its first female students in 1880, but they were not allowed to study medicine, one of the oldest professions. This goal was attained in 1885 when Dagmar Berne (1866-1900) was admitted as the first female medical student to The University of Sydney. In 1890, Dr. Emma Constance Stone (1856-1902) of Melbourne became the first registered medical practitioner in Australia. In 1902, Ada Emily Evans (1872-1947) became the first female law graduate (The University of Sydney) but once again she was not allowed to practise.
113 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 further advanced in both secular and denominational schools.74 Advertisements in the Australasian in the early 1920s reminded girls that their ‘duty was to prepare themselves for the role God had allotted to women. They were to be the servants of and partners of their husbands and mothers of law-abiding Christian children’.75
Essentially, while schools provided learning opportunities that elevated women and their work, at the same time they indoctrinated them with the concept of duty to God, man and Country. A permeation and blend of these ideas were a guiding force in the direction of women based on social positioning and financial necessity to seek training and education diversely in art and design schools or directly through work experience.
Streams of Training and Education for Interior Design in Sydney
The knowledge base for interior design draws from disciplinary studies in the fine and decorative arts, in design and architecture, and through practical training established through apprenticeships and retail trade. Through these various streams of training and education, different types of knowledge and skills were emphasised. Each mode associated correspondingly to distinct roles and purposes.
Tradition of Art and Artists
73 Manning Clark, A History of Australia, vol. 6, Clayton, VIC: Wilke and Company Limited, 1981, p. 157. 74 ibid. 75 ibid., p. 206.
114 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4
The tradition of artists as decorators and designers has a long association linked with creative production of murals and sculpture, such as, Michelangelo’s Sistine
Chapel, Boucher’s decorative schemes, or Whistler’s Peacock Room. In the nineteenth century in Sydney at the same time that art training for decorative and industrial arts was being established in the technical schools, the academy system provided training for the so-called fine arts which were held in high esteem. Julian
Ashton was prominent in this arena, founding his school of art in 1890 at
Beaumont Chambers, King Street. Instruction was based on academy traditions where technique, fine draughtsmanship and excellence in craftsmanship were emphasised.76 There, men were trained as professional artists, and many women including Thea Proctor (Chapter 5) attended the school, usually without such intention. In the process, however, they established foundational knowledge as artists for the subject of interior art decoration (design).
Early Design Training in Sydney
Historically, design training for art decoration in Sydney can be traced to the
School of Design, established in 1870 at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts,
Pitt Street.77 This design training was not in the context of training individuals as professional interior decorators (interior designers), but training in the production of designs for art and architectural decoration for buildings and their interior productions.
76 Paul Delprat, ‘Julian Ashton Art School, an Introduction to Our School…Past Artists - an Historical Background’, c. 2004, http://www.julianashtonartschool.com.au. 77 For a history of the Mechanics Institutes and Schools of Arts in Australia, see Candy & Laurent, op. cit.
115 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4
The Sydney Mechanics School of Arts originally established in 1833, aimed to benefit ‘members, teachers and lecturers of the various branches of
Science and Art’.78 The School’s first president, Major Thomas Mitchell,
Surveyor General of the Colony, in his public address to the people held at
Sydney Court House, 22 March 1833, spoke of its broader aims in which the
“power of art” and the “light of science” although two separate elements together were believed to “extend the dominion of civilised man cross regions peopled hitherto only by savages”.79 Art was especially believed to be a positive source fostering moral and social improvement. Following the lead of the British Schools of Design reform initiative that began in 1835 with the Government’s Report on
Design and Industry, design training was believed the answer to unify art and industry. These design reform ideas continued to be promoted as evidenced in the
1874 Sydney Morning Herald editorial which stated that design training was necessary, ‘to state a true thing, or to adorn a serviceable one…for manufacturing and commercial purposes, for scientific purposes, for moral and religious purposes, and for polite purposes’.80
By 1878, the prominent teacher Lucien Henri who had studied at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris in the late 1860s was appointed Lecturer-in-Charge of the
Art Department of the newly named Sydney Technical College or Working Men’s
College.81 In this position, he wished to draw together all aspects of design under
78 Jean Riley, ‘The Movement’s Contribution to the Visual Arts: Three New South Wales Case Studies, 1994, p. 212, in Candy & Laurent, op. cit. 79 ibid. 80 ‘Editorial’, Sydney Morning Herald, 11 Jul 1874, p. 6. 81 Christopher John Kent, Phyllis Shillito (1895-1980), A Review, MA Coursework, School of Design, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology, Sydney, 1995, p. 12. The School of Design’s first instructor was Mr. Phillips, a graduate of London’s National Art Training School located at South Kensington. In 1878, he was replaced by a well-known French
116 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 one school envisaged in a School of Australian Decorative Arts. Although the school never eventuated in his time, Henri who departed Sydney in 1891 fostered a national spirit in design using Australian flora and fauna which was realised in his pattern book of decorative designs, Australian Decorative Arts.
Growth in technical education continued. Decorative and industrial arts classes from Sydney Technical College were transferred to new Technical College buildings in Mary Anne Street, Ultimo, occupying all rooms on the top floor of the main building. Mr. J. Wright took charge of the Art Department until 1915 when Sammy Rowe was appointed Lecturer-in-Charge.82 In 1922, under Rowe’s leadership, the school moved from Ultimo to its present home at the former site of
Darlinghurst Goal, becoming East Sydney Technical College (ESTC).83 As in the past, Rowe’s vision for the school relied on overseas models which now included an injection of ‘New blood from the European Training Ground’.84 Under Rowe’s supervision, the next tour de force—a woman (Phyllis Shillito, Chapter 8)—was hired early August of 1925 for design instruction, joining the staff at ESTC.85
Schools of Architecture in Sydney
From nineteenth and early twentieth century educational policies, a formal but dichotomous mode of architectural education emerged in Sydney. By the 1920s, two opposing streams—a tradition of technical education at Sydney Technical
College and an artist-architect approach under the direction of Leslie Wilkinson at
designer-artist, M. Lucien Henri (1850-1896). In 1891, Henri took leave from his position in the Art Department returning to Paris where he died in 1896. 82 ibid. 83 ibid., p. 13. 84 ‘The Department of Art at the East Sydney Technical College’, Art in Australia, vol. 15, no. 2, 1935, p. 43. 85 ibid.
117 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 the University of Sydney—had been established.86 From 1945, comprehensive full-time and part-time courses were established with the development of new courses at the University of Sydney and at the New South Wales University of
Technology with educational standards also influenced by the Royal Australian
Institute of Architects.87 While not a common educational path for women, as
Hanna’s recent study reveals women progressively gained entrance into architecture courses with several completing degrees.88
From this training ground, architects—both women and men—were hired to teach in the early schools for interior design lecturing on and demonstrating within studio settings architectural drafting skills, three-dimensional thinking with further emphasis on technologies and structure (Mary White, Chapter 9). Despite efforts as early as the 1940s to include interior design within university and architectural education in Sydney, this would not eventuate until the 1970s.
Retail Trading Firms as Training Ground for Interior Decoration and Design
Training for interior decoration and, subsequently, interior design also evolved through associations with retail trade. As discussed earlier in this chapter from the late nineteenth century, businessmen/decorators such as John Lamb Lyon and
Cottier, James and Hugh Patterson, J. Ross Anderson, Phil Goatcher, B. J. Grice
H. H. Groth, J. Alhouse, F. A Geiger, and J. Clay Beeler provided interior decoration, painting services and upholstery to the wealthier clientele of Sydney.
86 Peter Proudfoot, ‘Architectural Education in Sydney 1833-1983’, Architectural Education 3, London: RIBA Magazine, 1983, pp. 73-97. 87 ibid., p. 73. 88 See Bronwyn Hanna, PhD Thesis, ‘Absence and Presence: A Historiography of Early Women Architects in New South Wales’, PhD Thesis, Faculty of the Built Environment, UNSW, 1999.
118 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4
Furniture and department stores formed a primary source for the supply of furnishing products and a venue from which advice could be gleaned on interior decoration for the home. In Sydney, these included Andrew Lenehans (est.1850s) and David Jones (est.1860s), followed by Farmers Department Store and Beard
Watsons.
The traditional avenue of training through the domain of the furnishing store was the apprenticeship, originally offered exclusively to men. Cecily Adams, a mid-century interior decorator in Sydney, explains the system and its gender bias:
…before the First World War, a five-year apprenticeship to a general furnishing store, such as Harrods or Liberty of London, would have been the answer to an aspiring young decorator’s dream. There, under the tutorship of experienced men, he would have received his training. At the end of the first year any young man who proved to be unsuitable for this field of work would have been dropped from the list of apprentices. Each young man would have received 5/-per week pocket money and, in the case of a country boy, he would have been housed in lodgings by the London firm. All the young men who today would be called interior decorators were then called general furnishing men. Certainly no glamour name, but nevertheless decorating and design of a high order was carried out by these men. This was, of course, well before Women’s Lib. Women were not considered as suitable general furnishing trainees, so they stayed out of sight in seamstresses’ workrooms, making the window drapes with their elegant pelmets and swags, and the romantic curtains and pilaster tops for the large fourposter beds, as well as all the other soft-furnishing needs of the well-dressed Victorian home. 89
By the 1920s, the breakthrough for women into this male-dominated domain had arrived in Australia: women were employed at furnishing stores as decorators and, by the 1940s, the department store has assumed an important role in training, where they ‘learnt the many branches of knowledge needed by anyone
89 Adams, op. cit., p. 14-15.
119 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 undertaking the very important job of complete home decoration.’90 Instruction manuals were also published where good design principles were advanced with two intentions: to improve public taste in the homes of the broad middle classes and to promote business.91 Professionally-trained and educated interior decorators, such as Nora Seton McDougall (Chapter 6), were hired to train staff and provide lectures on interior decoration for the home to the retailer’s clientele.
Public Programs and Government-Sponsored Courses
Continuing interest in matters of taste and practical concerns in furnishing the home prompted special exhibitions and public programs on furniture and furnishings, while war-time prompted government sponsored correspondence courses to servicewomen and men overseas and those waiting at home (Nora
McDougall, Chapter 6; Margaret Lord, Chapter 7).
Through these various streams of education from the 1920s to 1960s in
Sydney, a distinct discipline emerged for interior design. Seminal to this movement were women who offered instruction through private schools of art and design, lecture series, journal articles, popular magazines, advice columns, government-sponsored correspondence courses, retail stores, and government-run technical education system. Identified in this study are Thea Mary Proctor, Nora
Seton McDougall, Margaret Florence Lord, Phyllis Sykes Shillito, and Mary
Laidley White who, working independently, initiated the first programs for the
90 ibid., p. 12-13. Adams, is representative of women who had earlier undertaken art instruction (Strathcona Girls Grammar School in Melbourne) and design training (ESTC studying sculpture with Raynor Hoff and Barbara Tribe, and design with Mr. Morefield) amassing the knowledge of the interior decorator through fragmented study.
120 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 study of interior decoration and interior design in Sydney. Individually and collectively, the five women progressively advanced interior design as a discipline and profession, their seminal efforts paving the way for further developments in full-time and part-time courses and advanced degrees at colleges and universities.
Their stories in the following chapters demonstrate their significant contributions to the professional development of interior design.
Professional Organisations for Interior Design in Australia
Professional associations and societies are usually at the forefront of distinctions between trades, occupations and professions. With governmental sanction, the role and responsibility of the practitioner is defined and in some countries and states legislated. In the early formation of a society for interior design in America, furniture retailers, manufacturers and distributors at the higher end of the market played a significant role in the growth of the field by creating at their annual trade show a venue and thus an avenue for professional organisation. 92 In Australia, it was practitioners, teachers and students motivated by their intentions to raise a consciousness of the new profession and to set and advance standards of design for practice and education.
Two concurrent movements for professional organisation for interior design can be traced in Australia. The first, the Interior Design Association of
Australia (IDAA), formed in Melbourne in 1948 was instigated by students
91 Such as the Retail Trader’s Training Institute of New South Wales who published a series of instruction manuals on Interior Decoration for Salespeople. 92 Christine Piotrowski, Professional Practice for Interior Designers, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002, 3rd ed., p. 9. For example, it was through the ‘first of its kind’ semi-annual furniture market held in 1878 at Grand Rapids, Michigan that an avenue was created for decorators to meet from which a professional organisation would be formed.
121 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 attending Melbourne Technical College (now RMIT). The idea was fostered earlier that year under the ‘capable’ teacher Frederick Sterne who had at that time changed the three-year Decorator course into a four-year diploma in Interior
Design.93 IDAA held monthly meetings with Jack Crow as its first president and
Ron Opie as treasurer who wrote letters to schools promoting the new discipline.
By 1952, ‘the organisation had grown in strength’, leased their own meeting rooms ‘in the heart of town’ and gave lectures to the public on aspects of Interior
Design. During the Arts Festival associated with the 1952 Olympic Games, an exhibition of member work was visited by a number of overseas visitors.
In Sydney the first professional organisation for interior design, Society of
Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA), was established in 1951. Its beginnings are described by Margaret Lord (Chapter 7) in her 1969 book, A Decorator’s
World, as follows:
In 1950 seven interior decorators met at Marion Best’s house in Woollahra to discuss the formation of a society or association which would help to raise the standard of interior design in Australia. These seven were Mary White, Don Johnston, Edmund Dykes, Don Shaw, Stuart Low, myself [Lord], and our hostess, Marion Best. As a result of our talk that evening a list of possible members was made out - not many at the time - and a meeting was held in the ballroom at Merioola, a decaying mansion in Edgecliff Road. There was plenty of enthusiasm for the project. Most of us felt that, apart from any more ambitious aims we might have, we would all benefit from getting together occasionally to exchange ideas and information about the various decorating trades, sources of supply, and so on - and that indirectly this interchange would help raise standards of both design and workmanship in Australia. This has proved to be true, and the Society of Interior Designers, although it moved slowly for some years, now has over 50 full members. Besides influencing manufacturers of furniture and fabrics, it has promoted interest in interior design by lectures, discussions and exhibitions.
93 Ron Rosenfeldt, ‘Historical notes on the establishment of the Society of Designers for Industry and its development into the Industrial Design Institute of Australia 1947-1969, received from Design Institute of Australia Federal Secretariat, Hawthorn Victoria, Mar 1999, p. 11; Early members of IDAA included Deera and Bill Lelievre, D. H. Bill, J. L. Delbridge, W. Hardacre, and Joan Stewart.
122 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4
Members work in a variety of ways. Most have shops, or are consultants in store furnishing departments, while one or two do no merchandising but work like architects in a purely professional capacity from an office or studio. Because of the initiative and enthusiasm of that original small group, interior decoration is now a recognized profession with a properly organized and registered society. 94
In a catalogue accompanying the society’s first ‘exhibition’ of interior rooms held in 1953, the role of the interior designer was addressed to curb the ‘reluctance’ of people to employ an interior designer by stating the advantages of ‘expert advice and design service’.95
By 1956, the Society had become self-conscious of professional identity.
Officially from its onset (1951), the Society had chosen the term ‘designer’, although many practitioners continued to call themselves ‘decorators’ bound by tradition. However, as Michaela Richards discovered in her research, ‘SIDA’s inclusion in the 1956 Sydney Telephone Directory under “Painters and
Decorators” provoked the identity crisis. The furore which accompanied this misunderstanding and the ensuing debate within the Society left most members firm adherents of the term “designer”.’96 Details of the debate are not recorded, however, professional status was central to the argument making distinctions between the painter’s physical work of decorating and more comprehensive
94 Margaret Lord, A Decorator’s World, Living with Art and International Design, Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1969, p. 185. Also see Adams, op cit., p.6, who gives a different version of the group of seven decorators who met to discuss the formation of a Society of Interior Decorators. Adams says, ‘In 1951 I was invited by one of Sydney’s leading designers, Don Johnston, to join a small group of interior decorators who had arranged to meet one evening at Woollahra in an old home called “Merioola”, to discuss the formation of a Society of Interior Decorators…Roberta Osborn (now Howland) and I are the last surviving members of that group of seven decorators.’ One possible conclusion is that there was more than one meeting set in which each group believed they were the first to meet. 95 ‘Catalogue of an exhibition of rooms’, Sydney: Society of Interior Designers of Australia, Printer, M. A. Henry, 1953, unpaginated. 96 Michaela Richards, The Best Style, East Roseville NSW: Craftsman House, 1993, p. 51.
123 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 definitions of theoretical and practical knowledge and skills required and implied by design over decoration.
In September 1964, SIDA was incorporated as a public company.97 The subscribers included Mary Laidley White, Leslie Walford, Warren Thomas
Harding, Robert Malcom Forbes, Merle du Boulay, Marion Best, Margaret (Lord)
Wardell and Barbara Campbell.98 Key objectives of the society were as follows:
Advancement of the standards of interior design and decoration…to uphold in practice a Code of Ethics and Professional Practices of mutual benefit in professional public and trade relationships and to promote educational programmes with a view to improving the art of interior design and decoration…by securing the improvement of facilities for the teaching of the same in schools technical colleges universities and the like.99
In the years that followed, the Melbourne Association for Interior Design
(IDAA) and the unified Industrial Design Institute (IDIA) amalgamated (20
December 1982) and the name of organisation changed at that time to Design
Institute of Australia (DIA). By 1 July 1998, the Melbourne-based DIA, the
Sydney-based Society of Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA founded 1951) and the Australian Textile Design Association (ATDA) unified maintaining the name DIA with amendments to Memorandum and Articles of Association to cater for the amalgamated body, forming a National body instead of a Federal body and
State Councils instead of Chapters. In January 1999, National and State Discipline
Practice Groups formed.100 SIDA’s merger into the larger multidisciplinary design
97 Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-8/1 SIDA 1964, 1972-81. SIDA was incorporated 24 September 1964. A 31-page document includes Memorandum and Articles of Association. 98 ibid. 99 ibid., pp. 1-2. 100 Rosenfeldt, op. cit., p. 13; Note: This history explains the joining of Melbourne’s Interior Design Association of Australia (IIDA), formed in 1948, with the Society of Designers for Industry. Together an Industrial Design Institute of Australia (IDIA) was formed. On 20 December 1982, name of organisation changed to Design Institute of Australia (DIA) from Industrial Design Institute of Australia.
124 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 organisation, DIA, relinquished its separate professional organisation and identity; however, it maintained a strong alliance with design. On the surface, the merger squashed exclusive professional compartments that specialisation had fostered since the nineteenth century.
At this time, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) classified ‘Interior
Decorator’ under an Associate Professional status, as differentiated from the
Professional status of the ‘Interior Designer’.101 The former was defined as an individual who ‘plans the interior design of commercial and residential premises and arranges for decorating work to be done’, while the latter ‘plans and designs interiors for buildings, office and homes, with consideration to layout, function, aesthetics and safety’.102 More specifically identified were the different educational qualifications and years of practical experience (Bachelor degree or higher or 5 years of experience versus AQF Diploma or higher or 3 years of experience), as well as changing technological requirements (uses computer-aided design systems as part of design process) of the profession. A comparison of tasks also shows commonalities and differences based on analytical, technical and design skills (Table 4.2). This summary establishes a basis of requisite skills and knowledge for an evaluation of practices relative to those of the early practitioners of this study.
101 ABS Catalogue No. 1220.0, Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1997, p. 293 and p. 211 respectively. 102 ibid.
125 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4
Table 4.2 Comparison of Tasks of Interior Decorator/Interior Designer
3999-11 Interior Decorator 2533-17 Interior Designer x Inspects premises and plans of premises to x Consults with clients to determine needs, be decorated. preferences and expectations. x Consults with clients to determine x Analyses functional requirements, desired decorating requirements. effect and purpose of the interior. x Draws preliminary decoration schemes for x Sketches plans of areas showing approval. arrangement of space, furniture and x Prepares final decoration plans including accessories. quotes and costs for work and materials. x Estimates costs and materials required and x Supervises decorating work or performs presents plans and quotes to clients for work personally. approval. x Prepares accounts and arranges payment for x Selects or recommends purchases of subcontractors. decorative and functional materials and x May operate a retail outlet for furnishings accessories such as furniture, lighting and related items. fixtures and paintings. x Directs workers engaged in on-site implementations of proposed scheme. x Uses computer-aided design systems as part of the design process and for consultation with clients. x Designs original furnishings and joinery to conform with proposed scheme. x May work with architects in the preparation of plans. x May design interiors for ships, aircraft or other transport vehicles.
Source: ABS Catalogue No. 1220.0, Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1997
Conclusion
This chapter has discussed interior design as a distinct artistic field, specialised design discipline and profession linking its development to ideals and aims of modernisation motivated by the rise of industrialised capitalism with response to production, consumption and commodification of goods, technological advancements, urbanisation, gendered divisions of productive labour, rise of
126 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 professions from the late nineteenth century and design reform movements advanced through democratised and institutionalised education.
The chapter further discussed the transformation of interior decoration as an élite tradition hallmarked by cultured patronage, connoisseurship, fine craftsmanship and luxurious materials to a lucrative business prompted by industrialisation, mass production and commodification and a newly expanded consumer audience who often bereft of good taste were motivated alternately by comfort, élite aspirations and conspicuous consumption. However, during the late nineteenth century, traditional practices of artists, architects, businessmen and antiquarian advisers made way for women, as the field was identified as their natural profession and a charming career; acknowledging also how an archetypal casting of the female decorator reliant on social background, assumed domestic authority and influence over matters of everyday life, lack of structural knowledge needed for architecture, and an association with decoration relegated her and the field little status.
Concurrent movements of democratised education and arts training that supported the entrance of women into schools were also discussed in this chapter.
These movements gave impetus to design reform movements, each impacting the early discipline of interior decoration, as well as the various avenues of education and training for artistic women. The education and training that were available to these women included academies of art, design schools, instruction from a plethora of manuals, books and correspondence courses that proliferated, and practical experience at furnishing firms and retail establishments, revealing how women’s limited study of mere small facts and fragmented experiences compared
127 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 to men’s education in architecture based on sound principles was believed superficial and insufficient for advancement.
Within the history of interior design education, this chapter has highlighted how feminists credit the first serious efforts to offer systematic instruction to Edith
Wharton and acknowledge Elsie de Wolfe as the first to professionalise the field by opening a practice and charging for services. However, professionalisation through formal institutionalised education is credited to men: Frank Alvah Parsons at the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts, followed by Sherrill Whiton at the New York School of Interior Decoration for programs of Interior Architecture and Decoration, and Walter Gropius at the Bauhaus whose modern ideas and ideals, underpinned by fundamental (formalist) principles, practical knowledge, and the notion of ‘design’, instigated a paradigm shift from interior decoration to interior design which became the new hallmark of the profession. Subsequently, modernist focus on pioneer architects, their monumental and permanent structures in histories of interior design dominated over the design of everyday objects and interior spaces, making interior decoration and its traditional subjects for women
(colour, textiles, printing and weaving) insubordinate.
This chapter has further raised issues of professional rivalries within and outside the field, citing distinctions between interior decorator, interior designer and architect and arguments that ensued regarding (a) types of education based on traditional historical knowledge versus building technologies and structure, (b) gendering of spaces (public versus private) and work (decoration versus architecture), (c) juxta-positioning of female intuition (emotion) to male rationality (logic and reason) which polarised ways to knowing design based on
128 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 modernisation and (d) biological sex and society’s valuing or conversely devaluing of positions, roles and identities, such as female decorator and male architect and subsequently, interior designer. The identity dilemma of the
‘profession’ has been linked to significant historical junctures that capture the spirit of their time and mark changes in practice, production and clientele.103 The discussion raised here attests to the fact that binary extremes hardly explain interior design’s complex history.
Finally, a focus on the Australian development of interior design in this chapter has outlined streams of knowledge (artistic, technical and practical) influenced by underlying and lingering ideological and philosophical differences in education, emergent institutionalisation and professionalisation. As a result, a complex interaction of ideas and ideals (including socio-economic class) revealed how women were directed to subjects that could combine their so-called natural talent with learning and that differences in the Australian development of interior design compared to its American counterpart challenge the stereotyped image of the untrained female decorator. The five women of this study attained formal training through curricula of art and design; therefore, their knowledge and authority was derived from other than so-called ‘natural’ talent, intuition or social background.104 Concurrent Melbourne and Sydney movements of the late 1940s
103 An inherent difficulty for the design historian is determining what name is appropriate in identifying, describing and/or defining the activity, career, vocation, occupation, discipline, domain and/or profession. Any sense of meaning is often complicated by inconsistent usage by both writers and practitioners thus confusion regarding the practice, role and status of the practitioner is perpetuated. 104The early women’s exclusion from the history of interior design as foundational leaders ignores the development of design in theory and practice, an essential area of significance to current university educated designers. Evidence of this lack of inclusion of the early women in research studies resides in Marina Lommerse, 1998 unpublished MA thesis, Career Development of University Educated Interior Designers/Interior Architects: Past Present and Future, Perth: Curtin
129 Historical Development of Interior Design Chapter 4 and early 1950s have subsequently amalgamated with an interdisciplinary design group. Thus, the early intentions to raise the public profile, set standards for practice, establish a code of ethics and instigate trade associations were important to establishing categorisation of professional and occupational jurisdictions; yet in
Australia today, there remains speculation of whether interior design is a ‘true profession’ and, in America, what constitutes profession.105
The following biographical chapters turn to the stories and experiences of five Sydney-based women to examine issues raised here and challenge past stereotypes by investigating their legacy of design. In what way did these women espouse modernity as active participants in the emergent and developing years of interior design in Sydney? What were their contributions and how were they significant to professional development?
University of Technology. In this study, Lommerse fails to mention SIDA founded in Sydney in 1951 citing Design Institute of Australia (DIA) as the early main professional body for interior design. 105 Peter Geyer, Sydney ’99 Design Conference, 1999; also see Caren Martin op. cit.
130 Thea Proctor Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
THEA PROCTOR
House decoration is an art and it is a never-ending source of pleasure to those who study it. It has so many possibilities even to people of limited means.1 —Thea Proctor, The Home, 1923
Introduction
This chapter on Thea Proctor is the first of a series of biographical chapters on five women who are the focus of this study, each organised around a common structure.2 The chapter begins by giving biographical, disciplinary and experiential background situating Proctor as a female artist within the social and aesthetic milieu of her time.3 The emergent ‘profession’ of interior decoration in
Sydney coincides with its promotion in the early twentieth century as a fashionable and artistic pursuit for women. In a country of limited opportunities for artists and women, Proctor who never marries is motivated towards the field
1 Thea Proctor, ‘Household Weeds’, The Home, Mar 1923, p. 14. 2 I use the terminology of the day ‘interior decorator’ and ‘interior decoration’ in this thesis consciously to indicate shifts over time, but follow the current academic tradition of using surnames, i.e. ‘Proctor’, in reference to the artist/decorator. The latter going against Proctor’s abhorrence of the practice as she, according to her niece Thea Bryant, would have much preferred ‘Miss Proctor’. 3Scholars have approached Proctor’s work in various ways focussing on specific works of art, her choice of media, as taste-maker, and even in her role as image-maker of modern women. For instance, Helen Morgan, ‘Thea Proctor in London 1910-11: Her Early Involvement with Fashion’, Art Bulletin of Victoria 36, 1995, notes that Proctor was often noted in the personal and ‘Sydney s'amuse’ columns of the Home in the 1920s. Her opinion was sought on topics of fashion, interior decoration and flower arranging-primary concerns of the magazine. Also see Helen Morgan, Thea Proctor, Her Career Before 1921 and the Question of her Aesthetic Reputation, MA (Honours) Thesis, 2 Volumes, 1994, University of Melbourne, footnote 55, Chapter 6, in which Morgan attempted to separate the artist’s social positioning from her art stating, ‘I have chosen not to discuss those [social activities and positioning] here, and to use only information which has a bearing on her art as it was required throughout the text.’ However, in understanding Proctor’s contributions and legacy to interior design, Proctor’s sociocultural positioning was important in raising the profile of this still new design specialisation. Therefore, this thesis seeks the objective
131 Thea Proctor Chapter 5 and its study out of a necessity to support herself. Gaining authority on the subject, she introduced instruction on art and design within her private classes in
Sydney. It was here, this researcher argues, that she advanced the idea of Interior
Design as a woman's profession. A description of her activities and significant contributions to the development of interior decoration follows. This chapter, importantly, discusses individual and societal values and beliefs underpinning
Proctor’s work as a female artist and impacting on her philosophy of design.
Formulated within an early phase of the modernist movement, this idea of design subsequently informs her approach to interior decoration. Finally, this chapter summarises Proctor’s contribution to the professional development of interior design in Sydney, concluding with an analysis of her significance as new developments and requirements of the time emerge.
Biographical Background and Basis of Authority
Alethea (called Thea) Mary Proctor was born 2 October 1879 at Armidale, New
South Wales (NSW) of upper middle class background.4 Thea’s father, William
Consett Proctor originally from Landcashire, was a solicitor and at 25, became the youngest member of the NSW Legislative Assembly (1880-87) at that time.
Although they were not close, according to her cousin, Thea inherited her father’s
‘natural facility’ for drawing.5 Her mother, Kathleen Janet Louisa Roberts, came
(external) forces that impact Proctor’s subjective (internalised) understanding of design that in turn gave Proctor authority to advance the discipline and profession. 4 ibid., p. 27. I would like to thank Helen Morgan for her generous help and research that provided biographical information. I would also like to thank Thea Bryant, Proctor’s niece for access to her private collection of articles, letters and photographs of the artist. 5 Quoted in Dora Sweetapple, ‘Thea Proctor’, p. 180, Thea Bryant private collection; also see Roger Butler, ‘Proctor, Alethea Mary’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 11, General Editor: Geoffrey Serle, Melbourne University Press, 1988.
132 Thea Proctor Chapter 5 from Brisbane, the daughter of Francis Edward Roberts, an engineer and explorer of note. On Thea’s grandmother’s side, the Russells, engineers of Scottish descent, had established the first iron foundries in Tasmania and New South
Wales. Impressionist artist John Peter Russell (1858-1930) was a second cousin to
Thea.
During the 1880s, the family lived comfortably in the refined Sydney suburb of Hunters Hill and Thea was sent to boarding school at Armidale in 1889.
William and Kathleen separated in 1892 and divorced in 1897, leaving Kathleen to move to Bowral where she brought up Thea and her brother Frederick with assistance from her parents. At Bowral, Thea attended Lynthorpe Ladies’ College where her artistic talent was directed to painting and drawing studies. Early recognition of this talent came at the end of the school year in 1894, when Thea won first prize in the Senior Division for ‘Painting & Conduct’.6 This was followed with another first prize at the Bowral District Amateur Art Society for a still-life oil painting of her violin and bouquet of flowers. The local winners gained further esteem through the judging of their work by the well-known
Australian Impressionist artist Arthur Streeton.7 In December 1895, Thea passed the junior public examination and, shortly thereafter, left Lynthorpe to pursue studies at Sydney Art School, 88 King Street, where she attended Julian Ashton’s classes from 1895 to 1896.
6 The prize was a copy of E .P. Roe, Barriers Burned Away, inscribed on the flyleaf, ‘“Lynthorpe” Girl’s School, Bowral, Senior Division, 1st Prize, Painting and Conduct, Thea Proctor, Christmas 1894, J.G. Laby Principal’, Thea Bryant private collection. 7 Morgan, op. cit., p. 27; and newspaper clipping, ‘She Can Remember When a Chop Cost Twopence’, no date, no pagination, Thea Bryant private collection.
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In 1903, Proctor travelled to London with Kathleen, lured by a desire to experience the British art scene first hand as was then promoted in the English art journal The Studio. Thea was also encouraged by her mother who believed that she would have a better chance in England.8 After her arrival, Proctor studied at the privately-run St John’s Wood Art School, for as long as was financially possible. It was during this time that income from a wealthy family member ceased.
By mid-1905, Kathleen Proctor had returned to Australia, but Thea stayed on and worked. Although Proctor struggled financially, in later years she wrote:
[She had] no regrets about staying in London with no money…There are things one simply has to do in life, to return to Australia would have been the finish of me - & I had to learn to draw - & I got away from Sydney suburbia.9
Although Proctor was required to live frugally, this never deterred her pursuit of experiencing life, as she later told, ‘When I earned money I would go out and buy something I really wanted.’10 The young artist also remembered the
‘excitement’ of seeing her first London exhibition of the Impressionists—Renoir,
Manet, Monet, Pizarro—“Goodness, it was a revelation!”11 While in London,
Proctor experienced all that she could, attending ‘fancy dress parties at Holland
Park’,12 ‘first productions of Bernard Shaw’s plays at the Court Theatre’13 and
8 Morgan, ibid., p. 28. 9 Proctor, Letter to Thea Bryant, c. 1965-6. Most of the letters to Bryant from Proctor are dated and this by its contents suggests it is in the last year of her life, Thea Bryant private collection. 10 ‘She Can Remember When a Chop Cost Twopence’, op. cit. 11 ibid. 12 Sweetapple, op. cit., p. 182. 13 ‘She Can Remember When a Chop Cost Twopence’, op. cit.
134 Thea Proctor Chapter 5
‘Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet’.14 This penchant for fancifulness continued later in
Sydney as witnessed at the Costume Ball of 1927 (Figure 5.1).
Figure 5.1 Thea Proctor dressed for Costume Ball in Sydney, 1927 Source: Thea Bryant Private Collection, Sydney
In her artistic studies, Proctor came under the influence of Australian artist
George W. Lambert, who was recognised for his draughtsmanship and portraiture.
At this time, she also studied lithography and design under Ernest Jackson at the
14 Daniel Thomas, newspaper clipping, ‘The Tastemaker’, references ‘three years ago she died’, no pagination, Thea Bryant private collection.
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Chelsea School of Art. Life for an artist, however, especially a women artist, was not easy. Thus, despite her shared friendship with the Lamberts, ‘after 7 years of appalling hardships & disillusion…[and not being able to] stand it any longer’,15
Proctor decided to return to Australia in 1912. But finding there ‘the state of art so depressing’, she returned again to London, departing Australia in 1914.16
Of further artistic influence to Proctor were her London circle of friends including artists Charles Conder, Wilson Steer, William Orpen, Augustus John,
Burne-Jones, and writer Ezra Pound. As members of the New English Art Club, they were seen as the modern stream of British painting. Proctor was also influenced by the fin-de-siécle movements of the time: the ‘art for art sake’ aestheticism, particularly as had been voiced by Whistler in his famous ‘Ten
O’Clock” lecture of 1885 and associated influences of japonisme. Proctor was also introduced at this time to the formalist theories of modernists Clive Bell and
Roger Fry. Bell’s theory of aesthetics, especially his notion of significant form which was believed an essential element common to all works of art, became critical to Proctor’s own thinking and approach to art and design. Proctor was also familiar with Fry’s discussions on design and of the artist as decorator in his book,
Vision and Design, 1920, and in his articles written for the art journals, Burlington
Magazine and Colour; and through his experimentations in the Omega workshops run by him in London from 1913 to 1919.
15 Proctor, Letter to Thea Bryant, c. 1965-6, Thea Bryant private collection. 16 ibid.
136 Thea Proctor Chapter 5
Then, in 1921, after another seven years overseas, Thea Proctor, aged 42, returned to Australia: this time permanently.17 According to the British
Australasian, Proctor intended to make her home in Melbourne where her brother had settled, but by August had limited her stay to the exhibition opening of her lithograph prints.18 Proctor then moved to Sydney where she embarked on a teaching career at her former art school—Julian Ashton’s. This lasted only two terms, when, as Proctor tells, ‘they sacked me for giving the students dangerous thoughts’.19 The returning artist’s modernist outlook confronted the conservative sensibilities of the art academy, an attitude Proctor later found ‘funny’ since her ideas were already considered ‘old-fashioned’ overseas.20
In March 1923, The Home magazine pictured the interior of Miss Proctor’s
‘Studio’, located in the Grosvenor Building on Lower George Street near Circular
Quay (Figure 5.2). Adjacent was her cleverly entitled article, ‘Household Weeds’, in which she offered modern advice on the ‘art’ of house decoration.21 Proctor had evidenced through American and English magazines the attention interior decoration was gaining abroad and, considering house decoration an art and
17 According to Morgan, op. cit., 1994; Supposedly, Proctor arrived on the Nestor, 21 Sept, ‘Miss Thea Proctor - Age 42 - British – Artist’, having embarked at Glasgow, was contracted to land in Melbourne. Inward Passenger Lists Public Records Office Melbourne. However, as Morgan, op. cit., p. 747, points out, there is some discrepancy here with another paper who says Proctor returned mid October, ‘Art Notes’, Australasian, 15 Oct 1921. 18 British Australasian, 4 Aug 1921, p. 14 and 15 Sept, p. 12. 19 ‘She Can Remember When a Chop Cost Twopence’, op. cit. 20 Thea Proctor, ‘Design’, Undergrowth, Sept/Oct 1926, unpaginated; copy can be found in Mitchell Library, Sydney, NSW, Australia. 21 Proctor, ‘Household Weeds’, op. cit., p.14; Proctor’s Studio was located at 219 George Street. The title ‘Household Weeds’ is clever in its duel play on the subject of the article, placing the palm and aspidistra on a black list, and to weeds as binding forces of Victorian traditions and dogma. Proctor most likely borrowed the idea from Bell who wrote that ‘a modern movement…can escape the binding weeds of dogma…[as it turns] towards art…not only for the most perfect expression of transcendent emotion, but for an inspiration by which to live.’ Refer to Clive Bell, Art, NY: Frederick A. Stokes Co., Publishers, 1914, p. 277.
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‘never-ending source of pleasure to those who study it,’22 she integrated the subject into her private instruction on art and design.
Figure 5.2 Thea Proctor’s Studio Source: The Home, March 1923
22 ibid.
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This instruction is now credited by former students, family and writers as the
‘first’ of its kind in Sydney.23 Thus, Proctor put to practical use her artistic knowledge and disciplinary skills in design.
To further her knowledge of interior decoration from 1922 to 1928,
Proctor studied the subject by correspondence, sending away to New York for the
Arts & Decoration Home Study Course (Figure 5.3).24 From this exemplar,
Proctor would study pure design as it related to room composition, histories of architecture, furniture and furnishings, and the essentials of professional practice.
In May 1923, the Sydney Sun further confirmed that the ‘artist and lithographer, with original notions on interior decoration…[had] set up her studio somewhere on the top of dusty stairs - a splash of vivid color [sic] behind a tram- wracked street’.25 The snippet of information gained from an interview with
Proctor coincided with the opening of her Sydney exhibition of fans and drawings, which was her first solo art exhibition to be held in nine years. In the same edition on the Women’s pages, further coverage of the event was linked to women’s social interests under the caption, ‘Fans and Fashion’.
23 Although the exact date is unknown, this information is confirmed by Thea Waddell, Proctor’s niece and executor of her estate and Mary Turner, a former student of Proctor, 26 Aug 1999. Turner notes that Proctor was interested in everything but that she really excelled at flower arrangement. This no doubt was inspired by Constance Spry, the well-known English designer and florist (publications in Proctor’s book collection now held at AGNSW Archives). Nan Dwyer, in her article ‘Aunt Thea shook the artistic world’, The Sunday Mail [Brisbane], 14 Jul 1985, also states, ‘Thea Proctor organised the first Australian syllabus for interior decorating when that branch of the arts was unknown.’ 24 These years correspond to the course copyright dates, which were sent in individual lessons. In addition see program for the play and exhibition, Not about Still Lives, Margaret Preston and Thea Proctor, Queensland Art Gallery, c. 1985. Proctor completed the correspondence course in 1928, then making herself available to the public. 25 ‘Fans and Fashion - Portrait Problems - That Troublesome Nose - Art and Thea Proctor’, Sun [Sydney], 24 May 1923, p. 13.
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Figure 5.3 Thea Proctor’s Personal Copy of Arts and Decoration Practical Home Study Course Source: Thea Bryant Private Collection, Sydney
As an artist, Proctor’s reputation in Sydney gained momentum during the
1920s and 1930s, with the execution and exhibition of her ‘striking relief prints’ and ‘beautiful fans’.26 Through the influential magazine The Home, with the
26 ‘Thea Proctor – Two Exhibitions’, National Trust Magazine, Jun 1987, p. 19; also see ‘ How the World is Wagging, A Painter of Beautiful Fans, Thea Proctor’s Fantasies’, The Woman’s Budget, 18 Aug 1926, p. 3.
140 Thea Proctor Chapter 5 support of publisher and patron of the arts Sydney Ure Smith, she gained further attention with her stylish magazine covers and authoritative opinions on the subjects of art appreciation, taste, fashion and interior decoration. Ure Smith had commissioned Proctor's first cover for the stylish magazine in 1921 while she was still in London with another twenty-five being produced between 1922 and
1935.27 Subjects of fashion, lifestyle and flower decoration at which Proctor excelled were fashionably depicted in modern style (Figure 5.4).
Figure 5.4 ‘Still Life Decoration’ by Thea Proctor Source: The Home, June 1927
27 Morgan, 1994, op. cit., tabulated the number of covers illustrated by Proctor for the Home.
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The publisher later acknowledged Proctor’s work as ‘the finest’ that had appeared on the Home covers.28 During these years and continuing into the 1940s,
Proctor established her career as an advocate, educator, artist, interior decorator and taste-maker, providing interviews, classes, lectures, articles, art work, opinion and consultation on a wide range of areas in the arts, including interior decoration.
In 1926 Proctor, along with George Lambert, founded Australia’s first modernist art society—the Contemporary Group—with the intention to encourage younger, modern artists. Her important contribution to modern art in Australia was further recognised in 1946 when she was awarded the Society of Artists
Medal.29 Proctor had exhibited with the Society of Artists first in 1897, and became the first woman to sit on its selection committee. Proctor’s illustrative work for the Home was also shown in a 1935 exhibition of graphic art for the
Women’s Industrial Arts Society (WIAS), one of the earliest groups organised around the concept of industrial and graphic design.30
Proctor continued her artistic work into the 1950s, executing for public exhibition and private commission watercolours and drawings of still-life interiors and portraits. After a career spanning almost seventy years, Proctor, who never married, died on 29 July 1966 after a short illness in a hospital in Sydney, aged
86. She was commemorated as an ‘illustrious’ figure in the art world who ‘helped as much as any woman of that period to raise the standards of aesthetic taste’ in
Australia.31
28 Sydney Ure Smith, ‘The Story of the Home’, The Home, Mar 1930, p. 8. 29 This medal is held in Thea Bryant private collection. 30 Michael Bogle, Design in Australia 1880-1970, 1998, p. 111. 31 Leon Gellert, ‘A gracious lady has left us…’, Sunday Telegraph, 7 Aug 1966, Thea Bryant private collection.
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Activities and Participation in Interior Decoration and Design
Proctor’s ideas on interior decoration and design were disseminated (a) through numerous interviews, articles and illustrations that appeared in the popular press and artistic publications; (b) through lectures and private classes where she linked art, design, and interior decoration; and (c) in exhibitions of her drawings, paintings and interior furnishings. Through these activities, she explained modern theories and applications of design, elaborating on subjects of taste and fashion, flower arrangement and house decoration. In the process, she became an appointed arbiter of taste in Australia and she is credited with providing the first of its kind instruction for interior decoration in Sydney. The following describes
Proctor’s activities and participation in interior decoration and design further exposing various influences and ideas regarding the artist’s notion of pure design as linked with interior (home) decoration.
Articles by Thea Proctor
Proctor’s early article ‘Household Weeds’ in The Home offered aesthetic advice on home decoration. Often prescriptive, it followed modernist dogma incorporating Roger Fry’s theories of simplification. Proctor advised:
Simplicity is the greatest object to strive for, whether in the small house owned by people whose incomes are modest or in the large house of those who can afford elegance. Overcrowding is not only distracting to the eye, but the objects, even if beautiful, lose their individual decorative values when massed together. The effects of the spaces should be realised – spaces on the walls, mantelpieces, tables and the space in the centre of the room.32
32 Proctor, ‘Household Weeds’, op cit., p. 14.
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For Proctor, design meant visual ordering. As an artist, according to Avenal
Mitchell, ‘Proctor’s pictorial control involved the selection and arrangement of formal elements to convey harmony, rhythm and movement’.33 In her interiors,
Proctor followed the same process of reducing furnishing objects and spatial planes to ordered form, colour, pattern, and value in the composition of a room interior to obtain desired artistic effect.
In June 1924, in a co-authored article with Margaret Preston, the artists further explained their application of principles in ‘The Gentle Art of Arranging
Flowers’, noting that ‘a flower arrangement should be a design. Flowers and leaves should be selected not only for their colour but for their form and
[furthermore] they should be chosen to suit the vase or bowl, the colour scheme of the room and particularly of the walls’.34 The selection process was an organisation of the parts to the whole.
Flower decoration had been elevated to an art form as a study of design by the English florist Constance Spry. This was recognised by The Architectural
Review of December 1937 where ‘Flower Decoration’ was given limited status as a ‘component’ of the modern interior.35 As an artist, Proctor had been painting flower studies from as early as 1916: artistic arrangements created on two- dimensional surfaces. In the realm of interior decoration and design, this practical
(and beautifying) object became a means by which women like Proctor could
33 Avenel Mitchell, Thea Proctor (1879-1966): Aspects of Elitism 1021-1940, Fine Art IV, Department of Art History, University of Sydney, 1980, p. 9. 34 Thea Proctor & Margaret Preston, ‘The Gentle Art of Arranging Flowers’, The Home, Jun 1924, p. 38. 35 Constance Spry, ‘Flower Decoration’ in ‘Components of the Modern Interior’, The Architectural Review, vol. 82, Dec 1937, pp. 291-298.
144 Thea Proctor Chapter 5 expressively invent three-dimensional structural form. Spry had believed experimentations with floral design offered women ‘the freedom…to exercise their taste in backgrounds’ which in turn could release them from convention which so often raised barriers to one’s ideas in decoration.36 Yet, from a late
1930s architectural standpoint, this emancipating feminine activity of ‘Flower
Decoration’ was a minor ‘component’ giving way to ‘Furniture, Textiles,
Lighting, and Heating’ as essential elements to modern interior design.37
In fact, except for flower decoration, all of the other subject areas in the
Review were authored by men with no mention of the feminine subject given in the Editor’s ‘Foreword’ as were accorded the other subjects.38 This treatment highlights emergent issues for the profession now under critique by its ‘other’— the profession of architecture—and the limitations of artistic training for women which focused on the decorative arts. At the same time, formal training in design principles marked advancement over so-called natural instinct.
Proctor’s Lectures—A Focus on Design
Proctor’s lectures focussed on design. Her stance was summarised in an early talk at the Students’ Club, 21 August 1926, which was reproduced as ‘Design’ for the short-lived journal Undergrowth, Sept/Oct 1926.39 In her talk, Proctor defined design by reason of its absence in Australia, noting in particular two limitations: the type of art instruction in Sydney and Melbourne schools and the country’s
36 Spry, op. cit., p. 298. 37 ibid. 38 ‘Foreword by the Editor’, The Architectural Review, vol. 82, Dec 1937, pp. 223-4. 39 Proctor, ‘Design’, op. cit.
145 Thea Proctor Chapter 5 level of art appreciation which was ‘still at a stage of popular art’.40 According to
Proctor, artists were required to paint realistic representations rather than modern abstract ‘dangerous’ compositions.41
The problem was that design, according to Proctor, was not yet understood as that common quality found underlying both the ‘greatest [old masters] works of art in the world’ and the ‘best modern art’. She believed that the latter had further advanced by reducing realistic forms ‘to patterns of angles and curves’.42 To further explain her point, Proctor quoted Clive Bell stating that good art was based on sound design, ‘not imitation of form, but invention of form’.43
Proctor’s definition of good art also drew attention to modern art’s élite position, ‘Personally, I think that the higher the form of art, the smaller the number of people to whom it appeals.’44 In this, Proctor re-interpreted Fry’s sentiments, in which she stated:
The artist of the new movement is moving into a sphere more and more remote from that of the ordinary man. In proportion as art becomes purer the number of people to whom it appeals gets less. It cuts out all the romantic overtones of life which are the usual bit by which men are induced to accept a work of art. It appeals only to the aesthetic sensibility, and that in most men is comparatively weak.45
Proctor’s lecture to the students also subscribed to the idea that design could be taught as one acquires sound knowledge of drawing and good technique in painting. She defined design in terms of formal compositions using balance, placement and direction of line, arrangement of deliberate pattern, detachment
40 ibid. 41 ibid. 42 ibid. 43 ibid. 44 ibid.
146 Thea Proctor Chapter 5 from realistic form, conformity of shape and expression of colour.46 Thus, she advanced the idea of design as an intellectual activity combined with technical skill.
In 1929, Proctor gave a lecture in Adelaide on the subject of design in interior decoration, illustrating her preference for modernist designs by contrasting the qualities and effects of clear outline and flat colour. She showed different pieces of cretonne with two-dimensional abstracted modern designs, as compared to chintzes and tissues with shadowy, three-dimensional Queen Anne patterns in which the former was lauded and the latter discouraged.47 Proctor also recommended a systematic approach to the decision-making process in interior decoration, suggesting that the cretonne be selected first as the basis of a scheme.
Proctor added that there were natural distinctions between the instincts of women and men, the former possessing more for colour and the latter for form. Thus,
Proctor subscribed to both rational and intuitive approaches as relevant to her design process, suggesting also that she has accepted or did not question the status quo of gendered distinctions.
Teaching and Topics of Interior Design
Proctor incorporated interior decoration into her art classes based on her understanding of sound design as supported by her artistic training in fine art combined with her knowledge of Bell’s ideas on ‘significant form’ and Fry’s simplification of ‘purely aesthetic criteria’. But Proctor also studied interior
45 Roger Fry, Vision and Design, London: Chatto & Windus, 1920, p. 10. 46 Proctor, ‘Design’, op. cit. 47 See Helen Topliss, Modernism and Feminism, Australian Women Artists. Sydney: Craftsman House, 1996, p.162; Register, ‘Thea Proctor on Interior decoration’, 11 Oct 1929, p. 28.
147 Thea Proctor Chapter 5 decoration as a distinct subject, drawing from ‘all her books on interior decoration’.48 Those that remain from Proctor’s collection are Arts and
Decoration Practical Home Study Course in Interior Decoration and Common
Sense in Home Decoration by Carl Maas.
The first text was received upon enrolment in the New York-based correspondence course with a personalised inscription embossed in gold, ‘Interior
Decoration…prepared for Thea Proctor’ (See Figure 5.3). The binder holds separate Lessons I–XXXIV that cover the topics of interior decoration as formulated at the time. The earliest lesson was copyrighted in 1922; the latest revision date was1927, which suggests that Proctor undertook study over this period of time.
The make-up of the Advisory Faculty for the Arts & Decoration Practical
Home Study Course represented a broad-range of expertise and interest associated with the education, practice and profession of ‘Interior Decoration’ at this time.
The course included areas of architecture, industrial design, fine and applied arts, historical preservation, collecting and connoisseurship, and product manufacturing.
48 As stated in Proctor’s will in Thea Proctor Collection, AGNSW Archives. The two books remain in the private collection of Thea Bryant. Only two books on Interior Decoration were found and sited by this writer, Arts and Decoration Practical Home Study Course in Interior Decoration, NY: Judd Magazines Inc., copyright 1922, Arts and Decoration Pub. Co. Inc. sections revised 923, 1926, 1927; and Carl Maas, Common Sense in Home Decoration, Cleveland & New York: The World Publishing Company, copyright 1938, first reprint Jan 1945.
148 Thea Proctor Chapter 5
A perusal of course contents indicates how divergent the study was from
Europe’s modern experimentations, notably the Bauhaus school, during this same period. Instead, the lessons maintained interior decoration’s traditional topics, heavily influenced by the study of historical period-styles formulated under the expertise of its Directors, historian Harold Donaldson Eberlein and interior decorator Nancy V. McClelland. Eberlein was the author of several books on
European and American subjects including architecture, arts and crafts, and interior decoration. McClelland (1876-1959) had established the decorating section for Wanamakers Department Store, New York, in 1913, the first of its type in America and, in 1922, went on to establish a decorating firm which specialised in the accurate recreation of period interiors for the domestic market and museums.49
Proctor’s use of the lessons, given the historical emphasis of the latter lessons, was most likely limited to the beginning eleven chapters: The Fixed
Background, Walls, Windows and Their Treatment, Ceilings and Floors, Lights and Lighting Fixtures, Color and Color Schemes, Choice and Arrangement of
Furniture, Decorative Textiles and Hangings, Choosing, Framing and Hanging
Pictures, Painted Furniture, Its Qualities, Its Uses, Its Place in Decoration, and
Furnishing the Apartment. The overseas model provided a framework for interpreting interior decoration tailored by Proctor to meet local conditions.
49 Anne Massey, Interior Design of the 20th Century, London: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1990, reprinted 1996, pp. 128-9.
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Proctor’s Program of Study for Interior Decoration
In the early 1920s in Sydney, the department store represented the face of interior decoration. A plethora of building and furniture styles were in existence and the marketplace, while relatively small, was growing. Design training was situated in the technical institutes for the purpose of art manufacturers and building products.
Within this environment, Proctor’s classes, beginning in the early 1920s at her private art studio in George Street, represent the humble beginnings of artistic instruction for the distinct subject of interior decoration in Sydney. The classes, directed to a group of art-minded individuals, were based on Proctor’s wide- ranging interests across the fine and applied arts. No known curriculum existed and no formal accreditation was offered. According to Mary Turner, a former student, the content of Proctor’s classes largely revolved around exposure to ‘all the arts about town’.50
Thus, while Proctor’s instruction cannot possibly be compared with the level of education today or even of her time in overseas institutions, she directed the study by seeking out examples from which to explain her understanding of sound design. The exemplars tied her abstract ideas to materials and spaces of interior decoration. As indicated in her extant library collection, her interests crossed boundaries, cultures, and traditions. Here interests included British,
Japanese, and Italian art, drawing, painting, sculpture, textiles including tapestry and carpets, garden design and flower arranging.51
50 Mary Turner, 26 Aug 1999, AGNSW. Mary Turner said she attended Proctor’s school in 1945 and that Proctor ‘drug them everywhere and was interested in everything, from Wilkinson’s houses to flower arrangements which she excelled in’. 51 Thea Proctor Collection, AGNSW.
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Prominent in Proctor’s library were her sources on drawing and draughtmanship, which she regarded as the basis of all design.52 Proctor’s own drawing was distinguished by its rigour, individuality and difference, using technical skills to create two-dimensional art works of fantasy rather than plans of fact.53 Despite the instruction offered in her study guides from New York, no known architectural plans or elevations exist, only the inventive watercolour renderings of artful still-life interiors. Nor did Proctor sell furniture from her own shop front or work as a salesperson in the field.
Proctor’s Projects in Interior Decoration and Design
Proctor’s study of Interior Decoration from 1922 to 1927 spurred on her activities as an interior decorator. Her projects ventured into the commercial sphere by providing painted designs, colour schemes and furniture arrangements to clients, businesses and furniture stores. With fellow artist Roy de Maistre, in 1927,
Proctor designed a range of ‘cobalt blue’ lacquer furniture with floral decorations painted in reds, pink, lemon yellow and white for Grace Bros which was featured in the Home (See Figure 5.5).54 By 1928, having established a reputation as an interior decorator of strong colour and form, in July she further advertised her services through the social pages of The Home.55
At this time, Proctor designed the third floor beauty parlours for David
Jones’s Elizabeth Street store. The rooms, described by Virginia Webb, were
52 Art in Australia, vol.2, no.1, Feb 1922, p. 46. 53 ‘Modern Art - Miss Thea Proctor's Work’, Advertiser, 14 May 1925, p. 10. Proctor’s reputation in drawing, especially her pencil portraits, was well established throughout Australia. 54 Virginia Webb, ‘Between the Stores’ The Lacquer Room 1935-36, Australian Collection Focus 1 Aug - 24 Oct 1999, Exhibition brochure AGNSW.
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‘decorated in “the French style” characterised by pale pink enamel with floral designs painted in royal blue and geranium’.56 The style, appropriate to this
Figure 5.5 Thea Proctor and Roy de Maistre, Painted Furniture for Grace Bros., 1927 feminine domain, would have suited Proctor’s interest in modernised furnishings, as well as her own sense of propriety. The following year, Proctor also participated in the famous Burdekin House Exhibition of October 1929 where she
55 Advertisement, The Home, Jul 1928, p. 4. 56 Webb, op. cit., David Jones Elizabeth Street store opened in 1928.
152 Thea Proctor Chapter 5 arranged a room setting selecting ‘modern’ furniture, fabrics and paintings. Her signature uncluttered design used flat, ‘fresh, clean, clear colors [sic]’.57
During this time, Proctor’s modernist and feminine authority was further acknowledged by the Ford Motor Company of Australia. Noted for her
‘achievements in the application of modern form and colour to interior decoration’, she was asked as counterpart to fellow artists Lambert and Ure Smith to determine colour harmonies for Ford motor cars (Figure 5.6).58 Proctor represented the ‘capable feminine mind’ who could interpret the ‘modern woman’s demand for gaiety and colour’ in motor cars just as she could in ‘most things of every-day life.’59 The men were the picture of male conservatism.
Proctor’s acclaimed artistic expertise continued into the 1940s, when she was commissioned to give advice on several productions by J. C. Williamson’s theatrical company.60
Her established reputation as a modern interior decorator also gave rise to one of the longest misconceptions and controversies surrounding the design of a department store interior portrayed in Grace Cossington Smith’s painting, The
Lacquer Room, c.1935. Although Proctor’s involvement has subsequently been rejected,61 the room in its bold colour and strong clean-lined design follows
Proctor’s advocacy of pure flat colour and clean lines.
57 ‘Topics for Women - Modern - Thea Proctor's Room’, Sun, 20 Sept 1929, p. 11. 58 ‘Meeting the Demands for Brighter Cars, The Value of the Artist in Industry’, Ford Motor Company of Australia Pty. Ltd., Brochure, 1929. 59 ibid. 60 ‘Thea Proctor- Two Exhibitions’, op. cit., p. 19. 61 Morgan notes in correspondence with Barbara Horton, David Jones archivist, 23 Nov 1993, that there is absolutely no evidence that Thea Proctor designed the interior of The Soda Fountain. Bruce James points out that this was the subject of Grace Cossington Smith's painting The Lacquer Room, which Daniel Thomas has on a number of occasions stated to be The Lacquer Room at
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Figure 5.6 Thea Proctor with George W. Lambert, Sydney Ure Smith and Ford Motor Co. representative; ‘Colour Harmony’ selections for the modern motor car, c. 1929 Source: Thea Bryant Private Collection
Proctor’s activities in interior decoration in Australia are not comparable to those of her overseas counterparts. Australia’s size, relative newness as a nation, distance from industrial or cultural centres, limited numbers of wealthy clientele, conservative nature, as well as Proctor’s own self-identity as an artist, reduced her
Farmer's department store, designed by Thea Proctor. The Lacquer Room was in David Jones. See
154 Thea Proctor Chapter 5 opportunities to fully practice as an interior decorator in Sydney. She was not a tradesperson, antiquarian or shop owner. Also, despite her exposure and study of historical periods and styles, Proctor chose to analyse her subjects visually through abstract formal qualities which had yet to gain popular appeal or interest among the pretentious. She appears to have had little interest in or knowledge of building structure, electrical lighting and business practices for interior decoration.
Yet, as this study argues, her contributions as an artist were significant in advancing the profession in Australia by her promotion, understanding and application of aesthetic (formal) principles of design.
Values, Beliefs and Philosophy of Design
Proctor saw herself as an artist rather than as an interior decorator or designer. Her activities and the acceptance of her ideas were hinged to her reputation as an artist.62 Writing ‘from the point of view of the artist’, she expressed opinion on the subjects of fashion, taste, flower arrangement, interior (home) decoration and design as evidenced particularly in Ure Smith's influential magazine, The Home.63
In the public eye and within the art world, her extended activities as an interior decorator gained her the reputation of a ‘taste-maker’.64 These qualities have led
Bruce James, Grace Cossington Smith, Roseville, NSW: Craftsman House, 1990, pp. 103-4. 62 Historians in the past primarily concentrated on the ‘artist’ over that of the ‘designer’. Since the 80s, feminist viewpoints have challenged this exclusivity of artist. See Isabelle Anscombe, A Woman’s Touch: Women in Design from 1860-the Present Day, NY: Viking Penguin, 1984, p. 14. Also see Morgan, op. cit.; McNeil, op. cit.; Topliss, op. cit.; Webb, op. cit.; Mary Eagle, ‘Modernism in Sydney in the 1920s’, 1978, in Ann Galbally, & Margaret Plant, eds., Study’s in Australian Art, p. 89; and Mary Mackay, ‘Almost Dancing: Thea Proctor and the Modern Women’, in M. Dever, ed., Wallflowers and Witches: Women and Culture in Australia 1910-1945, St Lucia, Qld., 1994. 63 Proctor & Preston, ‘The Gentle Art of Arranging Flowers’, op. cit., p. 38. 64 James Gleeson, ‘The death of a taste maker’, World of Art, newspaper clipping, no date, no pagination; and Daniel Thomas, ‘The Tastemaker’, newspaper clipping, no date, no pagination, Thea Bryant private collection.
155 Thea Proctor Chapter 5 her to be seen within a feminist perspective as a representative of the single
(unmarried) female artist of her era, recognised for her important role as an image- maker who defined the modern woman of Sydney in the 1920s.65
Proctor’s early experiences as an artist were crucial to her philosophy of design. In her formative years as an artist, she learned from Julian Ashton the value of good draughtsmanship and his belief in individual expression and she incorporated these ideas into her work. In London, she had seen first hand the use of vibrant colour by the French Impressionists—an experience that was to have a lasting influence on her approach to art and design. It was also there that Proctor was exposed to Bell’s notion of significant form and Fry’s speculation on the reorientation of rationalism.66
Fry’s treatise on the formal qualities of design was based on ‘purely aesthetic criteria…the rediscovery of the principles of structural design and harmony’ which were further related to theories of simplification.67 Fry referenced many of his modernist ideas from Dr. Denman Ross’s Harvard
University study of the elementary considerations of design. In his “Theory of
Pure Design”, Ross had summarised scientific results in a ‘formula that a composition is of value in proportion to the number of orderly connections which it displays.’68 Fry found, however, that Ross’s study restricted as it was to abstract forms failed to assist in the analysis of figurative representations in the fine arts, but was useful when applied to the practical arts. Fry related how the new interest
65 See MacKay, op. cit., pp. 26-37; and Robert Holden, Cover Up: The Art of Magazine Covers in Australia, Rydalmere, NSW, 1995, pp. 91-6. 66 See Bell, op. cit., p. 50; and Fry, 1920, op. cit. 67 Fry, ibid., p. 8. 68 ibid., p. 21.
156 Thea Proctor Chapter 5 in ‘pure’ design had given rise to an ‘interest in the decorative possibilities of paint and architectural design’ which he attributed to a ‘reaction’ against the photographic vision of academic schools.69
Proctor reinterpreted these modernist notions of pure design as universal principles that were found present in all of the arts, in particularly, in the ‘perfect’ inventions of modern works.70 For Proctor, good design required having ‘taste’. In an interview with Home magazine (June 1922), she speculated on how one develops ‘taste’ and why Australians were lacking in it.71 Proctor believed taste could be demonstrated through concepts of art and design.72 Applying her ideas to the diverse subjects of hats, architecture, the Russia Ballet and Venus de Milo, she further linked taste to ‘knowledge’ which was based on ‘instinct as well as training’.73 She lamented bad taste and blamed the insularity of Australians, the country’s lack of history and established standards by which one could compare good from bad taste making Australians ‘ignorant of the origins and cause of various fashions’.74 In her 1938 article, ‘Modern Art in Sydney’ for Art in
Australia, Proctor further explained that taste required having artistic sensibility, having an idea and knowing how to express it.75 Thus, she subscribed to both notions of aesthetic emotion and rational thinking.
69 Roger Fry, ‘The Artist as Decorator’, Colour, Apr 1917, pp. 92-3. 70 Proctor uses the word ‘perfect’ in 1922 to describe the beauty of contemporary music, dancing, acting, backgrounds and costume for the Russian Ballet. ‘Australians must Develop Taste says Miss Thea Proctor’, Home, Jun 1922, p. 37. 71 ‘Australians must Develop Taste says Miss Thea Proctor’, op. cit., pp. 37-38. 72 ‘Where Our Art Fails’, [Sydney] Evening News, 16 Sept 1924, p. 10. 73 ‘Australians must Develop Taste says Miss Thea Proctor’, op. cit., p. 37. 74 ibid. 75 Thea Proctor, ‘Modern Art in Sydney’, Art in Australia, vol. 3, no. 73, 5 Nov 1938, pp. 24-30.
157 Thea Proctor Chapter 5
This followed Bell’s notion that only those possessing these qualities could
‘elaborate a plausible theory of aesthetics’.76 Fry went further associating formalist theory and art with two aspects of intellectual activity in scientific work—the particularising and the generalising.77 Fry, like Bell, combined the intellectual and emotional elements of design, explaining how the artist passes from the stage of merely gratifying our demand for sensuous order and variety through formal arrangement to a state where he arouses our emotions, for which
‘the harmony is not true…unless it is felt with emotion.’78 This privileged the artist and linked design to taste, defined as the ‘harmony which always results from the expression of intense and disinterested emotion.’79 The latter also disassociated the artist’s activity from the rising commercialism of the new consumer society, keeping the artist tied to an idealised romanticism and privileged position of past eras.
This characterisation resonates in Proctor’s life. On a personal level, she lived moment to moment with little money, which in a Baudelarian sense seemed to heighten her aesthetic awareness of the world around her. It also kept her tied to a fantasy world as evidenced in her fans, idealised still-life interiors, and escapades at fancy-dress parties. In 1932, Ethel Anderson said of her art, ‘Her world owes everything to fancy, nothing to fact. Its reality rests wholly in its unreality. Its charm lies in its fantasy: a fantasy so exact that it convinces us both of its reality and its beauty.’80 Daniel Thomas relates this elevated idealism about
76 Bell, op. cit., p. 3. 77 Fry, op. cit., 1920, p. 52. 78 ibid., p. 54. 79 ibid., p. 37. 80 Ethel Anderson, ‘The Art of Miss Thea Proctor’, Art in Australia, 15 Apr 1932, p. 8.
158 Thea Proctor Chapter 5 art to Proctor’s intense caring ‘about the young people who risk their souls to become artists.’81 Proctor, accordingly, was always there ‘to stand up and assert that art was supremely important’.82
Proctor placed artists on an elevated plane because of their ability to acknowledge beauty and their special role as creators of an ideal and universal order. She believed artists should be venerated for their special role and that the government should financially support them for their special contribution to society.83 Her belief was in tandem with the spiritual ideals of the Theosophical
Society which was voiced in the campaign, ‘The Crusade for a Beautiful
Australia’.84 As her niece wrote of her, she was a ‘crusader for new ideas in art and lifestyle…stylish and avant-garde…[introducing] a zest for living and
Bohemian freedom to a rather hidebound circle [in Sydney]’.85
Proctor’s individualism, belief in natural instinct and training as the basis of knowledge, combined with her idealised vision of art’s exclusive qualities elevated the decorator to that of the artist whose domain was important to the nascent professional culture of interior decoration in Sydney. Importantly, Proctor instilled in her students aesthetic theories of the time which translated to modernism in design. She applied these theories to the art of home decoration, the features of which can be summarised as follows:
x Significant form requires simplification to essentials.
x Taste is explained through art and design.
81 Thomas, ‘The Tastemaker’, op. cit. 82 ibid. 83 Thea Bryant, 20 Oct 2000. 84 ‘An Ideal Australia’, Advance! Australia, vol. 4, no. 5, 1 May 1928, p. 19; Theosophists voiced their beliefs in an Ideal Australia in their Symposium in Adyar Hall, Sydney in 1928.
159 Thea Proctor Chapter 5
x Dual relationship of good art is a basis of sound design and design is a
common quality underlying all great works of art.
x Invention of form is preferable to imitation of form.
x Aesthetic progress is made through beautification.
x Good design requires artistic sensibility/emotion and clear/rational
thinking.
x Beauty is the harmonious creation of ideal/universal order.
x Individual expression is a particularising element of art.
Contribution to Professional Development
Proctor was intensely interested in professionalism, yet she did not think of herself as a professional interior decorator. This is not because she understood interior decoration as an amateur activity; but rather, because for her it remained secondary to her activities as an artist. The latter is supported by a story related by
Proctor’s niece, Thea Bryant, who tells that when someone suggested to Proctor that she paint a picture to fit into their room colour and design, she was insistent that it was the other way around: the room should be decorated to suit her painting.86
As an artist, Proctor had very early in her career sought professional recognition in Sydney through the male-dominated Society of Artists, an established and conservative fine art society. The Society of Artists represented artistic status and authority in Sydney at that time and, as Mitchell points out, it distinguished itself from The Society of Women Painters by the latter’s
85 Dwyer, ‘Aunt Thea shook the artistic world’, op. cit.
160 Thea Proctor Chapter 5 predominance of gendered subject matter and wanting of technical ‘standards of professional exactitude’.87 In contrast to these latter deficiencies, Proctor demonstrated her professional achievements in the fine arts through her ordering and precision of technique which was grounded by special training. Against this background, Proctor’s contributions to the professional development of interior design in Sydney are summarised as follows:
1) Thea Proctor established the first private training school for interior
decoration. Instruction on interior decoration incorporated into her classes
on art and design is credited as the first of its kind in Sydney.
2) Through Proctor’s understanding of modern design, she provided the study
of interior decoration with an abstract theoretical base acquired first
through an academic system of fine art training and then by self-discovery.
Proctor consciously applied universal elements and principles to create
artistic compositions of two-dimensional surface treatment and three-
dimensional spatial arrangement. Proctor addressed visual, aesthetic and
decorative concerns of design which advanced the study beyond women’s
so-called natural talent. At the same time, this understanding was distanced
from the practical and functional aspects of interior decoration.
3) Working within a relatively élite social milieu and informed by her artistic
education and experiences, Proctor gained professional authority. In
reassessing overseas models of instruction and practice, she replaced
traditional approaches dependent on studies of European period styles with
86 Thea Bryant, 20 Oct 2000. 87 Mitchell, op. cit., p. 22.
161 Thea Proctor Chapter 5
modern ideas of design as evidenced through her writings, lectures,
projects and influence on others in the field. The latter of which can be
linked to one of the first successful modern interior designers, Marion Hall
Best, who credits Proctor with influencing her use of brilliant colour.88
4) Proctor’s activity as an interior decorator was sanctioned through her
knowledge of art and her self-appointed role as taste-maker, which was
established especially through Ure Smith’s elegant artistic publications,
Home magazine and Art and Australia.
5) At a time when interior decoration was in its infancy as a profession with
no distinct society to advance its aims, the Contemporary Group, as Nancy
Underhill professes, was important to the early alliance formed between
modern principles and interior design.89 Proctor’s co-founding of the
Contemporary Group took an important if unintentional part in the
professionalisation of interior design.
6) Proctor established a professional culture and identity for the practice.
Perceiving interior decoration as an aesthetic activity, she ignored the
usual commercial training offered through retail networks, disinterested in
the business and sales-related aspects of trade. As an artist, she directed
the study and practice towards a formalist approach in her modernist
design aesthetic.
88 Marion Hall Best, ‘Best Memoirs’ [JMP]; and newspaper clipping, ‘The Tastemaker-Art with Daniel Thomas’ n.d., n.p., Thea Bryant private collection. 89 Nancy Underhill, Making Australian Art 1916-49, Sydney Ure Smith Patron and Publisher, Oxford: Oxford University Press Australia, 1991, p. 40; Underhill believes the Group was important to the early alliance formed between modern principles and interior design.
162 Thea Proctor Chapter 5
Conclusion
This chapter has discussed Proctor’s rejection of conservative traditionalism in her art, while acknowledging her adherence to, even mobilisation by, engendered social conventions of the day. Motivated out of financial necessity within a system that yet lacked rigid specialisation of the arts, Proctor established her reputation in interior decoration based on her vision as an artist, and intellectual and instinctual understanding of and approach to design. This understanding held onto past aristocratic ideals associated with taste, knowledge, beauty and perfection, while alternately engaging in early modernist (formal) theories of design.90 It could be argued that Proctor combined Bell’s ‘artistic sensibility’ and ‘clear thinking’ with a preference for women’s and men’s ‘natural’ (instinctual) talents in design.91
This artistic background and set of ideas gave her authority and advanced interior decoration in Sydney at this time. In particular, Proctor’s knowledge of art’s fundamental principles advanced the study, establishing a modernist direction for the design discipline.
As a female artist in the early twentieth century, the newly-identified career of interior decoration for women provided Proctor income and opportunity for creative expression and demonstration of her concepts of design. At the same time, her artistic education, codified by gendered expectations, imposed a difference. Proctor had gained first-hand knowledge and experience in the fine arts, but did not have the same advantage of distinct training for interior architecture and decoration—available only overseas at that time. This access to
90 Ideas informed primarily by Bell, op. cit. and Fry, op. cit., 1920. 91 I conclude with these phases described by Bell, pp. 3-5, to aptly describe Proctor’s understanding of design.
163 Thea Proctor Chapter 5 specialised training by correspondence provided content primarily tied to past ideals and a tradition of educating aspiring interior decorators by studying period styles. Also finding in Australia a dearth of historical exemplars, Proctor relinquished this traditional method, relying instead on an examination of objects and materials through the formalist approach, distilling universal principles.
Proctor’s lack of financial backing and, importantly, her idealised vision of fine art and her own unique status kept her and her activities outside much of the real work of interior decoration. Proctor did not establish and run a shop front for interior decoration or engage in trade: the antiquarian/businessman (deliberately gendered as masculine) and furnishings salesperson (the most common avenue for work in the field) were remote to her. She did not offer full decorator services nor did she know (or wish to know) anything of business practices. She was not interested or knowledgeable in the functional, technical or commercial sides of practice. Thus, in practical and commercial terms, her experience was limited.
Proctor’s authority as a tastemaker advising on art decoration for the home was enabled largely through publicist and conservative Sydney Ure Smith’s elegant artistic publications. By attaching the subject to her reputation as a fine artist and linking this further to the fashionable interests of women, she professionalised interior decoration, elevating its status within a gendered and largely elite, artistic domain. Yet, by the 1930s and concurrent to Proctor’s local initiatives, the architectural profession overseas was beginning to take seriously the subject of interior decoration, referring to it by the new name ‘interior design’.
164 Thea Proctor Chapter 5
Growing distinctions between interior and exterior design were problematic, as one reviewer found, ‘impossible to draw an exact line’ between their boundaries.92 In an attempt to explain differences, the Architectural Review editor argued that design as decoration was considered superficial and aesthetic and, distinct from design’s practical and functional factors, the technical aspects of a building, the former non-utilitarian as exemplified by a consciousness of art, the preserves of what are usually known as the fine arts and the latter residing in functional spaces such as kitchens and offices. This thinking would have significant implications for interior decoration and design in its next phases of development and, in turn, diminish Proctor’s importance as an early educator.
92 ‘Foreword by the Editor’, The Architectural Review Supplement, op. cit., p. 223.
165 Nora McDougall Chapter 6
CHAPTER 6
NORA McDOUGALL
Those who are enamoured of practice without science (knowledge) are like a pilot who goes into a ship without rudder or compass, and never has any certainty as to where he is going. 1 —Leonardo Da Vinci
Introduction
Less is known of Nora Seton McDougall’s personal and professional background in comparison to the other four women of this study: no archive exists nor have any remaining family members been found.2 It is uncertain if McDougall married and many contradictions and anomalies appear in recorded information.3 At the same time, McDougall’s contributions to interior design in Sydney are significant in that her ‘story’ reveals not only many of the aesthetic changes taking place from the 1920s to 1940s, but also the challenges that existed for the professional development of the field as interior decoration is promoted as an interest to women and consumers through correspondence courses, popular magazines and retail stores.
This chapter follows the same basic structure as its predecessor’s. It begins by giving biographical and disciplinary background, the latter formed through
1 This quote appears alongside Nora S. McDougall’s photograph and author’s biographical information on the inside cover page of her book, Make Your House a Home, How to Decorate, n.d. in publication, but copyright reg. 22 Aug 1949, Little Collins St., Melbourne: Special Press Pty. Ltd. 2 I first became aware of Nora McDougall through Michael Bogle, Design in Australia 1880-1970, Sydney: Craftsman House & G+B Arts International, 1998, p. 105. 3 In McDougall’s book, Interior Decoration for Australians, Australian Army Education Service (AES), Melbourne: Ramsay Ware Publishing Pty., 117-129 King Street Ltd., c.1940s published sometime during or immediately following World War II, McDougall is referred to as ‘Miss McDougall’ suggesting she was unmarried at the time. The date of her death remains unknown to this writer.
166 Nora McDougall Chapter 6
McDougall’s study of interior architecture and decoration at the famous New
York School of Fine and Applied Arts in the late 1920s. A description of
McDougall’s activities and participation in interior design in Australia follows with further discussion of societal and educational values and beliefs influential to her philosophy and approach to interior design in the 1940s. Finally, the chapter evaluates McDougall’s contributions to professional development of interior design, especially in light of her activities that directed the study to servicewomen, housewives and salespeople through a range of training programs and informational publications.
Biographical Background and Basis of Authority
Nora Seton McDougall was born 2 May 1900 to Henry Leslie McDougall,
Grazier, aged 47, and Emily Reynolds McDougall, aged 45, at their property
‘Hills’, West Maitland, New South Wales, Australia.4 As recorded at the time,
Nora became the youngest sibling to six older living children, Frances (16), Allan
(15), Nellie (12), Ruth (10), Lora (8), and Charles (5). Details of Nora’s childhood and early educational background remain unknown.5 However by 1927, she had travelled to America to attend the prestigious New York School of Fine and
Applied Arts (NYSFAA) (renamed in 1941 as Parsons School of Design).
4 Certified Copy of Birth Registered in New South Wales, Australia, #14033, issued Sydney to this writer 28 Feb 2001. On Nora’s Birth certificate her name was recorded as ‘Norah Seaton’ although she does not use this spelling in her publications. 5 Ann Campbell, 17 Mar 2001; Campbell, a member of the Maitland Family History Circle Inc, supplies the following information on the death and burial of McDougall’s parents, ‘Henry Leslie McDougall d. 21.5.1927 75yrs, Plot 155 Wee Waa Cemetery; Emily McDougall d. 20.5.1914 Plot 155 Wee Waa Cemetery’, however, Campbell could find no mention of them in the Maitland Rates.
167 Nora McDougall Chapter 6
The NYSFAA was well-known at this time, having established a reputation in the study of Interior Architecture and Decoration that began under the direction of Frank Alvah Parsons in 1906.6 Parsons (1866-1930) later published his theories on the subject in his book, Interior Decoration: Its
Principles and Practice of 1915.7 According to school records, McDougall attended NYSFAA from 1927 through to the northern hemisphere fall of 1928.8
The opportunity to study in New York perhaps was the result of inheritance or newly acquired independence. Nora’s father Henry had recently died (21 May
1927) and her mother Emily, already deceased (20 May 1914), possibly caused
Nora as the youngest sibling to reside with and care for her father until his death—a practice customary to the time.
Archival records from Parsons School of Design have not confirmed that
McDougall graduated from the NYSFAA nor do they indicate that she received her certificate for which she would have had to complete a full two-year program; yet as acknowledged, school records are ‘incomplete’ and circumstances may have simply detained or prevented McDougall from ordering her certificate. 9
While in New York, McDougall gained practical experience with the interior decoration firm, McMillan Inc.10 This most likely was in conjunction with
6 Other Australians attending NYSFAA: Dora Sweetapple, friend of Thea Proctor’s and sister to Marion Hall Best. Best, credited as Sydney’s first professional modern interior designer, also undertook study from the school but by correspondence course work which is held in the Best Archive, Historic Houses Trust of NSW. 7 Parsons was born 1 Apr 1866 at Chesterfield, Massachusetts and died on 25 May 1930 aged 64 of heart illness. 8 Theodore Barber [email protected], 18 Oct 2000, archivist, The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Archives, Gimbel Design Library, Parsons School of Design/New School University, New York. 9 ibid., 25 Feb 2000. 10 Nora McDougall, Make You House a Home, How to Decorate, no date, but copyright reg. 22 August 1949, Little Collins St., Melboune: Special Press Pty. Ltd., photo inside cover page.
168 Nora McDougall Chapter 6 her studies as the school encouraged students to work while undergoing instruction. McMillan Inc. was founded c.1924 by Eleanor McMillan Brown, a graduate and later, a trustee and occasional lecturer at NYSFAA/Parson School of
Design, her firm now credited as being the first to offer full professional services.11
In addition to the professional courses offered in Interior Architecture and
Decoration, (also, in Costume and Theatre Design, and Advertising Illustration), the NYSFAA offered a sequence of courses counting toward a special certificate in Teacher Training. McDougall most likely participated in this program which contributed to her decision to prepare a ‘discussion course’, entitled Interior
Decoration for Australians in the 1940s.12
The study of Interior Architecture and Decoration during the time of
McDougall’s attendance at the NYSFAA was housed under the Department of
House Planning and House Decoration. The Department was headed by Zerelda
Rains, Director of Instructions, and Harriet S. Palmer, Executive Secretary in
Charge of Credits and Lectures, with various lecturers and instructors teaching in the department, including Head Instructor C. John Marsman, who specialised in
Period Art lectures and Studio Criticisms, Instructor Eugene Moxon, Lecturer F.
William Shaefer in Reproductions and Trade Processes and Assistant Instructor
Jessica Wilson.13
11 Erica Brown, Sixty Years of Interior Design, The World of McMillan, NY: Viking Press, 1982, p. 9. Erica Brown also distinguishes Eleanor McMillan Brown from Elsie de Wolfe, Ruby Ross Woods, and Rose Cumming who are described as ‘women of taste’ who had no formal training. She says McMillan ‘changed all that’ by starting the ‘first professional full-service interior decorating firm in America (Nov 1924). 12 Byline on cover of McDougall, op. cit., Interior Decoration for Australians. 13 Parsons was President of the NYSFAA at this time, according to the School Handbook, Summer Session 1928, New York School of Fine and Applied Art, New York, Paris; p. 4; Barber,
169 Nora McDougall Chapter 6
It is uncertain when McDougall returned to Sydney, but her illustrations for Herbert Mapes’ book, Winged Avenger of 1935, suggest it was sometime during the 1930s, or possibly at the conclusion of her studies in 1928. The Wall
Street stock market crash of October 1929 and ensuing Depression may also have contributed to her return to Australia. By the early 1940s, McDougall was sufficiently known in Sydney to have been asked to participate in a series of public lectures for the ‘Englishman’s Home Exhibition’ in 1941 joining eight other speakers.14 The Exhibition featured displays of traditional period furniture in authentic settings.
McDougall also developed instruction on the subject of Interior
Decoration for the Australian Armed Services during World War II, and established her Sydney Interior Decoration Studio at 290 New South Head Road,
Edgecliff, N.S.W. of which she was principal.15 By the late 1940s, she was identified as the ‘Home Decoration Expert’ to a wide audience of Australian readers and toured cities across Australia and New Zealand visiting department stores.16 McDougall’s date of death has not been confirmed and little is known of her remaining life outside her writings on interior decoration. Attempts to gain further information have been frustrated as no known next of kin has been established. Without consent, public records and certain archival information cannot be given. While further biographical information would illuminate her
op. cit., 25 Feb 2000; The Art History course which was a foundation course for all professional programs was planned by Frank Alva Parsons, and given by Harriet S. Palmer in the summer of 1928. Palmer had previously conducted the summer school work in Paris for four years. 14 Other lecturers included: Miss Margaret Lord, Miss Eleanor Lange, Professor Leslie Wilkinson, Mr. John H. Burden, Mr. John Young, Mr. A. R. Penfold, Mrs. H. A. (Dora) Sweetapple, and Mrs. Hall Best. 15Bogle, op. cit., p. 105. 16 McDougall’s by line in The Australian Women’s Weekly in 1946.
170 Nora McDougall Chapter 6 story, McDougall’s writings and known details provide valuable insight into her activities, values, beliefs and philosophy of design that contributed to the development of interior design in Sydney.
Activities and Participation in Interior Design
McDougall was self-employed as an interior decorator and teacher of the subject
(Figure 6.1). Operating from her Sydney studio, she was actively engaged in interior design in the 1940s, becoming ‘well-known’ to Australians through her instruction to service personnel under Australian Army Education Services (AES) during World War II. Her reputation grew post-war through her tour of department stores in cities across Australia and New Zealand where she gave lectures on interior decoration to customers and salespeople and through her books and published articles. Her series in The Australian Women’s Weekly enjoyed wide circulation.
McDougall’s books on Interior Decoration began as part of her AES discussion course. So ‘keen’ was the interest among service women that a
‘booklet was prepared to carry the information to a wider public’.17 Published by
AES in eleven chapters, the study was released under the title, Interior
Decoration for Australians (Figure 6.2).18 By 1946, McDougall had written and published her Home Study of Interior Decoration, copyright registered 26
August.19
17 McDougall, Interior Decoration for Australians, op. cit., p. 3. 18ibid. 19 ‘Application for Registration of Copyright in an unpublished Original Literary, Dramatic, Musical or Artistic Work’, Commonwealth of Australia, Form B, #227969, dated and signed by Nora S McDougall, 30 Jul 1946. Attached is a ’Statement of Address’ which records McDougall’s address as 290 New South Head Road, Edgecliff, NSW, stamped with #43243. Also attached is
171 Nora McDougall Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 Nora Seton McDougall, c. 1949 Source: Make Your House A Home by Nora McDougall
In 1949, she had rewritten the original AES study as Make Your House a Home,
How to Decorate, copyright registered 22 August (Figure 6.3).20 The latter reiterated her intention ‘to set out, for the housewife and student, simple principles of decorating a home’. McDougall’s study of interior decoration was composed under war-time conditions and further popularised during Australia’s reconstruction period, outlining modern design principles from a practical perspective based on the needs of ordinary people.
typed letter of confirmation to McDougall dated 26 Aug 1946, Photocopied documents, National Archives of Australia A1336/1, 43243. 20 Nora S. McDougall, Make Your House a Home, How to Decorate, copyright reg. 22 Aug 1949, National Archives of Australia A1336, 47958.
172 Nora McDougall Chapter 6
Figure 6.2 Cover for Interior Decoration for Australians by Nora S. McDougall, c. 1941
173 Nora McDougall Chapter 6
Figure 6.3 Cover for Make Your House a Home by Nora S. McDougall, 1949
174 Nora McDougall Chapter 6
In her publication, Interior Decoration for Australians, McDougall began by questioning, ‘What is Interior Decoration?’ In her response, she compared the
‘professional interior decorator’ to ‘a medical general practitioner, who must have knowledge and understanding of a great number of things, and if a specialist is required, [would] know whom to seek’.21 McDougall described in common language the ‘things’ essential to the decorator: furniture making, history of furniture and textiles, architectural structure, colour, lighting, carpet manufacture, the details of accessories, kitchens and appliances, and the importance of the
‘careful’ selection and arrangement of these things.22 While the topics were traditional to the study of interior decoration, they were examined by McDougall with a view to ‘present day living conditions’.23
A Supplement gave examples of before and after treatments to rooms using ‘principles of good decorating’ and ‘ingenuity’ to demonstrate the benefits of ‘modernising’ (Figure 6.4).24 Practical approaches and economic considerations were recurring themes. McDougall recommended in her down-to- earth manner, ‘before we make our plans, let us become really familiar with our house or room, analyse and list our needs, and then go window-shopping, and search the magazines for articles and pictures…before buying one pennyworth of goods.’25 The prescriptive process incorporated a modern rational/analytical
21 McDougall, Interior Decoration for Australians, op. cit., p. 3. 22 ibid. 23 ibid., p. 4. 24 ibid., p. 46. 25 ibid., p. 8.
175 Nora McDougall Chapter 6 approach to decorating with the traditional role of shopping supposedly appealing to women.
Figure 6.4 ‘Before and After Pictures’ Demonstrate Benefits of ‘Modernising’ Source: Interior Decoration for Australians by Nora McDougall, c.1941
176 Nora McDougall Chapter 6
New inventions and modern labour saving devices were promoted, because according to McDougall, they would prove in the end to be good investments. She also encouraged Australians to look realistically to their local conditions and one’s own circumstances to ‘discover…ourselves as we are, and not as we imagine our personality to be.’26 McDougall considered colour an essential tool in decorating, especially in Australia:
The sun is so strong that much of the brilliance of colour is absorbed in our bright surroundings, therefore we can have a great range from which to choose for our decorating. We can make colour our servant and make it work miracles, both psychologically and physically.27
In her first publication, Interior Decoration for Australians (c.1941),
McDougall included as important an explanation of differences in the roles of the interior decorator and the architect and their ‘natural’ partnership in uniting the whole of the home. McDougall outlined each professional’s responsibilities in the planning process that combined would gain the best results:
The ideal way to decorate a home is to co-operate with the architect. As he lays his plans, the decorator works with him and decides where the furniture will be placed to the best advantage. The doors, lighting and wall plugs, etc., should be so arranged that no mistakes are discovered when the house is finished and the furniture ready to go in.28
Although almost ten years separated McDougall’s first and last book publications on interior decoration, they were similar in content and length (Table
6.1). At the same time, differences do appear. Because her early publication,
Interior Decoration for Australians, had the benefit of government and commercial support, it included many professional photographs used to
26 ibid., p. 3. 27 ibid., p. 12. 28 ibid., p. 3.
177 Nora McDougall Chapter 6 demonstrate the author’s ideas and the sponsors’ own social intentions and economic interests.
Table 6.1 Comparison of Content in McDougall Books on Interior Decoration
Interior Decoration for Australians Make your House a Home, How to Decorate Chapter Contents Contents
1 What is Interior Decoration? An Organized Plan
2 Selection of Furniture and Furnishings Select Furniture with Care
3 What Colour Can Do for Us The Miracle of Color
4 Making Our Walls Attractive Walls are Necessary
5 What Shall We Walk On? Floors are Basic
6 How to Choose Fabrics Choice of Fabrics
7 Arranging Our Furniture Arrange your Furniture to a Plan
8 Accessories Which Add Personality Add “YOU” to your Home
9 Making Our Curtains Curtains to Measure and Make
10 Points About Our Kitchens The Hub of your Home
11 Make Modern Appliances Pay Dustless Efficiency (Streamline Your Dividends Home)
12 Supplement Decorating is never ending
In contrast, Make your House a Home, How to Decorate, offers simple graphic illustrations, some informative (Figure 6.5, Figure 6.6) and others more indicative of sentiment (Figure 6.7). Importantly, the images convey ergonomic and environmental concerns for the home. It is also noteworthy that in this publication there is no discussion on the roles of the professional interior decorator and architect in the planning and decoration of houses. Instead,
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McDougall directs her instructive ideas to homeowners who can then take on these tasks to make their house a home.
Figure 6.5 Nora S McDougall, Illustrations and text describing chair positions for comfortable ‘fit’ Source: Make Your House a Home by Nora McDougall, 1949
179 Nora McDougall Chapter 6
Figure 6.6 Nora S McDougall, Illustration for ‘Orientation of Sun’ in Relation to Colour Selections Source: Make Your House a Home by Nora McDougall, 1949
Figure 6.7 Nora S McDougall, Illustration for ‘Things Within Easy Reach’ Source: Make Your House a Home by Nora McDougall, 1949
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McDougall also disseminated her ideas on home decoration in a series of articles for The Australian Woman’s Weekly, a widely read magazine that boasted,
‘over 650,000 copies sold every week’ (Table 6.2).29 Far from being an élitist magazine, the Weekly was geared to the middle-class. As Weekly historian Denis
O’Brien points out, the journal was a social institution deliberately shaped by the people who made it to influence those who read it.30 Its content represented the broadest section of Australian society and, as such, its pages were a social history reflecting attitudes of the time. O’Brien elaborates:
From its origins in the sour tailings of the Depression, through war, peace, prosperity, the Weekly had become part of the national ethos, standing squarely in the Australian middle-ground as one of the strongest influences in cultivation of middle-class standards and values.31
Articles on the home, its decoration and improvement were intended to set standards, influence the ordinary Australian and contribute to their cultivation of taste.
The Weekly’s first edition had appeared 10 June 1933, some 50 years after the first magazine for women had emerged in Australia and, according to
O’Brien, the magazine revolutionised the concept of publishing for women
‘breaking from the inherited traditions of English journals by treating female interests as news, rather than merely as topics of domestic routine.’32 At the same time, the content of McDougall’s articles indicates typical subjects of domestic
29 Cover of The Australian Women’s Weekly, 7 Sept 1946. 30 Denis O’Brien, The Weekly–the 50 Years, Ringwood, VIC: Penguin Books Australia, 1982, p. 6. 31 ibid. 32 ibid., O’Brien tells further that by the 1960s and early 70s, the influence of the Weekly on the social interests of women came under scrutiny, with many feminists questioning its role in the reinforcement of feminine roles. This was despite the little remembered role of the magazine in reporting women’s rights. The first issue of the Weekly gave front-page coverage to ‘Equal Social Rights for Sexes, Mrs. Littlejohn Outlines Big Issues To Be Fought For’.
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Table 6.2 Selected Articles and Lectures by Nora McDougall from 1941-1948
Englishman’s Home Exhibition Lecture Series, 1941
Lectures Date
‘The Influence of the Past Periods on Future Decoration’ 9 May ‘English Decorative Textiles of the 18th and 19th Centuries’ 16 May ‘The Adam Period’ 23 May ‘The Victorian Period or the Second Dark Ages’ 30 May
Articles written for The Australian Women’s Weekly, 1946
Articles Date
‘Plan color schemes to suit the aspect’ 20 Jul ‘Keep your home fresh …beautiful’ 27 Jul ‘Selecting the color scheme’ 3 Aug ‘Color scheme for a Western Aspect’ 10 Aug ‘Color schemes for Northern Aspect’ 17 Aug ‘Space saving ideas for small homes’ 24 Aug ‘Making the small hall attractive’ 31 Aug ‘Fitting the furniture to the room’ 7 Sept ‘Country Kitchens’ 14 Sept ‘New Color Schemes for Bedrooms’ 21 Sept ‘Farmhouse Comfort’ 28 Sept ‘Drab house now haven of charm’ 5 Oct ‘Lesson in Curtain Making’ 16 Nov
Series of Public Lectures at Fitzgerald’s in Hobart, TAS, July 1948
Lectures
“Is your House a Home?” “Problems of Decorating,” “Color in the Home,” “Fabrics and How to Select Them,” “Curtains for Windows,” “Knowing Your Furniture and How to Place it.”
interest to women in which practical and economical advice was sought and given in return: suitable colours for differing climatic aspects, space saving ideas, matters of hygiene and comfort with details provided for executing do-it-yourself projects.
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These modern problems of home decorating were also incorporated in
McDougall’s lectures for department stores in cities across Australia and New
Zealand in the late 1940s. As indicated in a series of public lectures given at
Fitzgerald’s Department Store in Hobart, Tasmania in 1948, McDougall’s post- war offerings were in stark contrast to earlier lectures given at the ‘Englishman’s
Home Exhibition’ of 1941 which covered historical styles and how the past could influence future decoration (Table 6.2).
Although the topics of McDougall’s department store lectures were conventional, more unusual was the recognition she gained as news of the tours was reported overseas in the publication, NY (New York) Retailing (Home
Furnishings Edition).33 As evidenced in the newspaper clipping found in Parsons
School of Design scrapbooks and archival records, McDougall was an acclaimed
‘graduate of the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts’ and, in addition to offering public lectures, she had also conducted ‘special lunch-hour talks…for the benefit of the staff’.34 This acknowledgement linked her esteemed training to important contributions in the retail sector.
Little is known of McDougall’s professional work as an interior decorator, although projects are occasionally mentioned in her magazine articles used as solutions to decorating problems.35 The homes under discussion were not, however, the grand mansions of Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs or Melbourne’s
33 ‘“Tasmanian Store Sponsors Lectures”, Hobart, Tasmania, July 20’, New York, NY Retailing (Home Furnishings Edition), 21 Jul 1948. 34 ibid. 35 Nora McDougall, ‘Farmhouse Comfort’, The Australian Woman’s Weekly, 28 Sept 1946, p. 37; and Nora McDougall, ‘Drab house now haven of charm’, The Australian Woman’s Weekly, 5 Oct 1946, pp. 48-49.
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Toorak, but instead were in keeping with her audience’s social and economic status: the simple homes of ordinary Australians. McDougall had crafted her career and work as an interior decorator and teacher of the subject in Australia around middle-class needs and a retail experience that solved everyday problems and promoted mass-production and mass-consumption. Under these circumstances and conditions, her design ideas were tied to broader aims and ideals arriving from overseas, especially from America.
Values, Beliefs and Philosophy of Design
McDougall gained knowledge and, in turn, authority to teach interior decoration in Australia based on her reputation as a graduate of the esteemed New York
School of Fine and Applied Arts. Incorporated under the Regents of the
University of the State of New York, the school proclaimed ‘national leadership’,
‘international professional standing’ and ‘vision’ through its ‘professional courses with reference to the larger aspects of...industrial art’, which was defined as art that related to the home, clothes, the theatre and advertising illustration.36 This claim, the educational institution believed, was verified ‘by the fact that not only have the reputable Art Schools of the country and many Universities patterned their courses on this plan, but hundreds of organizations claiming “complete,”
“intensive” and “authoritative” educational training’, varying in duration from six weeks to six months, had sprung up everywhere in imitation.37
36 Handbook for New York School of Fine and Applied Art, New York, Paris, Summer Session, 6 Jul-18 Aug 1928, New York, p. 5. 37 ibid.
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As publicised in Australia, McDougall attended both the institution’s New
York and Paris schools.38 This broadened international experience exposed
McDougall to a range of topics and ideas on interior decoration during the late
1920s era. Important to her formation of ideas was the American school’s philosophy toward education in the industrial arts. Based on the founding ideas of
Frank Alvah Parsons, these were three-fold: ‘retaining…fundamental principles of both taste and practical usage, visioning, as far as possible the future…[and] striving constantly to adapt sound ideas and technique to modern requirements and practices.’39
Parsons and his ideas were widely known not only through the New York school and his publications, but also through lectures given by him annually at the
Metropolitan Museum. He also spoke more broadly throughout the United States,
Canada and overseas in Italy, Spain, France, Holland, and Belgium on subjects including: "The How and Why of an Artistic Home," "Democracy, Feminism, and the New Art," and "Art, Dress, and Common-Sense."40 The subjects suggest
Parsons was clearly in tune with the new aims of women and art education.
The school’s reach and wide-ranging approach to art and design education was furthered through its Summer Session program: its intent, as stated, to provide ‘the broadest possible service to the largest number of people by placing both its revised and new summer courses at the disposal of Art Teachers and
38 McDougall, Make You House a Home, How to Decorate, op. cit., inside cover page. 39 Handbook for New York School of Fine and Applied Art, New York, Paris, op. cit., p. 5. 40 Theodore Barber, ‘Frank Alvah Parsons’, Kellen Archive Center, Parsons School of Design, New School University, 2004, http://library.newschool.edu/speccoll/Kellen/faparsons.php.parsons.
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Supervisors throughout the country’.41 Education was directed to three distinct groups of learners:
Teachers and Supervisors…[for]work done in this school may receive due credit at universities and other American institutions; for students working professionally, who wish to get new ideas, broader vision and fresh inspiration…for laymen who will not become professional, but desire knowledge for personal use.42
Enrolled students were assured the work would be ‘thoroughly adapted’ accordingly. The 1928 Summer Session ran from 6 July to 18 August and is further discussed here as indicative of Nora McDougall’s core studies.
The school’s curriculum placed ‘Art History and Interpretation’ as fundamental to the four programs offered (Interior Architecture and Decoration,
Costume, Theatre Design, Advertising Illustration).43 Developed by Parsons himself, the Art History course provided:
…a background of history, “Period Art” and modern applications based on the outstanding relationship between the ideals and practices of life in the various historic periods and architecture, painting, sculpture, decoration, furniture, dress and the lesser arts which each period has expressed. 44
The course’s aims were (a) to establish bases investigating selected examples from each medium within any particular period, (b) to analyse and adapt their qualities to modern practice so as to stimulate further study, and (c) to systematise and correlate the knowledge already held by the student in order that a richer background for the study of any visual art could be formed.45 Thus, historical exemplars provided stylistic, theoretical and analytical bases for modern study of the arts.
41 Handbook for New York School of Fine and Applied Art, New York, Paris, op. cit., p. 6. 42 ibid. 43 ibid., p. 8. 44 ibid., pp. 8-9.
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The course consisted of lectures and demonstrations at the school and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other museums and collections, using the actual objects when possible, supplemented by lantern slides. Greek, Roman and
Mediaeval periods were investigated as a foundation for the Renaissance, then the most important French, English and American periods as they had developed from these courses. The Modern Art movement was also positioned historically and discussed.46 The 1928 course departed little from Part II (historic art periods and their ideas) of Parsons’ original 1915 text, Interior Decoration: its Principles and Practice. Following this historical foundation, three courses in House
Planning and Decoration were conducted for the study of Interior Architecture and Decoration, each building upon the other (Figure 6.8).
In an overarching statement of the school’s modern approach to their aesthetic but practical study of Interior Decoration, it was especially noted that:
the Principles of Design in form, colour and line are taught in each department by using the actual materials one will use in his professional work instead of dealing in abstract forms “to be applied later,” as of old.47
This applied approach to the fundamentals of design was believed to be practical and progressive, indicating also the school’s rejection of the Bauhaus
Preliminary Course model. The Department of House Planning and Decoration also declared its belief in the home as still the ‘most important factor in our
45 ibid. 46 ibid. 47 ibid., p. 10.
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COURSE ONE No Prerequisites. This may be taken as a general cultural HOUSE PLANNING course as well as a necessary part of the general professional AND DECORATION course. It may be taken separately or in conjunction with any other course by students in this or any other department. It Two Points Credit maybe taken alone by those who do not care to draw and must One Hour Daily be taken by those who are electing Course Two. 9 a.m. to 10a.m. The course consists of lectures and demonstrations. (If taken for credit, note-book work is required.) It states the principles, functional, architectural and decorative, concerned in the arrangement of the rooms of a small house; it explains floor plans with reference to furniture arrangement and it consider s the treatment and finish in of trim, walls, windows, furniture and decorations, as to form, colour, texture and arrangement. It is illustrated with lantern slides, textiles and other practical material. Visits are made to various manufacturers and shops as well as to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
COURSE TWO No Prerequisites except that Course One is required with this HOUSE PLANNING course. Course Two is arranged for those who will work out AND DECORATION problems in the application of the principles given in Course One. It consists of a consecutive series of problems illustrating Two Points Credit some essentials of Interior Decoration, either for teaching or One Hour Daily for practical use. This is a laboratory course but the class 10 a.m. to 12p.m. works under constant instruction, criticism and supervision. Drawing and the technique of colour are taught in easy steps as they are necessary to express ideas.
It is advisable to take this instruction with Course One when possible. NOTE Students taking course two may also work in the afternoon, thus completing one full period in a summer.
COURSE TWO Prerequisites: Courses One and Two or equivalent taken in HOUSE PLANNING this school or in schools for whose work we give credit. AND DECORATION Course Three is for advanced students only. It consists of the Principles of Interior Architecture not given in Course One, Three Points Credit but essential to a more complete understanding of the function Three Hour Daily of architecture as a background for furnishing and decoration 1 p.m. to 4p.m a modern house. It discusses the simplest essentials of the important historic periods and includes lectures illustrated with lantern slides and other materials. Consecutive problems are given, adapting certain periods very simply to modern conditions.
Students electing this course, which consists of lectures, instruction, criticism and laboratory work may enlarge its scope, complete more work and receive extra credit, by electing to work additional and more advanced problems mornings, from 9 to 12, under supervision. NOTE Students not desiring credit may do special work by arrangement with the instructor in charge.
Figure 6.8 Facsimile of Summer Session 1928 Courses in House Planning and Decoration Source: Handbook for New York School of Fine and Applied Art, New York, Paris, Summer Session 1928, pp. 11-12
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modern theory of “Education through Environment”.’48 As such, it was further believed that:
Upon its expression of appropriateness, comfort, taste and economic usage depends its value as a silent, constant force in forming the ideals which will dominate the homes of the future, as well as the influence these homes will exert on the minds and therefore on the lives of those who dwell in them now. 49
Thus, interior decoration was significant to the home’s aesthetic but also to the inhabitant’s formation of character. Of a more practical nature, the courses offered to the student the process of interior decoration. This course, as stated, did not begin with the furnishings but with the architectural plans and included:
…the location of rooms with relation to each other and to the whole; the placement of doors and windows with reference to each other, as well as to their function and the comfort and convenience of those who use the house; the selection of chimney pieces moulding and general trim. The selection and placing of furniture and decorative objects must follow the same principles of comfort, convenience, fitness and taste, then the unit is complete. 50
The aim of the Summer Session study of Interior Architecture and
Decoration was ‘to select, condense and express as clearly as possible in a limited time the fundamentals of this profession, so arranged that further study may be intelligently done in sequence, so that each step may be taken as the ability to advance is acquired.’51 The courses consisted of lectures, demonstrations, problem-based class work and studio criticism, and including field trips to museums, manufacturers, and shops. Outcomes indicative of the courses were exemplified by previous student work (Figure 6.9).
48 ibid. 49 ibid., emphasis in the original. 50 ibid. 51 ibid.
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Figure 6.9 Illustrations of Student Work Source: NYSFAA Handbook, c. 1928
The NYSFAA—supported by excellent resources—emphasised Museum
Research in each department of the school as directed by department heads.
Aesthetics, authenticity and taste formed the basis of Museum Research, each believed to provide three distinct educational and practical values:
First, the student is trained to select and arrange the most beautiful things of each kind and type; second, he is put in touch with authentic period art objects in a professional way; third, taste is cultivated by the study of beautiful things. 52
It was further believed that this method provided a foundation for both the general art appreciation course and for further historical research study in
European museums and collections. Through advancement, a rather élite mode of training was cultivated through the Paris School which was a regular feature of
52 ibid., pp. 27-28.
190 Nora McDougall Chapter 6 the NYSFAA curriculum. Yet further research studies could be arranged at their
Italian school.53
Training for teachers was also given in Summer Session programs and, while taken from the general courses for training teachers was described as
‘simplified on the professional side as to be adapted to the practical industrial point of view from which within the last few years art training in American public school education has become visioned by this school.’54
The curriculum for Interior Decoration combined with the simplified teacher training would inform McDougall’s approach on her return to Australia. A modern style of decorative illustration, based on the modern theory of dynamic symmetry that McDougall demonstrates in her publications, was also taught under the Departments of Graphic Art and Life Drawing. This illustrative technique was considered economically effective for reproduction because it displayed
‘uniqueness, originality and simplicity found in “Modern Art”’ which was also appropriate to advertising as it was readily accepted by the American mind’.55
Overall, the NYFAAS through its education and design philosophies, course content and teaching approaches melded traditional attitudes with modern ideals. Grounded in historical precedents with modern application in mind, the school’s instruction professed refinement of taste cultivated through vision toward self-improvement that manifest in the aesthetic home. Teaching utilised a variety of methods, taking full advantage of its schools’ proximity to major New York,
53 The Paris School operated throughout the year with short vacations at Christmas and in August and usually offered a Summer Session. However, during the summer of 1928 the Summer Session was held in New York due to the building in Paris being filled with its regular school pending rearrangement of space and faculties. It is uncertain if McDougall attended the Paris school as a regular or summer session program.
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Paris, and Italian museums, libraries, trade resources and professional firms.
Teaching also incorporated research and practical experience with laboratory criticism and coursework.
School records also confirm that Interior Decoration had truly become a career for women. Out of the recorded graduates receiving (ordering) diplomas in
Interior Architecture and Decoration from the New York City and Paris schools from June 1927 through June 1929, only eleven of sixty-two were male. Equally, of the sixty-three graduates undertaking teacher training in the subject areas offered by NYSFAA, only five were male (See Table 6.3). Certificate courses were also given. The records unfortunately do not entirely reflect the number of students who attended the school or completed courses. For instance, Nora
McDougall is not listed in these records.
How was McDougall influenced by her study? What did she adopt or discard and why? Clearly, by 1940, the world compared to the time of
McDougall’s training at the NYSFAA had significantly changed following the great depression and outbreak of war. McDougall’s writings indicate that she was greatly influenced by the school under Parsons’ leadership, but in particular, she was impacted by the stringent conditions of war. In formulating her instruction, she drew heavily on Part I (elements and principles of design) and Part III
(modern and individual houses and special suggestions in selection and placement) of Parsons’ 1915 book, while Part II (historical period styles) fell dormant. The factors significantly impacted her selection and omission of material in her formulation of subjects for interior decoration.
54 Handbook for New York School of Fine and Applied Art, New York, Paris, op. cit., p. 6
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Table 6.3 Summary of Students Attending NYSFAA, June 1927-June 1929
Diploma Ordered- Diploma Ordered- Month/Year Interior Architecture & Decoration Teachers Training Certificate Location Women Men Women Men WM
June 1927 6013100 NYC
June 1927 200000 NY&Paris
June 1928 13 2 17 2 1 0 NYC
June 1928 231000 NY&Paris*
June 1929 21 3 27 1 1 0 NYC
June 1929 730001 NY&Paris
Total 51 11 58 5 2 1
Source: ‘Diplomas June, 1929’, Archive: New School for Social Research, Parsons School of Design. *One woman and one man received diplomas for Interior Architecture and Decoration from combined study in NY, Paris & Italy.
Although McDougall would have undertaken historical study and museum-based research in New York and Paris outside her special exhibition lectures of 1941, she did not or could not incorporate the material in her
Australian instruction. McDougall also did not have in Australia the vast resources of the NYSFAA: the museums in New York, Paris, and Italy, or the lantern slides prepared by instructors at the schools. From a practical standpoint, this dearth of historically accurate material contributed to the lack of traditional period-style study in her instruction. The lack of resources was replaced instead by readily available contemporary magazines and retail stores that supported a
55 TP ibid., p. 24.
193 Nora McDougall Chapter 6 recuperating market-place with intentions of filling homes with modern-day
(re)productions and new appliances. But also the need to acquire this knowledge had passed.
McDougall, instead, acquired a pragmatic and democratic approach to teaching her subject based on the continuing aims and ideals of modernisation.
Following the lead of the NYSFAA which rejected a singular formalist approach,
McDougall theorised her modern aesthetic ideas using commonly understood language and applying underlying principles to concrete examples. She wrote in her first book:
The principle [sic] factors we want in our rooms are – peace, unity, variety and individuality. Peacefulness is obtained by not overdoing pattern. For instance, if we have a plain carpet we can have patterned drapes and upholstery, or vice versa, and harmonious colours, also we should keep our lines as straight as possible in the placing of furniture and mats. Unity means there is a relationship between furniture and furnishings; variety means that the individual pieces of furniture need not match but should be in harmony, or even contrast, with one another. The buying of a “three piece suite” may help the manufacturer but does not bring variety to individuality to our rooms. Also this may lead to over- crowding of a small room. A couch with two matching chairs of the same size may cause wasted spots, encumbering the corners of small rooms when smaller chairs of different design could do wonders.56
Identifying with her audience and believing that design was integral to achieving practical, functional, appropriate and economically viable results in the homes of ‘we ordinary folk’, McDougall offered ‘simple’ principles based on middle-class values to the subject of interior decoration.57 McDougall, first of all, emphasised planning before embarking on any project, stating that ‘only through good hard thinking and planning of everything that goes into a room, and its relation to the whole scheme’ can make our homes ‘whether shanties or palaces’
56 McDougall, Interior Decoration for Australians, op. cit., p. 8. 57 ibid., p. 6 and table of contents.
194 Nora McDougall Chapter 6 speak ‘welcome and peace’ and have ‘individuality’ and ‘beauty’.58 She advised that in order to achieve the best results individuals must have definite ideas, not
‘wild and vague ideas that are impracticable when you get down to tin-tacks’ but those which then could be planned with the ‘decorator and architect in a concrete form’.59
A well-decorated home, according to McDougall, was ‘not the most expensive, but the one which radiates peace and contentment.’ She further identified the ‘ingredients, naming ‘CHARACTER, BALANCE, HARMONY,
VARIETY, INTEREST, UNITY, COMFORT and APPROPRIATENESS of purpose’ as essential. 60 McDougall related peacefulness specifically and aesthetically to ‘not overdoing pattern’ and carefully in her writings avoided mention of war. Her outlook was forward-thinking to modern ideals of the home as an aesthetic expression of individual character based on one’s own contentment of position and circumstance.
Following a modern ideal towards home decoration, McDougall emphasised the importance of expressing one’s own life and working conditions to create a new beauty. She said, ‘if with sincerity we endeavour to make our surroundings as attractive, as homelike as we can, and in keeping with our needs and social status’ then we would express our times and our life.61 Furthermore, what ‘we’ choose depends on our ideas of beauty and appropriateness.62
Appropriateness also extended to making the correct selections for place and
58 ibid., p. 7. 59 ibid., p. 5. 60 McDougall, Make Your House a Home, op. cit., p. 10. 61 McDougall, Interior Decoration for Australians, op. cit., p. 6. 62 ibid., p. 9.
195 Nora McDougall Chapter 6 purpose: ‘we should not buy, for a country home, the type of furniture suitable only in a French salon, or heavy Tudor furniture for a female ménage.’63 Copying others was also discouraged in favour of understanding fundamental principles, such as scale and harmonising effects with the use of different colours, textures and woods to achieve appropriateness and individuality. Her ideas represented the new spirit of the times.
McDougall recognised that ‘interior decoration is always in a state of change.’64 Believing that ‘everything has its cause and effect’, she found it fascinating to trace the progress of some furnishing style or feature down the ages to its modern counterpart. Progress meant technological change. She said, ‘we live in a scientific and machine age…our living requirements should express our age.’65 ‘Washing machines, electric light, sweepers and irons are all made to help the housewife, and so a progressive and open mind – not a biased one – is needed by every home-maker…[with] dividends of leisure and happiness’.66 Technology not only produced new inventions for the home but also brought new ideas ‘overnight’, ‘distance means nothing to us…our living has become international’.67 However, McDougall also cautioned her readers of the ‘pitfalls’ of change: ‘one is the determination to be in the forefront of fashion, another is seeking to be different at all costs, and a third is over-cautiousness’.68 Being fashionable alone did not mean that the new ‘style, colour or design’ was good.
63 ibid. 64 ibid., p. 5. 65 ibid., p. 3. 66 ibid., p. 46. 67 ibid., p. 3. 68 ibid., p. 12.
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Economic usage was tied to planning and the new aesthetic: ‘Buy well, avoid cheap and overdecorated pieces’.69 Thus, McDougall believed that not only did a lack of planning cause mistakes, but ‘mistakes cost money’. She also acknowledged that ‘decorating costs money’ and advised her readers that, since no one had an ‘unlimited bank balance’, they must organise a financial plan.70
She went so far as to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of saving money before purchasing as compared to buying on instalment plans. In her later book under less stringent conditions, she adds, ‘if money is no object, just skip this’. 71 Economy was tied to selections—‘rugs are more economical’; on the other hand, ‘bargains’ may not be bargains in the long run ‘owing to some unsaleable quality’.72
To the modern housewife, the kitchen, in McDougall’s estimation, was
‘equivalent of the heart in the human body – without it we could neither walk nor talk’.73 This dramatisation was a prelude to thinking more intently about how the kitchen could be an efficient and convenient work place for the woman who spent three-quarters of her day working there. Aware of her modern female audience who had been directed back to the home, McDougall noted that while the new labour-saving appliances were costly, they were ‘the tools by which women carry out a job bigger than any outside career’.74 Elevating this job to its rightful purpose, hygiene especially in the kitchen and bathroom, became ‘everything’ and
69 McDougall, Make Your House a Home, op. cit., p. 10. 70 McDougall, Interior Decoration for Australians, op. cit., p. 8. 71 McDougall, Make Your House a Home, op. cit., p. 10. 72 McDougall, Interior Decoration for Australians, op. cit., p. 25. 73 ibid., p. 37. 74 ibid.
197 Nora McDougall Chapter 6 could be achieved through clean looking colours, washable surfaces, streamlined forms, open spaces and modern inventions like ventilation hoods.75
Quality material, sound structure and good reputation were of equal concern: ‘Buy only from a recognised firm known for good material and manufacture, then if anything should go wrong they will stand by their reputation in rectifying the defect.’76 Look behind the ‘pretty coverings and examine the structure…furniture should be chosen for the beauty of its wood rather than elaborate carving and decoration.’77 Thus, honesty and integrity underpinned good design.
McDougall presented to her reader, student and consumer audience modern precepts for designing interior space. These ideas, based on values and beliefs of her time, represent artistic theories and principles of design constituting modernism in interior design. The features of which can be summarised as follows:
x Planning as essential to realising the whole.
x Peacefulness and contentment as aesthetic and social ideals of the
time.
x Sincerity and appropriateness as the New Beauty (Truth).
x Progress as a state of change holding both ‘dividends’ and ‘pitfalls’.
x Economic usage tied to planning and the new aesthetic.
x Efficiency and hygiene in the modern manner.
x Quality of material and sound structure based on honesty and integrity.
75 ibid. 76 ibid., pp. 9-10. 77 ibid., p. 10.
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Contribution to Professional Development
Nora McDougall had become a teacher of Interior Decoration in the 1940s at a time when few professional interior decorators were known in Sydney and no professional society had yet been formed. McDougall worked briefly with a full- service decorating firm in New York whose clientele was very wealthy. In most
Sydney households, decorating and furnishing one’s home was usually carried out by the consumer (primarily the housewife) working directly with the trades
(painters, upholsterers, etc.) or salespeople.
McDougall’s first documented programs were formulated during World
War II as interests for service women in the Armed Forces. They were later popularised through articles in a leading women’s magazine and in books giving simple principles on interior decoration, followed by lectures at department stores.
In this way, McDougall was closely aligned with the modern consumer and retail trade, appealing directly to housewives and homeowners interested in improvements and salespeople practicing in the field.
In keeping with modern ideals of education for the industrial arts,
McDougall’s initiatives democratised a field of study once considered élite and exclusive to the well-off. In conveying her ideas to a growing consumer population, she promoted the idea that interior decoration (design) was not a luxury but essential to the function of one’s home, its aesthetic character, and even, the cultural development of its inhabitants—although ultimately this bold claim could not be substantiated. Essentially, McDougall’s work was tied to broader socio-cultural and economic development of a modernising Australia. Her
199 Nora McDougall Chapter 6 reach was made possible through the popular press and retail sector, cultivating a broad audience for modern design in the Australian home. Inadvertently, her activities ensured that interior design remained situated within an amateur artistic context continuing to identify it as a feminine pastime.
As such, McDougall’s contributions to interior design in Sydney both advanced the profession and limited its advancement. Her contributions to professional development can be summarised as follows:
1) She formulated one of the earliest correspondence courses for interior
decoration (design) in Australia for the armed services. Its impact
expanded the understanding that good design was of benefit to the
Australian home.
2) She disseminated applied artistic and theoretical ideas to a broad
population for personal use, as well as to practicing interior decorators and
sales people in retail trade.
3) Having gained professional authority through overseas training,
McDougall worked hard to maintain and extend this authority through a
variety of educational and professional activities.
4) She achieved community sanction through regular contributions to a
popular magazine which boasted a weekly audience of 650,000, just as she
won professional respect in the commercial retail sector, even gaining
recognition in a NY publication.
5) Despite her high profile, McDougall did not participate in the emergent
professional organisation (SIDA) formed during her active years. She
continued to refer to the field as interior 'decoration' and does not appear
200 Nora McDougall Chapter 6
to have engaged in arguments of a name change. This is possibly due to
popular acceptance of interior decoration despite new aesthetic directions
or, alternatively, the so-called 'wrong' circles in which she operated,
meaning not aesthetically élite. McDougall’s practical approach was
geared to the ordinary Australian to whom the concept of planned interior
decoration was new. This in itself constituted advancement.
6) McDougall’s broad skills enabled her to take an active role in the
professional culture through training lectures at department stores and
expert advice to ordinary consumers, particularly with regards to the
economic aspects of design decisions.
Conclusion
This chapter has positioned Nora Seton McDougall within a popularised notion of interior decoration and the commercial retail sector in Australia, recognising her contributions to the cultivation of modern design for a broadened consumer audience. Although little is known of McDougall’s early childhood, personal life, or professional work conducted from her privately-run Sydney Interior
Decoration Studio, written work in the public domain, especially her AES correspondence course for servicewomen published in booklet form and popular
Weekly articles, establishes her legacy of design.
This legacy is impacted particularly by study at the famed NYSFAA, which significantly was informed by modern theories of ‘education through the home environment’ and Frank Alvah Parsons’ theoretical ideas on interior architecture and decoration. Emphasising initially the importance of the trained
201 Nora McDougall Chapter 6 decorator who through planning and knowledge could create new beauty backed by a foundation of the old, McDougall’s true intent focused on the importance of the interior as an honest expression of oneself and one’s own times.
Although McDougall gained exposure to interior decoration through the vast resources of New York and Paris, in Australia, she was keenly aware of her middle-class war-time and post-war audiences, including herself as part of the
‘ordinary folk’ who had few grand possessions and held little resemblance to the socially élite patronage attached to the NYSFAA during her attendance from 1927 to 1928. The old guard’s significance while still appealing was waning under pressure of modern realities.
By way of contributing to the war effort, McDougall’s instruction on the subject was promoted as an interest to servicewomen and advice to homemakers.
During reconstruction, her efforts turned to the retail sector, concerning herself with the new consumer and modern innovations for the home.
McDougall’s concern for the immediacy of modern conditions resulted in a popular modernism for interior design based on ‘simple principles’ of peacefulness and appropriateness, comfort and contentment, economy and purpose. Her pragmatic instruction, which benefited from specialised training, was offered through commonly understood language. By transferring universal abstract concepts to everyday meaning and applying them to settings and products, McDougall translated aesthetic theory to useful knowledge. This sound aesthetic advice in turn contributed to setting standards of taste for a largely artistically-uneducated audience for the benefit of personal use. Integrating ideas of efficiency, effectiveness and good hygiene, her intention was to ‘make the
202 Nora McDougall Chapter 6 modern house a home’. Accepting the post-war return of women to the home, she elevated their status by associating modern functioning in the home to women’s important work. In her discussion of place-making, she wished to shift old habits by discouraging imitation of historically-styled period furnishings. Scorning especially the reviled Victorian Period—dubbed the ‘Second Dark Ages’—she offered instead practical and cost-saving ideas complete with concrete examples to establish realistic goals and achieve individualised results.
Was McDougall effective in her attempts to modernise Australian interior decoration? Further research may uncover specific cases and illuminate if anyone took notice of McDougall’s advice. In absence of testimonials, it is important to recognise how this ‘home decoration expert’ represents a cadre of unassuming modernists who progressively contributed to changes taking place in the attitudes and aesthetics of their time. McDougall’s employment in a populist realm did not garner star status. She wasn't part of the emerging SIDA in Sydney; thus, she was not avant garde in the heroic sense of modernism.
It is also tempting to speculate that McDougall was isolated from the new art and design movements in Australia because: (a) she had not established necessary ties with the art cognoscenti in Sydney; (b) her own personality, values and beliefs as evidenced in her philosophy of design were geared to economies for the ordinary person; and (c) her positioning within the commercial retail sector concerned with consumption distanced her further from art and design’s new directions. Yet, it can be argued that McDougall used effectively governmental and commercial systems, linking new directions in interior decoration to
203 Nora McDougall Chapter 6 technological efficiencies for the home because of her keen awareness and interest in broadening the reach of design.
McDougall maintained the identity of an interior decorator and had distinguished in her early work the specialised roles of the professional decorator and architect. She believed the best results were achieved by professionals working in tandem with the homeowner. At the same time, ironically in the process of modernising Australian interior decoration, McDougall’s advancements paradoxically created an image that anyone could be a decorator as long as they followed her sound advice. This would have implications for professional advancement diminishing the concept of the practitioner’s special knowledge. In directing her modernist ideas to ordinary Australians and encouraging them in do-it-yourself projects, she progressively distanced herself and interior decoration from the professional design community.
The further impact of this under pressure from the modern trained professional who operated in the public domain was that the traditional designation of interior decoration became further associated with past traditions, amateur status and the domestic activities of the housewife. Such was (and is) the predicament of cultivating standards of aesthetic taste (by any name) through populist means and gendered interests. This inevitably devalued the professional work of the interior decorator and diminished recognition of McDougall’s seminal role in interior design’s development in Sydney.
204 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
MARGARET LORD
Any study of the history of interior design, the things we put in our buildings, as well as new developments and trends in design, can in itself be so interesting that it is necessary to take time now and then to decide what it all amounts to, [sic] and to remember that these things are only important insofar as they affect the daily lives of people, their happiness and well-being.1
—Margaret Lord, A Decorator’s World, 1969
Introduction
Margaret Lord, like her predecessors, gained knowledge of ‘interior decoration’ from overseas. Commonalities exist in her understanding of the subject and practice, but also differences arise underpinned by her 1930s London training and international experiences in design. This chapter begins by providing biographical, disciplinary and experiential background that forms the basis of her authority on interior design. Featured, in particular, is Lord’s cultivated public image on her return to Australia which gains her recognition as an expert on the subject, and importantly, draws attention to the new profession in Australia from the 1940s to 1960s. A descriptive account follows summarising her substantial activities and active participation in the development of interior design during this time. The chapter then turns to core values and beliefs surrounding the developing field from pre-war to post-war times that coalesce in Lord’s philosophical and theoretical understanding of design and, subsequently, her approach to interior
1 Margaret Lord, A Decorator’s World: Living with Art and International Design, Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1969, 2nd printing, p. 187. Note that only the dust cover changes from 1st to 2nd printing for both 1969 publications.
205 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 design. This chapter concludes with an evaluation of Lord’s contributions to professional development of interior design in Sydney while also identifying factors challenging advancement.
Biographical Background and Basis of Authority
Margaret Florence Lord was born 12 December 1908 and raised at Warrnambool,
Victoria, Australia, the middle child of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Lord, with an older brother John and a younger sister Nance.2 After matriculating, Margaret studied art full-time for three years at Swinburne Technical College and then taught art in
Melbourne secondary schools while continuing night studies at the National Art
School.3 Since her early school days, Lord displayed a flair for drawing which was believed ‘inherited from her mother’—an amateur artist.4
Continuing to pursue artistic training, Lord attended Saturday classes conducted by Melbourne artists, George Bell and partner Arnold Shore.5 But later, wanting to do ‘something different, something…considered glamorous [and] with rather vague ideas of what Interior Decoration was about’, she set out to get a job in a decorating establishment.6 At the time, Lord did not know any practising interior decorators in Australia, only that it was ‘an established profession’ in
2 Georgina Hart, 26 Mar 2001; Lord’s brother John and his wife Nora of Melbourne now deceased had no children; Nance (nee Lord) Cummings of Melbourne had two children; Kate and Cameron Cummings (an architect in Melbourne) both now thought to be in their 40s. 3Many personal biographical details are drawn from: Helen Yoxall, 10 Jun 1992, ‘Administrative History/Biographical Note’, Margaret Lord Archive, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (Powerhouse); and conversations with Lord’s step-daughter, Georgina Hart, an archivist who was later instrumental in the establishment of Lord’s archive upon settlement of her father Vincent Wardell’s estate. 4 ‘Lord Knows How’, People, 8 Apr 1953, p. 20. 5 Lord, 1969, op. cit., p. 13. 6 ibid.
206 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 other parts of the world.7 So in 1936, Lord boarded a P&O one-class ship for
London initially ‘to see the sights’, but while there, decided to return to
Melbourne with something more ‘worthwhile to her credit’.8 In London, she would gain knowledge and experience in the profession until the outbreak of
World War II forced her return in 1940.
Lord’s Formative Years in London
Lord recalled in an interview later in life that her first six months in London were spent ‘wandering around the West End gazing hungrily through the plate-glass windows of the plushy decorating firms’.9 Jobless and living in Bloomsbury
Square, but determined to gain entrance into the beautiful world of interior decoration ‘if only to sweep floors’, she started by studying furniture drawing at night, attending the Central School of Art in Southampton under the instruction of
Australian Hal Missingham.10
By September 1936 and with funds dwindling, Lord decided to call in to see Constance Paul, another Australian whom she had met shortly after her arrival in London. Paul, one of England’s successful women decorators, was working for the exclusive Dutch firm Reens-Arta in Mayfair.11 The meeting proved beneficial, providing Lord with her first work in interior decoration, initially by running
7 ibid. 8 ibid. p. 12; and Margaret Gilruth, ‘Victorian Girl Who Decorates London’s Big Homes’, Sydney Morning Herald Women’s Supplement, 2 Jul 1940, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304 Scrapbooks, 1940-41, 1952. 9 ‘Lord Knows How’, op. cit., p. 20. 10 ibid.; also note that Hal Missingham would later become Director of the National Gallery in Sydney in the 1940s (now known as the Art Gallery of New South Wales). 11 Reens-Arta was the result of an amalgamation between an established Berkeley Street business and an important Dutch house, Reens of Amsterdam. It was located in the exclusive Bruton Street, between Berkeley Square and Bond Street, as noted in Lord, op cit., 1969, pp. 11-12.
207 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 messages and making herself generally useful and, later, by drafting and copying drawings for Paul. The work at first was unpaid but afforded Lord the opportunity to work in a design studio. It was still unconventional for women to work in drafting and irregular at that time to work as an apprentice without paying for the opportunity. However, Lord’s efforts soon paid off, gaining the attention of Mr.
Reens, and shortly thereafter, she was hired on staff with a minute salary.12
Lord was aware of the privileged position of interior decoration—a career then considered smart and fashionable. Soon, however, she realised that interior decoration was less to do with beautiful colour, fabrics and fine furniture than a
‘practical subject’ requiring ‘planning and detailing’.13
In her position at Reens-Arta, a firm catering to the wealthy, Lord experienced ‘interior decoration at its grandest and most lavish’ scale. She worked in a minor capacity on Barbara Hutton’s Regent’s Park house and, on another occasion, took measurements of the main bedroom in the Duchess of Windsor’s
London house.14 Lord’s early training ground working alongside a team of experienced professionals provided her with practical knowledge and skills.
During this time, she also extended her learning by travelling and attending important design events and lectures. These trips included (a) the Paris exposition of 1937,15 (b) Englishman Gordon Russell’s exhibition of his democratic furniture designs and subsequent lecture in 1938, and (c) an architectural lighting convention in Holland in 1939 where she found herself the only interior decorator
12 ‘Lord Knows How’, op cit., p. 20. 13 Lord, 1969, op. cit., p. 16. 14 ‘Lord Knows How’, op. cit., p. 20. 15 Lord, 1969, op. cit., p. 37; Paris World’s Fair was held in 1937.
208 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 in attendance.16 Through these experiences, Lord was exposed to a wide range of modern design influences and new technological developments from the extreme experimentations of European design to moderate conservatism of England.
Then, about a year before the war began in Europe, Lord’s career took a new direction. Marie Louise Arnold, a former head director at Reens-Arta, asked
Lord to join her at the newly formed Arnold School of Interior Decoration first as an instructor and soon after as director of studies.17 The school was a response to constant demands from clients to take their wealthy daughters ‘under the Interior
Decorator’s wing’ to learn the trade.18 With rising interest in the field, the relatively new subject of interior decoration met the broader aims of educating women in useful but refined careers.19 The study also served a contingent of young women who were just ‘filling in time’ before they married.20 The Arnold
School, located on South Audley Street, London, in the heart of Mayfair was not
16 ibid., pp. 72-73. 17 ibid., Lord gives a background of Marie Louise Arnold in her book, A Decorator’s World, p. 25, telling of ‘Arnold, who with her friend and business assistant, Lord William Taylour [of Irish aristocracy], had had a successful decorating establishment in Berkeley Street. Besides numerous houses, her firm had recently been responsible for the interior designs of Gatwick Airport. Aware of the scope of her work, when Reens of Amsterdam wanted to acquire a business in Mayfair, Marie Louise was offered good terms, and Reens agreed as well that she should bring with her all her well trained staff. Marie Louise then became the first managing director of the new business – Reens Arta – the outcome of which was the interesting marriage of two styles’. Lord further elaborates about these two styles which became known as ‘evolved contemporary’ showing Dutch and German influences, and the delicacy of French and English styles. ‘This was modern furniture that did not ignore the past’, p. 32. 18 ibid., p. 44. 19 ‘The Craze For Steel Furniture Has Gone’, Sydney Morning Herald Women’s Supplement, 2 Jul 1940, no pagination, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304 Scrapbooks, 1940-41, 1952. Lord mentions two Australian students at the school, but does not record their names. She also tells how their teaching methods were adapted to their rapid growth, ‘When the school was first started we planned to take only ten students at one time and give them individual training. But at the end of the first term we found there were so many others wanting to attend classes that we enlarged the school…Students were taken to museums for lectures on period furniture, and every branch of architecture was followed. There were lectures on the development of lighting and the psychology of colour. The students were given model rooms to decorate.’ 20 Lord, 1969, op. cit., p. 44.
209 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 far from Constance Spry’s famous flower shop and school of flower decoration and close to ‘fashionable decorators’ who would become guest lecturers at the school.21
In her initial charge as drawing instructor at the school, Lord drew on her previous experience teaching art in Melbourne’s secondary schools, as well as from her recent acquisition of drawing techniques from the Central School of Art,
Southampton. Later, after attending a series of lectures by Herbert Cescinsky, whom she considered ‘the greatest living authority on English seventeenth and eighteenth-century furniture’, Lord took on a number of subjects including the history of architecture and the study of period furniture.22
Lord spent hours reading and researching at the Victoria and Albert
Museum (V&A) where one day she was uniquely rewarded by a chance encounter with Queen Mary. Although aware that she must keep ‘an appropriate distance’,
Lord was able to inconspicuously listen as the Director, Sir Eric Dalrymple and his assistant moved slowly from display to display with the Queen.23 Fascinated by the distinguished authority’s processes of ‘examining, questioning, expressing informed opinion’,24 Lord came to appreciate the interrelationship of furnishings, customs and beliefs embedded within each era of time, a process that would continue to inform her teaching. The V&A Museum also provided authentic examples from which her Arnold School students could recognise and identify
21 ibid., p. 41. 22 ibid., p. 41; Cescinsky presented a signed copy of his book, English Furniture from Gothic to Sheraton to Lord which remained in Lord’s personal collection, and is now held by her step daughter, Georgina Hart. 23 ibid., p. 42. 24 ibid.
210 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 classical (e.g. Egyptian, Roman and Greek) motifs in the ornamentation of furniture and decoration that they were studying, a resource later missing in her
Australian experience.
The study of colour was a key component of Lord’s teaching subjects at the Arnold School, her understanding derived from theoretical study, instinct and hands-on experience. Lord had studied the subject first as an artist in Melbourne.
But, knowing that ‘colour’s scientific aspects’ had recently made it a very controversial subject in design, she decided to clarify her ideas on distinctions between the artist’s knowledge and that of the designer.25 Using John Holmes book Colour in Interior Decoration, she embarked on a self-guided study, concluding that without natural instinct and a good eye for colour, ‘all the theory in the world’ was to no avail. 26
Lord’s employer and mentor, Marie Louise Arnold, believed that in addition to having an appreciation for aesthetics, interior decorators should have
‘knowledge of building - at least enough to know of the pitfalls of removing an interior wall, or cutting an archway without proper consultation.’27 For practical, as well as aesthetic purposes, a young architect, Louis Osman, was hired as a permanent staff member at the school. Wholeheartedly, Lord adopted the notion that ‘ordinary daily contact with an architect and craftsman of such taste and appreciation…was an essential and valuable part in the education of any design student.’28
25 ibid., p. 48. 26 ibid., Holmes was a lecturer in Interior Decoration at the Architectural Association School in London in the 1930s. 27 ibid., p. 43. 28 ibid.
211 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
Another practical aspect of the school’s teaching was actual experience which evolved as a matter of necessity. In addition to the high fees charged to make the business viable, Arnold accepted commissions from a limited number of clients, ‘just enough to be able to give each student some experience of a decorating job in progress.’29 Students met with clients and were involved with a diverse cross-section of trades and professional people associated with the business of interior decoration. To further learn about cultivating a good relationship between decorator and tradesman as well as decorator and client, the school invited a famous London decorator, Herman Schriver of Eldon, Duke
Street, to deliver a special lecture on ‘Salesmanship’. According to Lord, the topic could equally have been called ‘Getting along with Clients’.30 In this way, the
Arnold School, under the leadership of Arnold with Lord’s assistance, gathered together a range of theoretical and practical topics and activities to educate and train the professional interior decorator of the late 1930s.
Then in August 1939, just as the school was ‘beginning to gather prestige the war put a stop to it’.31 Lord later recalled the chain of events. She had been travelling with friends to the south of France for the summer holidays, ‘absorbed in the charming, idle life of Cagnes’, where, as she said, one could forget about the rest of the world and avoid reading the newspapers. 32 Then, the imminence of war forced everyone to return home. Although the travellers, as Lord continues, were fully aware of Munich and the hazardous European situation, ‘ostrich-like’
29 ibid., p. 44. 30 ibid., p. 83. 31 ‘Lord Knows How’, op. cit., p. 20. 32 Lord, 1969, op. cit., p. 91.
212 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 they preferred not to think or speak of that dreaded thing, a European war. Despite the horror of war, Lord later romanticised her ‘exciting journey back to London on one of the last trains to leave the south of France’33, also admitting the ‘journey to
Paris was nightmarish’.34 After a few weeks living in London again, Lord found living and working conditions impossible. The School had not reopened in
September as intended and in spite of attempts by Arnold and Lord to prepare correspondence courses as an alternative measure, in the end nothing eventuated.
Lord’s Career in Australia
Margaret Lord returned to Australia in early 1940 after working in London four and one-half years. Although Victorian by birth, she believed opportunities for her
‘kind of work were greater in Sydney than in Melbourne’—a decision also prompted by a desire to maintain company with her London friends who had also returned home to Sydney.35 Even in Sydney, however, Lord found ‘it was difficult to see professional interior decoration’ such as she had known in London.36
Puzzled and depressed by the displays in leading furniture stores, she observed that Australia ‘seemed to have missed out on the new and lively developments in contemporary design that were then afoot in Europe’.37
Much later, she discovered ‘those few people doing good and interesting work’ in interior decoration in Sydney—individuals like Molly Gray, Marion
Best, Loudon Sainthill, Elaine Haxton, Deric Deane, Merle du Boulay, Stuart
33 ‘Margaret’s Lord’s Book On Home Decorating’, ABC Weekly, Mar 1945. 34 Lord, 1969, op. cit., p. 92. 35 ibid., p. 96. 36 ibid., p. 97. 37 ibid.
213 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
Low, Barry Little, Frederick Ward, Molly Guy Smith, Frances Burke, Michael
O’Connell, Katherine Hardess, Don Hall, Lester Bunbury, William Swaffield, T.
R. Petherbridge, and Joyce Brown.38 But at the time, Lord knew ‘the future was uncertain and people were disinclined to spend money on things like interior decoration’.39 Lord’s new challenge to improve the state of design in Sydney and her need to make a living under current conditions prompted her to seek alternative means of employment. This was accomplished by writing, first for the daily papers on places in the news that Lord had visited in Europe and, then, for journals on furniture and interior decoration, the most significant being The
Australian Home Beautiful, submitting regular articles from 1940-43 (Table 7.1).
The national magazine published her inaugural article, ‘Decoration and
Architecture in Wartime’ (1 July 1940), profiling her in their monthly commentary (Figure 7.1). The following day, the Sydney Morning Herald
Women’s Supplement launched Lord’s career locally featuring the ‘young
Melbourne girl’ who had returned from London with news that ‘The Craze for
Steel Furniture Has Gone’.40
38 ibid., Lord comments on the developments of interior decorators starting in the 1930s. 39 ibid., p. 103. 40 ‘The Craze for Steel Furniture Has Gone’, op. cit.
214 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
Table 7.1 Selected Writings by Margaret Lord
The Australian Home Beautiful Articles Date
x Architecture and Decoration in Wartime Jul 1940 x What is Wrong with Modern Design? Aug 1940 x Variety in One Room Sept 1940 x Design for Dining Oct 1940 x Have we gone crazy in kitchencraft? Nov 1940 x Space, light and balance Dec 1940 x x Your Books as Decoration May 1941 x An Englishman’s Home Jun 1941 x The Modernising Touch Jul 1941 x Australian Design and English Tradition Aug 1941 x Your Room with Flowers Sept 1941 x The Importance of Planned Lighting Oct 1941 x The Importance of Planned Lighting. II Wiring the house with Nov 1941 x forethought x Light and Color at Christmas Time Dec 1941
x Lighting for the Home. IV General Lighting, Methods and Jan 1942 x Fittings that are Available Today x Lighting for Home. No. 5 – Conditioned Lighting for Better Sight Feb 1942 x Guarding the children’s eyesight. No. 6 in a series of articles on Mar 1942 x Modern Home Lighting x The Aesthetic Value of Good Lighting, Considering Light as a Apr 1942 x Prime Factor in Decoration x Graceful Window Treatment May 1942 x Lighting Your Bedroom Jun 1942 x A Brighter Blackout, “Although you’re blacked out, there’s no Jul 1942 x need to be gloomy” x Today’s Decoration Problems, The Importance of a Good Aug 1942 x Background x Today’s Decoration Problems II. The Treatment of Walls and Sept 1942 x Ceilings x There are Dozens of … Methods of Treating Floors’ Nov 1942
x Home Making in Wartime 1.- Hints on the renovation of old Feb 1943 x furniture x If I Were Furnishing Again Jun 1943
x Room Decoration Today, What We’d like to do and What We Can Jul 1946 Do
215 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
Table 7.1 Selected Writings by Margaret Lord (continued)
Other Selected Articles Date
x Modern pictures in interior decoration, The Home 1 Oct 1941 x Inside the Postwar Home, Woman 8 May 1944 x Must We Have Bad Furniture? Appeal for a Better Standard, Australia Jul 1946 x Problems of Interior Decoration, Architecture Apr 1950 x If you have a job as well as a home, The Australian Women’s Weekly 29 May 1957
Books by Margaret Lord Date
x Interior Decoration A Guide to Furnishing the Australian Home, 1944 Sydney: Ure Smith Ltd [sold out in four editions and became textbook in technical schools] 41 x A Decorator’s World: living with art and international design, Sydney: 1969 Angus & Robertson [first printing with cover by Alistair Morrison of geometric pattern, second printing in same year with cover of red rose by Angus & Robertson] x Interior Decoration in Practice, Sydney: Angus & Robertson 1971 [updated version of first book with benefit of Lord’s practical experience]
41 Review of Lord’s book by Nora Cooper, ‘Handbook for Amateur Decorators’, Australian Home Beautiful, Feb 1945, p. 18; Cooper acknowledged the book as ‘probably the first that has ever been published on such a scale which sets out to deal with Australian furnishing problems as seen by an Australian and which takes into account Australian conditions of climate, supply of materials and such furnishing tradition as we have accumulated in our short history.’ Also see ‘Lord Knows How’, op. cit., p. 20.
216 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 Margaret Lord, 1940, Sydney Source: The Australian Home Beautiful, Jul 1940
In the war years that followed, ‘writing led to broadcasting’ with Lord first participating in a special series of radio programs on ‘Design in Everyday
Things’.42 Her appearances led to more regular broadcast work for the Australian
Broadcasting Commission (ABC) contributing to a series of programs known as the ‘Women’s Session’. The series spent half an hour every session exploring a wide range of subjects directed to women’s interests.43 The nationwide distribution of the ABC radio programs greatly contributed to Lord’s recognition in Australia (Table 7.2).44
42 Lord, 1969, op. cit, p. 103; Lord cites ‘Art in the Technical Age’ and ‘Choosing Pictures for your Rooms’ as two of the talks, p. 104. 43 ibid., p. 104. 44 Cover page of The ABC Weekly, vol.3, no. 15, 12 Apr 1941, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304 Scrapbooks, 1940-41, 1952.
217 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
While the radio work, as Lord recalled, was interesting, after a year she had almost forgotten that she had ever been an ‘interior decorator!’45 Wartime had curbed much of the work of an interior decorator where commissions were often gained by referral. Such was the case for Lord in an early project for the new wing of the Men’s Union at Sydney University (1940-1941) in which she was asked to produce designs for Ante and Badham Rooms. The referral came at the recommendation of architect William Moore who knew of her overseas work.46
Table 7.2 Radio Broadcasts by Margaret Lord
Selected Broadcasts Date
x Special series, ‘Design of Everyday Things’, Mondays 8:30 pm, 7, 14, 28 Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC):2BL, 2NC, 2CR, 3LO, 3WV, Apr 1941 4QR, 5CL, 7ZR 47
x ‘Art in a Technological Age’, ABC Radio: 2BL-NC, 4QR with Professor 23 of Town and Country Planning, Denis Winston, Faculty of Architecture, Feb 194? Sydney University; architect and town-planner Walter Bunning
x ‘Choosing Pictures for your rooms’ ABC Radio: 2BL-NC, 4QR with 1941 painter Carl Plate and Shore [Sydney Church of England Grammar School] art teacher, John Lipscombe48
x Discussion with Spanish artist and philosopher Salvador de Madariago 1941
x Regular series, ‘Women’s Session’, ABC Radio National and State 1941, 1944- conducting ‘hundreds of broadcasts’ covering subjects of interest to 46 women49
x ‘Woman’s Hour’ for the British Broadcasting Company (BBC)50 1952 Proposed broadcast
45 Lord, 1969, op, cit., p. 104. 46 ibid., p. 110. 47 Scripts and questions for Lord’s three sessions found in Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS, 92/1304-4 Scrapbooks, 1940-41, 1952. 48 Lord, A Decorator’s World, op. cit., p. 104. 49 Referred to in Lord’s type-written document, ‘Discussion Paints’, 27 Jul 1948, front page, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-9/1:5. 50 Letter from Pauline Ferguson, Sec to Editor Miss Quigley 29 Apr 1952, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1242; Labelled ‘9’ indicating information from the script was used in Chapter 9 ‘At Home and Abroad’ (England and America) in her book, A Decorator’s World.
218 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
Upon completion, the results were published in Ure Smith’s Home magazine.51 A description included later in her autobiography, A Decorator’s
World, 1969, had strong similarity to the illustrated interior (Figure 7.2) appearing in her 1944 book, Interior Decoration.
Figure 7.2 Illustration of Interior Space designed by Lord Source: Interior Decoration by Margaret Lord, 1944
51 ‘Men’s Union Extensions On The Way To New Horizons’, Honi Soit, no date, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304 Scrapbooks, 1940-41, 1952; photos of rooms were published in Ure Smith’s publication, Home, 1941; Lord describes the rooms in her 1969 book, A Decorator’s World, p. 110, ‘modern furniture in woods of natural colour and finish, upholstery in a combination of coloured hide and textured weaves, and curtains in hand-printed cottons. Simple, functional furniture was made to order from our designs. The tallow wood floors were largely left uncovered, broken only here and there by natural Indian druggets. The hand-blocked cottons for the curtains were designed and printed by Frances Burke of Melbourne, still well known as a designer-craftsman in this field. This scheme as a whole proved a fairly economical one, selected from what was available at that time. Everything – with the exception of the druggets – was Australian, and the effect was fresh and youthful.’
219 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
In another turn of events, Lord was asked by the YWCA to assist with their planning of a number of evening classes to keep women ‘usefully occupied while their men were in the services’.52 Lord was to devise an initial program of ten lessons to be repeated with different groups; an advanced course would follow when completed. The series became very popular and Lord, refreshed by the enthusiasm of her new students, renewed her quest to raise standards and foster an acceptance of new visual experiences in design.53
The success of the YWCA courses also attracted the attention of Army
Education Services (AES). According to Lord, all the courses then available through AES had been planned for men.54 Lord was invited to prepare a correspondence course in interior decoration that ‘would appeal to women in the services.’55 The course, which Lord later considered her ‘most important wartime job’, was based largely on her experience at the Arnold School and partially on recently delivered lectures for the YWCA. 56 In anticipation of a future text on the subject, Lord negotiated the right to use her material for a book, which eventuated in 1944 with the publication of Interior Decoration, a Guide to Furnishing the
Australian Home (Figure 7.3).
52 Lord, 1969, op. cit., p. 104. 53 ibid., p. 105. 54 Lord’s request to prepare a course for AES coincides with Nora McDougall’s ‘discussion course’ that was also prepared at the request of AES; but no mention is ever made by Lord in her autobiography of McDougall. Their paths would have crossed however as each were asked to speak at the Englishman’s Home Exhibition lecture series. 55 Lord, 1969, op. cit., p. 105.
220 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
Figure 7.3 Lord’s ‘text’, Interior Decoration, cover designed by Alistair Morrison, 1944
During wartime, a soft copy of the ‘text’ was sent by Army Education to each enrolled student.57 Expecting the intention to provide service women with a study program, to Lord’s surprise the majority of the students were men, making a myth of domesticity’s female domain. Lord surmised that under the difficult circumstances of war, the diversion of writing and sketching answers to a set of questions on interior decoration provided optimistic planning for the homes of servicemen and women hoped to have when the war ended.58 Lord’s reaction
56 ibid., p. 107, In this later book, Lord explains that Interior Decoration: A Guide to Furnishing the Australian Home, was reprinted three times, the first two being wartime editions, and later two properly bound editions. 57 ibid. 58 ibid.
221 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 suggests that she had succumbed to the usual expectation of interior decoration as primarily a feminine interest.
From 1944 to 1946, Lord continued to work with the ‘Women’s Session’ on ABC radio, but during this time (September 1945) gained part-time employment working as a colour consultant for the paint manufacturer, Lewis
Berger and Sons Pty Ltd. The position, continuing into the early 1950s, gave her entrance to a wide variety of interior design jobs, also providing opportunities to work with leading architects in Sydney and Melbourne. Through these associations, Lord became involved in numerous private and commercial interior design commissions (Table 7.3). 59
Alongside her interior design commissions, lecturing and teaching remained an interest and concern. The Warrnambool Standard reported in early
June 1948 that Lord’s future appointment as ‘Lecturer in Interior Decoration to the University of Sydney’.60 This had developed at the suggestion of Dr. G. K.
Duncan, Head of the Tutorial Department attached to the University Extension
Board. The appointment ‘in Miss Lord’s opinion…[indicated] people’s growing awareness of the importance of education in home design’.61 Lord hoped that eventually interior decoration as a ‘practical subject’ would become part of the regular art curriculum of secondary schools, stating: “What better expression of artistic talent for most girls and boys could be found than in the creation of
.
59 Minette, ‘Miss Lord’s New Appointment Interior Decorators Must Be Versatile’, Warrnambool Standard, 2 Jun 1948, Margaret Lord Archive MAAS 92/1304-5, 1948. 60ibid., Lord also refers to the appointment in a type-written document dated 27 Jul 1948, ‘Discussion Paints’, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-9/1:5, front page.
222 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
Table 7.3 Interior Design Projects by Margaret Lord
Selected Projects and Scope of Work Date
London x Barbara Hutton’s Regent’s Park house, in minor capacity c. 1930s x Duchess of Windsor’s London home, measurements of bedroom c. 1930s x Luxury hotel assisting designer c. 1930s
Australia x Imperial Airways Building on the Gold Coast; design of furniture, c. 1940 colour schemes and fabric selections x Sydney University Men’s Union, Ante and Badham Rooms; design of c. 1940-41 furniture and furnishings, colour schemes x The Shell Company, Carrington Street; furnish and decoration of staff c. 1940s recreation room x Berger Paints Pty Ltd, Sydney; initially hired to advise company on new Sept 1945- colour range and attract large painting contracts based on her expertise; early 1950s there, pioneered Studio of Paintechnics62; headed the activities of the ‘Colour Centre’, entailed writing painting specifications, inspecting major industrial, commercial and domestic jobs; submitting weekly reports; and answering hundreds of enquiries from NSW and QLD generated from advertising in Women’s Weekly, House & Garden and Film magazines63 x Residence of Vincent Wardell, ‘Boswell’, Charleston, NSW; c. 1946 redecoration of living room and Georgina’s bedroom x New South Wales Club, Sydney; redecoration of conservative men’s 1946-7 club x Telephone & Electrical Industries; plan of painting schemes c. 1946-48 x United Kingdom’s international exhibition stand at Showground, 1947 Sydney, under general direction of John Oldham and Kevin Lynch, Exhibition Officers of Department of Post-war Reconstruction; a very modern project intended to influence public taste to new aesthetic64 x Monowai (1947-8) owned by the Union Steamship Company, with 1947-51 architectural firm Fowell, Mansfield, Jarvis and Maclurcan, followed by Manoora and Kanimbla (1949-51); conversion of wartime ships to cruise liners x Johnston and Johnston factory, Waterloo; plan of painting schemes c. 1948
61 ibid. 62 Lord, ‘Discussion Paints’, op. cit., no pagination. 63 ibid. 64 Hal Missingham, Director, National Art Gallery (now Art Gallery of New South Wales), ‘Art at the show, Designers Praised’ Letter to the Editor, Sydney Morning Herald, newspaper clipping, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-5, 1946; Lord with Australian designers Alistair Morrison, Douglas Annand, Gordon Andrews, Nan Horton, James Cant, Rod Shaw and Dora Cant were acknowledged for their contribution on the design of the various exhibition rooms.
223 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
Table 7.3 Interior Design Projects by Margaret Lord (continued)
Selected Projects and Scope of Work Date
Australia (continued) x Wrigley’s Ltd Building, Rosebery; plan of painting schemes c. 1948 x Four Private Country Homesteads working with architect, Kenneth late 1940s- McConnel; residential planning and design early 1950s x Hartland and Hyde, a firm of engravers and blockmakers; plan of n.d. painting schemes x The Bread Research Institute, North Sydney; plan of painting schemes n.d. x Australian Glass Manufacturers (AGM) powerhouse at Waterloo; plan n.d. of painting schemes x Memorial Hall at Shore (Sydney Church of England Grammar School; late 1940s- plan of painting schemes early 1950s x Train named ‘Overlander” for Commonwealth Railways; plan of late 1940s painting schemes x Flying boats of Captains PG Taylor and Bryan Monkton; plan of 1950 painting schemes x Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital; plan of painting schemes early 1950s x Women’s Hospital, Melbourne; plan of painting schemes early 1950s x Australian Club, Melbourne; redecoration of dining room and reception early 1950s rooms x Lady Mayoress’ room and reception rooms at Sydney Town Hall; early 1950s redecoration x First exhibition of rooms of the professional Society of Interior 1953 Designers of Australia (SIDA); Sat on the exhibition design committee x Kirribilli House, the government’s V.I.P. residence; consulting on 1956 furnishings and decoration as assistant to Mansfield in restoration65 x Grazing property of David Pye, ‘New Merrigal’, Warren NSW; mid-late residential planning 1950s
Note: Listing compiled from newspaper clippings, magazine articles and archival notes that report Lord’s activities as an interior decorator and includes some work during her employment with Reens-Arta in London. harmonious homes?”66 Despite the intention, there is no evidence that Lord’s proposed classes at the University ever proceeded
With post-war interest in the subject rising, Lord was invited to give lectures on interior decoration to architectural and engineering groups including
(a) the New South Wales Chapter (NSW) of the Royal Institute of Architects
65 Lord, 1969, op. cit., p. 122. 66 ibid.
224 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
(RIA), Sydney;67 (b) the Architecture School, Melbourne University; and (c) the
Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) held at Melbourne University.68 The lectures gave specifics on problems in interior decoration couched with Lord’s intention to squash rising professional rivalries and address the scepticism many architects held for interior decorators. At this time, Lord with several other interior designers had plans underway to found Sydney’s first professional organisation, the Society of Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA, est. 1951).
In September 1951, Margaret Lord departed Sydney on a nine-month get- away trip, wanting for a while ‘to put furniture and decoration out of her mind’.69
Despite the intention, the holiday became an intense self-study tour of
‘furnishings, interiors and accessories in places as far apart as San Francisco,
Stockholm and Milan’.70 Interested in the new directions in international design,
Lord found herself ‘nose glued to the windows of modern furniture stores’.71 She wandered through furnishing departments and chose places to lunch or dine based on décor more than for the food they served. In spite of herself, she reflected that she had allowed her ‘profession to influence…[her] big adventure’.72
From London, Lord visited North Africa, Italy, and the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Before returning to Sydney, she also
67 The address was published. Margaret Lord, ‘Problems of Interior Decoration’ Architecture, Apr 1950, pp. 56-8, 65. 68 ‘Interior Decorating a Fascinating Study’, no source possibly a Warrnambool paper, Margaret Lord Archive MAAS 92/1304-5 undated. 69 Typewritten document titled ‘Woman’s Hour’ by Lord of a proposed broadcast on the BBC’s “Woman’s Hour”, regarding her observations on interior design during her world tour. A letter dated 29 Apr 1952 from Pauline Ferguson, secretary to the Editor of the British Broadcasting Corporation accompanies the returned script. The letter states that Miss Quigley would get in touch with Miss Lord regarding an interview, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 91/1242. 70 ‘Home Design Seen Widening in Scope, Australian Decorator Here Says Décor is Developing International Spirit’, The New York Times, Tues, 10 Jun 1952. 71 ‘Woman’s Hour’, 1952, op. cit. 72 ibid.
225 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 visited New York and San Francisco ‘looking for new ideas.’73 In New York,
Lord sought out interior design professionals from the American Institute of
Decorators (AID est. 1931) and met with well-known journalist Betty Pepis to whom she gave an interview, the result reported in The New York Times,
‘Australian Decorator Here Says Décor Is Developing International Spirit’.74
Returning to Sydney in June 1952 with ‘renewed energy and insight’, Lord explained the purpose and findings of her trip to the home press, making known that world-wide interest in ‘contemporary design’ was making it international:
‘There are no longer marked differences between the designs of various countries…good basic design all over the world stresses simple lines with an eye to suitability for the particular needs of each place and climate.’75 While modern design trends were hardly a revelation, the ideas were now making inroads into
Australian thinking.
While in Europe, Lord accepted a new commission for the Victorian government to be carried out on her return. Lord provided expertise in specifying colour, lighting and materials for thirteen prefabricated buildings being constructed in Melbourne for hospital use. A year later, its success, alongside other commissions, gained Lord a reputation as ‘one of Australia’s top interior
73 ‘Decorator says Pacific Our Mode’, Melbourne Sun News Pictorial, 1 Jul 1952, newspaper clipping taped on sheet with others dated June-July 1952 referring to Miss Lord’s trip abroad. Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-4/1:2; Lord most likely acquired the AID 1938-1940 conference Proceedings during this trip abroad, the conference was the organisation’s first to discuss education for a professional interior designer. The documents remained in Lord’s possession until her death and are now in Margaret Lord Archive MAAS, Sydney. 74 ‘Home Design Seen Widening in Scope, Australian Decorator Here Says Décor Is Developing International Spirit’, The New York Times, Tuesday, 10 Jun 1952. Betty Pepis authors in 1957 Betty Pepis’ Guide to Interior Decoration, NY: Reinhold Publishing Corporation. 75 ‘International Design for Modern Homes’, newspaper clipping taped on sheet with others (presumed Jun 1952), Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-4/1:2.
226 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 decorators’ and ‘authorities on modern domestic interior decoration’ as acknowledged in People magazine (April 1953).76 Recognised for her pioneering activities of the 1940s, especially for her use of colour in industry, the popular magazine gave a comprehensive overview of Lord’s earlier background in
London, and subsequent work in Australia.77
In her private life and after twenty years as a professional interior decorator, Lord, in her late forties, married businessman Vincent Wardell (early
November 1955) at Paddington Town Hall. According to Wardell’s daughter
Georgina, then twenty-one, the couple had first met when she was twelve following her parents’ divorce.78 The well-known decorator and colour expert had been asked by Wardell to his home, ‘Boswell’, in the outer Newcastle suburb of
Charlestown, NSW, to decorate Georgina’s bedroom and the living room (Figure
7.4).79 After the couple’s marriage, Lord continued to work professionally and wrote of her experience as a working wife for The Australian Woman’s Weekly
(1957).80 Scheduled to give a paper at the Fifth Australian Architectural
Convention (1956) held in Adelaide in a separate session (Symposium IV: Design for Everyday Things), she ‘withdrew at the eleventh hour’.81 Lord recalls in her
76 ‘Lord Knows How’, op. cit., p. 19. 77 ibid., p. 21. 78 An early acquaintance Honey Talty, 27 Mar 2001, adds that Margaret and Vincent might have met at a lawyer’s office, although no date for the meeting was known. 79 Georgina Hart, 26 Mar 2001; according to Georgina she was asked by her father, ‘What colour do you want your bedroom?’ The living room at ‘Boswell’ where Georgina and husband Dick Hart now reside (62 Tirriki St, Charlestown, NSW) remains much the same as Lord designed it at that time, a photo of the room appears on the front and back cover of her book, Interior Decoration in Practice, 1971, reprint 1973, Sydney: Angus & Robertson. 80 Margaret Lord, ‘If you have a job as well as a home’, The Australian Women’s Weekly, 29 May 1957, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-5. 81 Michael Bogel Design in Australia 1880-1970, 1998, p. 132; conference dates were 28 May-1 Jun 1956, Marion Hall Best substituted and gave an illustrated lecture on her firm’s interior design work.
227 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 book, A Decorator’s World, that she was sorry not to be able to accept the invitation but had planned to go abroad before the date of the convention. Lord may have been reacting against a remembered incident at the 1950 RAIA talk when she was made to feel an ‘outsider’ by one architect who had set out to
‘belittle’ her and her profession.82
Figure 7.4 Living Room at ‘Boswell’ (table designed by Lord) Source: Interior Decoration with cover photo of former home of Vincent and Margaret (Lord) Wardell
82 Lord, 1969, p. 184.
228 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
In the 1960s, Margaret Lord retired from practice with the couple’s permanent move to ’Boswell’; however, she continued to fulfil her role as professional advocate for interior design. In June 1963, she led a panel of five interior designers in an important discussion on ‘Interior Design in Australia
Today’ held for the Art Gallery Society of New South Wales (AGNSW)83 and assisted with the incorporation of SIDA in 1964. After a gap in writing, she also released two new books, A Decorator’s World: living with art and international design (1969) and Interior Decoration in Practice (1971), summarising her lifetime experiences in design (Figure 7.5). The former, an autobiography, was described by architect friend Roy Grounds as ‘one decorator’s entrancing story…of a life of travel and work with continuous discovery…a text book for students of interior decoration as well as a valid history of people and events over the past thirty years.’84 The latter was largely a revision of her 1944 book benefiting from further experience and study.
In 1974, Lord suffered a mild stroke and, two years later, died on 9
September, ‘the same day as Chairman Mao’ as step-daughter Georgina Hart recalls, leaving behind a long, diversely-constructed and successful career in interior design.85 Lord, importantly, backed by her overseas and local training and experience, left a legacy of modern design contributing significantly to the professional development of interior design in Sydney.
83 Untitled newspaper clipping, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-5, 1963; held 5 June. 84 Lord, 1969, op. cit., p. viii. 85 Georgina Hart, 26 Mar 2001.
229 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
Figure 7.5 Three books written by Lord from 1944-1971 pictured with photos of Lord and Wardell on table in living room at ‘Boswell’; Upper left book on the Bauhaus annotated by Lord Source: Photo taken by researcher
Activities and Participation in Interior Design
Within the first four years of Lord’s return to Australia, she had (a) written numerous articles on interior decoration for The Australian Home Beautiful, (b) given instruction at the YWCA, (c) prepared correspondence courses for AES, (d) written her first book, (e) conducted hundreds of radio broadcasts for ABC national and state programming, and (f) had begun consulting in private practice.86 As a result of these activities, Lord had cultivated a clientele receptive to the benefits of modern design. After the war, she continued to lecture and write, promoting better standards of design and raising the professional profile of
86 ‘Margaret Lord’s Book on Home Decorating’, op. cit.
230 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 interior design. Post-war conditions expanded her professional work, consulting on numerous residential and commercial commissions. An example of one of her modern interiors is pictured in before and after shots of the renovation of the cruise-liner Monowai in the late 1940s (Figure 7.6).
Figure 7.6 Before and After Photos of Renovation of Cruise Liner Monowai, Interior Decoration by Lord Source: Architecture, 1950
231 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
Lord’s active participation and substantial contribution to interior design is evidenced through an impressive listing of writings, broadcasts, lectures and projects (Table 7.1, Table 7.2, Table 7.3). Using her course material from the
Arnold School and overseas experience, Lord began by writing articles on a range of topics concerning interior decoration. Contributing regularly over a two-year period as indicated in Table 6.1, she emphasised the importance of planning and being modern.
Lighting, a relatively new subject, gained special treatment extending to six issues. Conscious of wartime restraints, yet critical of Australia’s slavish following of traditionalism and use of pseudo renditions of Period pieces, Lord advocated modernism, offering examples of 1930-40s French designers like
Andre Arbus, Jacques Adnet, Jean Royere, Suzanne Guiguichon and others.87 In this way, the cultural influences of the Old World could be preserved. At the same time, Lord wanted Australia to develop its own modern design using its own resources, meaning artists, designers and materials.
Lord approached design decisions with intelligence, care and individuality.
While believing modern planning necessary, she questioned extreme rationalism and cold scientific approaches to designing spaces if the results were inhuman and inflexible. In reviewing experimental kitchens designed by ‘a panel of six eminent architects’, Lord questioned if they (supposedly male architects) were ‘really competent to deal with this (feminine) domestic problem?’.88 Arguing for
87 Margaret Lord, ‘Architecture and Decoration in Wartime’, Australian Home Beautiful, Jul 1940, p. 10-11 and ‘What is Wrong with Modern Design?’, Australian Home Beautiful, Aug 1940, pp. 12-13. 88 Margaret Lord, ‘Have We Gone Crazy in Kitchencraft?’ Australian Home Beautiful, Nov 1040, p. 12.
232 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
‘progress of the right kind and, dead against feminine slavery of any kind’, she advocated retaining charm and character of past cottage-style kitchens while accepting the advantages of modern science which had produced labour-saving devices.89 Lord demonstrated her biases and understanding of how to achieve modern design merging notions of good taste with imagination, ingenuity and forethought in planning.
The Australian Home Beautiful appealed to a broad audience, and while not as aesthetically élite as Ure Smith’s Home of earlier times, it attempted to cover in-depth the subjects of Australia’s architectural history, as well as new developments in interiors such as lighting.90 The magazine also reviewed Lord’s first book, Interior Decoration A Guide to Furnishing the Australian Home, crediting it as a serious book and the first text on the subject in Australia.
Lord’s broadcasting activities further promoted modern design but also established interior design’s link with the design community, solidifying her reputation as a professional interior decorator and bringing to the forefront the practice as a professional activity.
Lord’s lectures (Table 7.4) further indicate her extensive knowledge of interiors from historical and modern perspectives. She was not only knowledgeable of her subject but comfortable in the public eye, seeking out opportunities to support her profession while explaining fully topics of interior decoration and design.
89 ibid. 90 Nora Cooper provided a series of in-depth articles on Australia’s architectural history at this same time for The Australian Home Beautiful.
233 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
Table 7.4 Lectures by Margaret Lord
Selected events Date
x Series of lectures for ‘Englishmen’s Home Exhibition’;91 Lord’s lectures: May 1941 ‘Queen Anne and Early Georgian Furniture’ (7 May), ‘The Latter Half of the 18th Century’ (14 May), ‘19th Century Furniture and Decoration’ (21 May), ‘Contemporary Furniture’
x Lecture to Royal Institute of Architects, NSW Chapter Apr 1950 ‘Problems of Interior Decoration’
x Participation in free series of lunch-time lectures on interior design, Oct-Nov ‘Beauty in the Home’ arranged by Lord and newly formed Society of 1951 Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA) for Arts Council of Australia (NSW Division); Lord’s topic: (4 Nov) ‘Using Colour and Light’
x Two lectures on lighting and colour in interior decoration at Melbourne Jul 1953 University, one to the Architecture School and the other to the Illuminating Engineers Society92
x ‘Interior Design in Australia Today’, Art Gallery Society of New South 5 June 1963 Wales (AGNSW); Lord gives background to interior design in Australia and introduces SIDA members: Marion Hall Best, Mary White, Edmund Dykes, and Leslie Walford, who speak on various topics of interior design
Lord also displayed her broad knowledge of interior design through teaching. Covering traditional topics including historical and stylistic precedents of architecture, furniture and furnishings; furniture selection and arrangement, materials, finishes and functions; design fundamentals and colour theory; drawing and drafting; the architectural background and its elements, and window, wall and floor coverings, Lord was concerned with beauty, use and efficiency which
91 The Englishmen’s Home Exhibition was held in Sydney from May-Jun 1941. It was an exhibition of a series of furnished rooms which showed the various phases of development from the Stuarts to present day (1941). See also Nora Cooper, ‘The Progress of Modernism’, The Australian Home Beautiful, Jun 1941, pp. 12-14. In article, Cooper critiques the period style rooms and in same edition Lord gives further outline and critique of rooms with many photos, Margaret Lord, ‘An Englishmen’s Home, Exhibiting the Succession of Furniture Periods’, The Australian Home Beautiful, Jun 1941, pp. 7-11. 92 ‘Interior Decorating a Fascinating Study’, op. cit.
234 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 extended to the health and well-being of her clientele.93 She especially found lighting, its technical function and relationship to colour and human psychology of importance in commercial and domestic spaces, applying good standards especially to the special conditions of factories, hospitals and children’s rooms.94
Subjects of professional practice were incorporated at the Arnold School but waned as her student shifted to the consumer in Australia. Lord’s broad understanding of the practice translated to her professional projects which were diverse as indicated in Table 7.4. These ranged from high-end residential interiors to sparse productions under war-time conditions, airport lounges and refits of ships to offices, factories, hospitals and elegant clubs. Central to her work was planning and specifying colour schemes, furnishings, finishes and lighting providing furniture layouts and detail drawings for custom furniture items.
Lord’s Cultivated Public Image in Australia
Important to the establishment of Lord’s reputation as an authority on interior decoration and design in Sydney was her cultivated public image in the Australian press. Three distinct depictions of Lord made possible her intentions to raise standards for better design and promote interior decoration (design) as a professional activity. Beginning with her return in 1940, Lord was depicted as a modern, independent, career-oriented woman, professional interior decorator and glamorous and fashionable socialite. The depictions, while not mutually exclusive,
93 Lord, in her book Interior Decoration in Practice, Sydney: Angus and Robertson Publishers, 1973 discussed successful planning of interior decoration in the home based on her precepts of use, aesthetic beauty and interest. 94 For example, in Lord’s book, A Decorator’s World, she tells how colour could be used psychologically to help workers feeler cooler or warmer in factory spaces, or as a safety factor when used to distinguish moving parts in machinery, or to aid efficiency in factories and workshops when pipelines were colour-coded differently, p. 115.
235 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 were tied to particular social, political and economic initiatives of the time addressing (a) war-time efforts that actively engaged women into the work force or alternately occupied their interests diverting attention away from war-time stresses, (b) through promotional activities in recognition of interior decoration and modern design, and (c) post-war reconstruction efforts with the resumption of consumer activity and redirection of women back to their so-called traditional domestic roles. While Lord took seriously her career and profession, and was very comfortable with her glamorous and fashionable imaging, she never fit or fulfilled the domestic idea of homemaker.
Initially restricted by conditions of war and without clientele or husband for financial support, a public persona was built around Lord’s exclusive Mayfair background, broadened international experience and ‘Vivienne Leigh’ good looks.95 Lord’s imminent homecoming in July 1940 was forecast from London: the ‘Victorian girl would return…a trained and competent decorator’ (Figure
7.7).96
A day later, the Sydney Morning Herald Women’s Supplement linked this background by featuring the former director of studies as modern, independent and career-oriented working behind her desk (Figure 7.8).97 By April 1941,
Lord’s engaging smile was used to announce her upcoming broadcasts on the cover of The ABC Weekly (Figure 7.9), a national publication of their radio
‘Programmes’.98
95 ‘Lord Knows How’, op. cit., p. 20. 96 Gilruth, op. cit.; Lord was actually in her early thirties at the time, and hardly a ‘girl’. 97 ‘The Craze For Steel Furniture Has Gone’, op. cit. 98 Cover of ‘Programmes of the Australian Broadcasting Commission’, The ABC Weekly, vol. 3, no. 15, 12 Apr 1941.
236 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
Figure 7.7 Lord on return from London, July 1940 Source: Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS, Sydney
Figure 7.8 Lord Pictured as Working ‘Girl’, SMH, July 1940
237 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
Figure 7.9 Lord Pictured on Cover of ABC Weekly, April 1941
Lord’s ‘first of its kind’ text, Interior Decoration, a guide to Furnishing the Australian Home, 1944, also attracted much publicity.99 Released by Ure
Smith’s prestigious art publishing house, the book’s focus on domestic interiors directed the study to the large body of women who were ‘beginning to take more interest’ in the subject of home furnishing.100 The book looked forward when after the war women could put their new ideas into practice. Besides being a ‘valuable
99 Cooper, ‘Handbook for Amateur Decorators’, op. cit., p. 18 100 ibid.
238 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 guide’ for the novice, its content provided teachers with ‘a useful framework from which to build a set of lessons.’101 The ‘pioneer book’ was applauded for its ease of reading, explanation of technical terms, superb colour illustrations, diagrams, logical arrangement and successive steps.102
Reviewer Nora Cooper, an architectural journalist, added her authoritative stamp confirming the author’s status as ‘a professional decorator’ who had analysed the ‘characteristics and defects of a room’s architectural character, its aspect and personality’ which were understood as the foundation of the decorator’s design.103 While Cooper confirmed Lord’s study as theoretical and quasi-academic, she also cast the ‘really instructive and practical guide’ as a
‘Handbook for Amateur Decorators’. In doing so, Cooper diminished (it is tempting to say knowingly) interior decoration’s professional status.104
In the ethos of post-war reconstruction efforts, Lord’s public appeal attracted attention to the modern international movement’s campaign for better design standards in Australia. Photographed in her tastefully-decorated and moderately modern Potts Point home/studio, she posed standing casually reading a book donned in striped shirt, capri-length pants and laced up ballerina-type slippers (Figure 7.10). Less casual and in contradiction to the breezy image were her forthright comments on the lack of public taste, ‘Who or what can we blame for the shoddy array of furniture that is once more making an appearance in so
101 Bruce B. Morris, ‘The Art of Home Making, Valuable Guide Book by Warrnambool Writer’, newspaper clipping no date, no pagination, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-5, 1944. 102 ibid. 103 Cooper, 1945, op. cit., p. 18. 104 ibid.
239 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 many city stores—lack of public taste, the indifference and ignorance of manufacturers, shortage of sound materials?’105
Figure 7.10 Lord Pictured in Her Potts Point Flat, July 1946 Source: Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS, Sydney
Lord was aware that publicity was intertwined with advocacy gaining recognition as a ‘professional Interior Decorator’ with her participation in the forward-thinking ‘Art in a Technological Age’ series in which she appeared alongside Professor Winston, Faculty of Architecture at the University of Sydney, and leading Sydney architect and town-planner Walter Bunning. Noted for their
‘wide overseas experience’ and representing Sydney’s modern design community,
105 Margaret Lord, ‘Must We Have Bad Furniture? Appeal for a Better Standard’, Australia, Jul 1946, p. 49.
240 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 the dashing trio discussed the effects of modern technology, mass production and mass communication on artistic standards and achievements in architecture and interior decoration (Figure 7.11).106
Figure 7.11 Lord Pictured with Denis Winston and Walter Bunning Source: Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS, Sydney
While overseas from 1951-52, Lord also sought publicity by preparing a talk for the BBC in London and, in New York, meeting with well-known
106 Newspaper clipping, ‘Monday Night Discussion …’, no page, no pagination, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-5, 1953; announces broadcast scheduled for Monday, 23 Feb 1963 at 8:40 p.m. from 2BL-NC and 4QR.
241 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 journalist Betty Pepis discussing local progress being made on the design front with interview gaining mention in The New York Times:
A movement…is afoot to create a more positively professional standing for the designer in all Australian industry by setting up a professional organization to protect the designer’s rights. Needless to say, Miss Lord is at the hub of this movement. 107
Following her return in 1952, Lord again gained considerable attention in the press at this time as a social butterfly and fashionable decorator attending numerous art and design events. Her professional, artistic and social circle were intertwined with friends including Sydney and Melbourne artists, designers and architects of the 1940s-1950s modernist scene: the Fred Rombergs and Roy
Grounds, William Dobell, Francis Lymburner, George Molnar; and the Merioola group.108 Lord was well-known and admired as an ‘elegant and decorative guest’ at cocktail parties, dinners and theatre first nights where she was usually ‘the centre of a small group of admiring men.’109 Her fashionable attire often took centre stage as reported bitingly in a Sun account of a Macquarie Gallery opening:
‘Margaret Lord dashed around in a French wool ottoman suit and wide elliptical hat, asking so many questions about absent friends, she hardly had time to see the paintings.’110
107 Betty Pepis, ‘Home Design Seen Widening in Scope, Australian Decorator Here Says Décor Is Developing International Spirit’, The New York Times, Tuesday, 10 Jun 1952. 108 Honey Talty, 27 Mar 2001; Talty remembers ‘Vincent particularly didn’t like Francis Lymburner for some reason but he was a great friend of Margaret’. It may have been because Lymburner was ‘gay’. The artist George Molnar was also a great friend of Margaret’s. An inscription ‘To Peg, with Love’ 13 Jul 1952 from Molnar appears in her copy of a book illustrated by Molnar, Oh, for a French Wife, Sydney: The Shepards, 1952, a cooking book by Ted Moloney and Deke Coleman. 109 ‘Lord Knows How’, op. cit., p. 21. 110 Newspaper clipping with ‘Sun’ handwritten and an illegible date taped on sheet with other clippings dated Jun-Jul 1952 referring to Miss Lord’s trip abroad, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-4/1:2.
242 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
From personal accounts, Lord’s private persona differed little from the public image.111 Margaret was independent, ‘very career-oriented; it was all about her career and profession. She was a great women’s liberator of her time…very proud that she went off to London by herself before the war’.112 Noted for her
‘strong business sense’113 and dedication, she is credited as ‘the most wonderful designer’,114 ‘everything she does, she does well’.115 Lord has also been described as completely feminine, charming and determined to have her own way: she could
‘bat her eyes when it suited her’.116 She was ‘popular’ and liked being at the centre of things. Very social and glamorous, she didn’t like cleaning or cooking.117 With her retirement in the 1960s and move to the Newcastle area, her old acquaintance Honey Talty says, ‘she felt slightly removed from what she had been in her early life’. 118
Values, Beliefs and Philosophy of Design
Lord was attracted to interior decoration in the mid 1930s, believing it to be an artistic and glamorous pursuit. She felt privileged working in London within a professional environment where she was exposed to a well-off clientele that maintained all the airs of exclusivity and tradition. This culture prevailed at the
111 On 27 Mar 2001 Georgina Hart hosted this writer at her home ‘Boswell’ (former home of Vincent Wardell and Margaret Lord Wardell) in the Hunter Valley inviting guests who knew Margaret Lord at various times over the years. In attendance was Rae Richards, a Newcastle artist and member of Low-Show artists of Newcastle and Honey Talty, who was an ABC radio presenter in Perth in the 1940s and met Margaret through the program. Together Georgina, Rae and Talty provided much information regarding Margaret Lord’s persona. 112 Georgina Hart, 26 Mar 2001. 113 ‘Lord Knows How’, op. cit., p. 21. 114 Georgina Hart, 26 Mar 2001. 115 ‘Lord Knows How’, op cit., p. 21. 116 Georgina Hart, 27 Mar 2001. 117 Georgina Hart, 26 Mar 2001. 118 ‘Lord Knows How’, op. cit., p. 21.
243 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
Arnold School for Interior Decoration where prominent ‘society women’ were among its students. Many students entering the school, as Lord describes, were
‘bent on a career’, but in the end, adopting ‘the vastly more important vocation of matrimony’.119 Lord held for herself the career ambitions of a modern woman, but was resigned to others’ traditional aspirations, satisfied that at least after attending the school they would be able ‘to plan the decoration of their own homes with intelligence and…good taste’.120
In London, Lord also discovered that wealth and inherited title alone did not ensure good taste.121 This was acquired and developed through theoretical and practical studies, and importantly, through ‘observation, sensitivity and experience.’122 This made accessible interior decoration to anyone who wished to pursue its study. Through her London training, self-study and international travel,
Lord was continually exposed to a wide variety of design influences. This contributed to her belief that one never stopped learning. For Lord, becoming an interior decorator was not only consciously gained through formal study but
‘unconsciously developed every day’.123 In addition, learning was not limited to a single formal setting but was ‘all around’ in the art shops and antique showrooms, in museums, city streets and in the pages of fashionable design magazines.124
Lord referred to herself professionally as an ‘interior decorator’, holding onto the traditional term which she held in high esteem, conceding at the same
119 See ‘The Craze For Steel Furniture Has Gone’, op. cit., and ‘The Signpost – Australian Decorator Comes Home Again From London’, The Australian Home Beautiful, 1 Jul 1940, p. 5. 120 ‘The Signpost –‘, ibid. 121 Lord, 1969, op. cit., p. 44. 122 ibid., p. 47. 123 ibid., p. 87. 124 Lord, 1969, op. cit., p. 87.
244 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 time it was not always ‘an accurate description’ of the work.125 Her indifference to a name change—to interior design—in the early 1950s in Australia was conscious and consistent with her understanding of real distinctions and overlaps in the knowledge, skills and practices of artists, designers, decorators and architects.
Lord was aware that most modern decorators chose to be called ‘interior designers’, but believed ‘designer’ could ‘include everybody from the designer of a bridge to a tea-pot!’126 Recognising interior decoration as a specialised field entailing ‘artistic self-expression’, she also believed it was a separate career from architecture.127 Yet, she made no hierarchical distinctions, only that the two areas were different and could never be divorced because the latter provided ‘the background character and style in detail and ornament, scale and dimension’, confining and restricting everything in the room’s design.128 Lord also distinguished fine art and interior decoration by their intention. Unlike the
‘perfectly balanced composition and interesting picture’ of an artist’s painting, aesthetics alone in interior decoration may have to be sacrificed for the sake of practical use. In her opinion, the decorator was not either an artist of superficial decoration that merely sat ‘on the surface’, rather the decorator’s role required awareness of ‘structure and purpose’.129 Lord was neither concerned as others
125 ibid., pp. 9-10. 126 ibid. 127 ibid., p. 97. 128 ibid., p. 20. 129 ibid.
245 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 were that interior decoration could be confused with the work of a master painter explaining, ‘Both are traditional terms that have old associations.’130
Lord’s positive associations with the old term during this modernising period began with her entrance to the field in London where she ‘grew up with the expression’131 revering ‘the great names’132 of the luxury class designers like
Dominique, Arbus, Royere, Adnet, and Leleu who were also known by the French term ensemblier.133 Their work, although not of the extreme modernism of the
German school, was marked by ‘simplicity of line plus intelligent use of
[ornamental] detail’.134 Lord held satisfying memories of her first employment at the prestigious ‘decorating firm’, where she had first acquired her white holland draughtsman’s smock alongside others in the ‘design studio’. 135
Lord also explained the elevated status of design within the decorating firm:
Being designers, we felt superior to the rest of the employees, the office staff, the well-dressed showroom people, and even, at times, to the consultants who dealt directly with the clients for whom our designs were made. After all, they simply brought their ideas back to us. We had to make them work, and sometimes [we] could suggest improvements to the original concept.136
As a junior designer, Lord’s jobs were far from her original glamorous notion but entailed practical and often tedious work, such as detailing the insides of
130 ibid., pp. 9-10; here Lord alludes to arguments on the naming of the first professional association for interior designers in Sydney (SIDA, established 1951). 131 ibid. 132 ibid., p. 156. 133 ibid., p. 39; Lord defines the term ensembliers telling how it first came into use in 1910 to describe the architects who were also decorators and the decorators who design as well. 134 Margaret Lord, ‘Architecture and Decoration in Wartime’, The Australian Home Beautiful, 1 Jul 1940, p. 10. 135 Lord, 1969, op, cit., p. 11. 136 ibid.
246 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 wardrobes, arranging in perfect scale ‘the spaces for all the clothing and accessories that a rich client might ever want’.137
Lord defined interior decoration as ‘the art of designing rooms which: a) comfort the body; b) please the eye; c) interest the mind.’138 As a practice and profession, interior decoration offered a practical means for artistic expression and never-ending subject of curiosity and intellectual discovery.
Lord’s experience of design in her formative years in London’s Mayfair district and prior to the outbreak of war was significantly different following her return to Australia under pressure of stringent war-time conditions and then reconstruction. This dramatic shift in conditions and circumstances fostered in
Lord a humanistic idea that interior decoration was ultimately about people, their personalities, needs, habits, pleasures, and dreams more than about things. Lord consequently believed that design mattered only insofar as it ‘affected the daily lives of people…their happiness and well-being’.139 Within this framework, Lord promoted a set of standards underpinned by modernist ideas of design.
In her art theory discourse, Lord drew from her educational background and experiences as an art student and design apprentice, augmented by constant self-study that was wide-ranging and international in scope. From this, Lord reconstructed a set of ideas on modern design for Australia which she integrated in teachings and applied in practice to interior design. These features and qualities evaluated as follows were believed by Lord found in good (modern) design.
137 ibid., p. 17. 138 Lord, 1973, op. cit., p. 1. 139 Lord, 1969, op. cit., p. 187.
247 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
Importantly, Lord believed art underpinned design and that it was essential that the artist be allowed to control design.140 Uncontrolled design was ‘thrust on the market’ because factories were producing inexpensive furniture at a great rate:
Lord argued that good design was more likely to result from the demands of a public with an appreciation of art.141 Thus, collaboration between creator, producer and end-user was required, but first public taste must be educated. As a result, Lord was also shifting some of the responsibility of setting standards for good design from designer to public.
Planning was essential and required forethought, whether it was for the selection of a colour scheme, lighting plan, furniture purchase or in renovation.
Under war-time conditions, Lord followed and taught one basic rule to begin the design process: ‘start with what you have and build from there’.142 From a wider perspective, her text on interior decoration compiled first for AES presented an overarching plan that directed the future of returning soldiers and their families on
‘how to beautify Australian homes’ and ‘make them comfortable’.143
As a modernist, Lord relentlessly pushed for good design based on simple principles she believed were finally being realised in the minds of the new post- war consumer. Characteristic of these aesthetic ideas were good proportion, simplicity of line and form as proposed by the modern movement and manifest in an international style. At the same time, as Lord had discovered, the international style was not singular and that good design could be achieved without the appearance of standardisation.
140 Lord, ‘Architecture and Decoration in Wartime’, op. cit., p. 11. 141 ibid. 142 Lord, 1969, op. cit., p.111.
248 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
Lord’s rejection of standardisation was backed by her belief in freedom of choice which was tied to individualism and by extension the need to express one’s personality through one’s own home. Lord’s approach followed: ‘there are not set rules for interior decoration’; women must use their own ideas, originality and variety to create solutions that were distinctive and individual. 144 She rejected houses that were ‘conscientiously and correctly decorated…[saying] they are cold and unsatisfactory…I think it is better to have one or two vulgarities–if people really like them’.145 Part of this evolved from her ‘great respect for the personal tastes of her clients’; therefore, she did not believe the decorator’s taste should dominate, but should successfully meld to fit client, project character and purpose.146 Lord used smaller possessions, ornaments, picture and lamps for individuality, also colour especially to ‘create moods and illusions of size and shape’. 147
Lord linked functionalism with the advantages of machine production and to the creative design process in that a design project should be approached with great thought and understanding of the problems involved. Lord was aware of functionalism as an ideal of Gropius and Le Corbusier and their principles of form and function that promoted the idea of designing to ‘perfectly’ suit the purpose, material and construction method for the design intended. Following this principle, Lord believed, furniture of good design would be made available to ordinary people. Lord balanced function with aesthetics, believing decisions
143 Morris, op. cit. no pagination. 144 ‘Decorator Urges Women to Use Their Own Ideas’, no date, no pagination, newspaper clipping, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-5, 1951. 145 ‘Lord Knows How’, 1953, op. cit., p. 21. 146 ibid.
249 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 should be made based on whatever ‘best suits the individual needs of the occupant and the design of the room as a whole’.148 This coalesced in her idea that
‘Modern’ furnishings suited practical and functional needs, while ‘Period’ pieces added interest to spaces.
Lord related harmony not only to visual arrangement and unity in appearance but to psychological needs, especially following the debilitating effects of World War II. She explained:
…The need for a harmonious home background is very strongly felt by thousands of Australian men and women whose lives have been interrupted and disorganised and who have had to face every sort of discomfort during six years of war. They deserve something better than what is being offered them.149
Wartime shortages had ensured, according to Lord, that people could never be pretentious. This was interpreted through integrity of material and honesty of purpose which translated as truth in use of material and construction based on one’s socio-economic position. Modernist campaigns for better standards were intended to shift outdated consumer attitudes, as well as influence retailers and manufacturers in their offerings towards the new values and living habits of the time.150 After the war, Lord found that as a result of ‘thousands’ of young
Australian men and women having studied interior decoration by correspondence or by attending evening lectures, they knew something of good design and had begun to ask why they couldn’t have furniture similar to modern designs found in publications from overseas. 151 The dilemma was producing furniture that would be affordable and ‘becoming’ to the living habits and outlook of the new
147 ‘Decorator Urges Women To Use Their Own Ideas’, op. cit. 148 Lord, 1969, op, cit., p. 68. 149 Lord, ‘Must We Have Bad Furniture?’, 1946, op. cit., pp. 51-3. 150 ibid., p. 49.
250 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 consumer.152 Lord set out the requirements from which an Australian style of good design could emerge:
Geography and climate come into this. Our furniture must perfectly suit the needs of people in Australia now, not those of people in England a hundred years ago. It must be comfortable and convenient in every way, space-saving since living space is restricted, labour-saving because most Australians do their own housework. 153
Lord promoted colour not only for its cost and aesthetic benefits, but its scientific answer in the reduction of fatigue, ability to boost efficiency, lower the accident rate in factories and offices and hasten convalescence in hospitals. Lord also believed lighting would be of ‘even greater concern to an interior designer than to an architect’, studying and subsequently promoting the subject for its aesthetic value, suitability, effectiveness, efficiency and performance.154
In Lord’s first of a series of articles in The Australian Home Beautiful (1
July 1940), she revealed her intellectual approach to the subject of design: ‘…so much has been written and talked about art today that our attitude to the subject is a self-conscious one, and it is this self-consciousness which makes all we do an intellectual problem’.155
Understanding that the modern style had settled down from its strict ideas of straight lines and geometric forms, she analysed this reaction against the florid exuberance and incongruity of the Victorian and Edwardian periods and, then in turn, considered its further reaction against ‘the rigid line, sharp edges, blank masses and utter absence of ornament or decoration’ of the purist movement of
151 ibid., p. 52. 152 ibid., p. 53. 153 ibid. 154 Lord, 1969, op. cit., pp. 72-73; this awareness prompted Lord to attend the international lighting convention in Holland (1939). 155 Lord, ‘Architecture and Decoration in Wartime’, op. cit., p. 10.
251 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 modernism. Simply, Lord said, ‘there is a very deep human need for detail’.156
Hinting at the psychological transformations that had taken place in the nation’s consciousness, Lord stated it was important that war not be allowed to interfere with cultural life and achievements of recent years.157
Linked with ideas of individuality and a spirit of the times beauty, Lord promoted the creation of design with a ‘definite Australian character’, urging locals ‘to break free from the inhibitions of overseas conventions’ without departing from universal principles.158 The new post-war requirements meant tailoring furniture to modern Australian living conditions that, Lord believed, would in turn create products of good design. Inexpensive—meaning affordable— furniture was required in quantity; therefore, design for machine construction was necessary and comfort and convenience was important. Furniture should be space- saving since living space was restricted and labour-saving since most Australians do their own housework.159 In Lord’s post-war appeal, she summarised: ‘When all these requirements have been understood and fulfilled, an Australian style will soundly and surely emerge. Furniture will have a new beauty and character, arising spontaneously out of a proper appreciation of circumstances’.160
Lord was neither a traditionalist nor extreme modernist; her early study of interior decoration although grounded in historicism was steeped in the new developments of the time. On her return to Sydney in 1940, she was ‘surprised and rather disappointed’ in the lingering traditionalism and lack of ‘any real
156 ibid. 157 ibid. 158 Morris, op. cit. 159 Lord, ‘Must We Have Bad Furniture?’, op. cit., p. 53. 160 ibid., pp. 51-3
252 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 interest’ in modern design.161 Lord understood historical precedents and appreciated especially the eighteenth-century styles as an honest expression of their age.162 She preferred examples of modernism that were not those of the extreme ‘operating theatre’ mode but works by the elegant French designers of the
1930-40s. In her professional work, Lord handled modern and traditional styles successfully, re-emphasising intelligent independence of choice: ‘One shouldn’t be too one-sided. There is no reason why the person who wants a Chippendale- style dining suite shouldn’t have one. We must have freedom in these things’.163
Her individualist approach to design was underpinned by her great respect for human beings and their ability to adapt with the conditions of their times. This, she epitomised in her understanding of interior design:
Any study of the history of interior design, the things we put in our buildings, as well as new developments and trends in design, can in itself be so interesting that it is necessary to take time now and then to decide what it all amounts to and, to remember that these things are only important insofar as they affect the daily lives of people, their happiness and well-being. 164
These artistic and theoretical understandings of design, referred to as modernism(s) in interior design, subsequently, underpin Lord’s approach to interior design, features of which can be summarised as follows:165
x Art as underlying idea of design.
x Planning as essential to good design.
x Simplification without the appearance of standardisation.
161 Margaret Lord, ‘What is Wrong With Modern Design’, The Australian Home Beautiful, 1 Aug 1940, p. 12.
162 Lord, ‘An Englishman’s Home’, op. cit., p. 7. 163 Lord, 1973, op. cit., p. 37. 164 Lord, 1969, op. cit., p. 187.
253 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
x Individuality.
x Functionalism.
x Harmony in form and idea for happiness and well-being of people.
x Comfort and convenience, space-saving and labour-saving devices to
fulfil everyday needs.
x Integrity of material and honesty of purpose transposed to truth.
x Technology as beneficial to improving lives of people.
x Transformation of national consciousness as condition of change.
x Beauty and national character as a result of circumstance.
x Historicism as honest expression of each age.
Contribution to Professional Development
Margaret Lord was committed to her career and profession. This she demonstrated directly and indirectly by her active participation: writing, broadcasting, lecturing and teaching subjects of interior decoration and design through professional practice and organisation. Her contributions to the professional development of interior design can be assessed in relationship to commonly defined core components of profession and a recognised professionalisation process summarised as follows:
1) Lord’s publication of 1944 is credited as the first Australian ‘text’ on
interior decoration (design), providing one of the first correspondence
courses to armed services. Through courses to YWCA and numerous
magazine articles, lectures and radio broadcasts, Lord spread modernist
165 These summarised conceptualisations of design follow Lord’s rhetoric as embedded within her
254 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
ideas on good design. Lord believed the study should be integrated into
secondary school and university programs, although this was not achieved
by her.
2) Lord provided systematic theory for interior design integrating universal
principles and practical approaches to the process of designing rooms. She
was relentless in her intellectual pursuit to understand all aspects of design,
focussing on aesthetics, as well as the happiness and welfare of people.
3) Lord gained professional authority through her education in art and design
(formally and informally achieved) and through practical experience
(international and local).
4) This was further sanctioned in the community popularly through her
cultivated image (in the press) and professionally by her reputation as a
competent and trained interior decorator (through public recognition,
personal and professional referrals).
5) Lord provided leadership as a founding member of Society of Interior
Designers of Australia (SIDA 1951), the first professional organisation for
interior design in Sydney, setting standards informally and advancing
standards formally in 1964 with the incorporation of SIDA which further
professionalised the practice in Sydney.166
popular writings. Simple language was used to reach a wide-ranging audience. 166 Lord’s interest in advancing the profession of interior design in Australia is evidenced in extant documents from the inaugural conference of The American Institute of Decorators on the subject of education for the Interior Architect and Decorator in the United States held 1938 in Chicago. The Proceedings, 1938, 1939 and 1940, were most likely acquired during Lord’s visit to the United States in 1951 during a time of the first discussions and foundation of Society of Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA, est.1951) in Sydney. Eight individuals, including Lord, signed the Certificate of Incorporation for the Society of Interior Designers of Australia, 24 Sept 1964. See also, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-8/1 SIDA, 1964, 1972-81.
255 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
6) Lord implemented new business practises, charging professional fees for
work in lieu of product-based remuneration. As early as July 1940, Lord
was working ‘on a consultant basis…designing the decorations for the
Imperial Airways Building on the Gold Coast.’167 Referring to the field
alternately as interior decoration and interior design, she displayed little
interest in arguments of identity and name change from ‘interior decorator’
to ‘interior designer’, satisfied with past associations. At the same time,
she was fervently concerned with being professional.
Conclusion
This chapter has recognised Margaret Lord’s significant contributions to the development of interior design in Australia discussing her established reputation as an expert in the field, her authority gained initially through overseas experience and, then, by her active involvement in the modern design community in Sydney where she promoted better standards of design and raised the profile of her chosen profession.
Lord was attracted first to the field perceiving interior decoration as a smart and fashionable career, but soon realised the subject was practical requiring much planning and detail. Her early exposure in London’s exclusive West End dramatically changed under stringent war-time conditions. Returning to Sydney in
1940 without clientele or financial support from husband or inheritance, Lord initiated her diversely-constructed Australian career in writing, broadcasting and teaching, raising through this public media a consciousness and appreciation of design and its purpose for everyday living. As war-time scarcity turned to post-
167 ‘The Craze for Steel Furniture Has Gone’ 1940, op. cit.
256 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 war production, Lord redirected her modernist campaign to manufacturers, wishing to change their indifferent practices of offering old-fashioned, ugly and often pretentious (re)productions to original Australian creations suited to a newly-educated consumer. Neither traditionalist nor extreme modernist, Lord understood the very deep human need for detail, championed form and function, aesthetic value, suitability, effectiveness, efficiency and performance. Each culminating in her dictum for good design: to please the eye, comfort the body and interest the mind.
Lord’s modern ideas on design were publicised widely, their success linked to her multi-dimensional cultivated image as a modern independent career woman, professional designer and glamorous fashionable socialite. The depictions, while not mutually exclusive, were tied to broader social, political and economic initiatives reflecting transformations taking place for women and the field of interior design at this time. Lord’s story both challenges and upholds past attitudes and notions of the early female interior decorator. While her reputation flourished professionally within the so-called natural feminine domain, she was dissatisfied with her pay as evidenced in discussions with her major employer.168
Lord crossed boundaries into the competitive commercial sphere of interior design and forged liaisons with the broader design community; yet, without financial backing or capital, she could not operate a shopfront nor were conditions conducive to this either.
168 See ‘Discussion Paints’, 27 Jul 1948, regarding her association with Berger Paints which began 1945. Lord quantifies her salary to date and refers to the monies received as a ‘meagre sum’ despite the ‘broad scope and variety of service’ that she brought to Berger, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-9/1:5.
257 Margaret Lord Chapter 7
In her teaching, the London experience was not transferable to Sydney.
Absent were the fine exemplars from classical history or modern productions in shop windows, replaced by early topics of interior decoration that focused on problems and solutions of home decorating. As audiences (and clientele) expanded, topics became more far-ranging, emphasising new challenges confronting the nascent profession of interior design, especially professional rivalries emergent between decorators, designers and architects.169 Questioned within public and professional forums was the necessity of the interior designer as a design specialist separate from the architect.170 Responding to the classic modernist (male architect) argument, Lord maintained the necessity of each, believing them distinct in their thinking, approach and contribution to designed buildings and their interiors. This belief derived from academic study and first- hand experience working with professional decorators and architects overseas and in Australia. Hired for her expertise in furniture arrangement, colour selection and
169 Such as in 1950 at a lecture given by Lord to the New South Wales Chapter (NSW) of Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA). Lord witnessed the rising tensions between decorators and architects when one architect tried to ‘belittle’ her and the profession with Lord suggesting that they should ‘work together’ to achieve better results in design, see Lord, 1969, op. cit., p. 184. 170 Again in 1963, controversy arose within the interior design community when Interior Designer and Architect Edmund Dykes, was reported as saying, ‘ideally, the architectural approach to the design of a new building should be from the inside out-must be from the inside out…If we accept this, and the responsibilities implied, the question I would ask is: in today’s architecture, as a separate professional entity, is the interior designer really necessary?’, ‘Rehearsal for a discussion’, newspaper clipping, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92-1304-5 1963. Dykes first trained as an interior designer under Phyllis Shillito, and later, attended ESTC to train as an architect. The main event, ‘Interior Design in Australia Today’ was held 5 Jun 1963 at the AGNSW in front of an audience of 650 Art Gallery Society members and guests. Presenting on a Wednesday night, Lord began with the background to interior design in Australia. Marion Hall Best spoke on modern design and of design and manufacturing indigenous to Australia. Edmund Dykes, an architect, consultant designer and former student of Phyllis Shillito, talked about the part played by the interior designer in the architectural scheme of things. Leslie Walford spoke of the designer’s job to express in real terms the owner’s half-realised longings, Mary White, the owner/operator of her school, Mary White School of Art and Design, discussed training for the interior designer.
258 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 lighting advice, publisher, paint manufacturer, architect and consumer alike enlisted her services on numerous interior design projects.171 Lord’s intellectual theorising turned to professional planning, devising painting schemes, writing specifications, inspecting major industrial, commercial and domestic jobs, submitting weekly reports, and responding to hundreds of enquiries generated from advertising.172
Her significant contribution to the professional development of interior design resides in her commitment to bringing modern design ideas to Australians which she spread widely through popular correspondence courses, lectures, writings and responses to hundreds of homemakers and owners, recognition given to her texts on interior decoration (Australia’s first) and pioneering work in colour and lighting. Under unprecedented ruptures of World War II, Lord had become consciously aware of her role in Australia’s modernising process, recognising that
‘good designers help’ but that most influential in ‘popularizing modern design is change in living conditions’.173
Lord sought the life of the independent career woman using both her female sexuality and hard-working nature to promote good design and raise professional awareness of interior design in the public eye. Her extensive public exposure was enabled by her ‘Vivien Leigh’ good looks and relentless determination—characteristics and qualities valued in Australia. Putting her career before traditional domestic roles, she married late. Adventurous and inquisitive, yet sophisticated and refined in manner, Lord sought new inspiration, travelling
171 Lord, 1969, op. cit., p. 115.
172 Lord, ‘Discussion Paints’, op. cit.
259 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 internationally and reading widely, then publicising her findings to further encourage local change.
While adamant about advancing modern ideas and ideals of design promoting professionalism through excellence and setting standards, Lord was ambivalent to a name change from the traditional term ‘interior decorator’ to the modernist call for ‘interior designer’, respecting nostalgically the past work of her former exemplars of the luxury but modern profession of interior decoration.
Unlike McDougall, however, Lord was a founding member of the Society of
Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA, 1951) and part of the art and design cognoscenti in Sydney and Melbourne. These affiliations were of key importance to the advancement of her design ideas and bold promotion of her profession.
Although each of the women presented thus far would have known of each other—Lord and McDougall particularly having taken part in early lectures for the
Englishman’s Home exhibition and concurrently offering armed service’s instruction, they did not work professionally with each other or travel socially in the same circles—no recognition of the other’s activities is evidenced in their writings. This indicates how wide the ‘profession’ had grown by mid-century in
Sydney, expanding beyond Proctor’s early artistic beginnings of the 1920s with her art decoration for the home. Interior design’s aesthetic ideas had also expanded, transformed by necessity and informed by new ideas regarding practical, functional and technological areas of design. Common to the women’s advancement professionally and personally was their knowledge of art’s
173 Margaret Lord, A Decorator’s World, 1969, p. 40.
260 Margaret Lord Chapter 7 fundamental principles and their entrance into the public domain participating in its various activities to modernise Australia.
261 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
PHYLLIS SHILLITO
Some people are fortunate enough to be endowed with a good colour sense and an ability to choose suitably for the purpose required, or to combine colours to form a satisfying scheme. There are others to whom such a project presents a major problem; for these people, colour systems provide a means of clarifying such problems.1
— Phyllis Shillito, 1959
Introduction
English-born and educated Phyllis Sykes Shillito has been recognised as a tour de force in design education in Sydney; yet her contributions to the development of interior design have not been fully acknowledged or evaluated.2 The intent of this chapter is to investigate Shillito’s contributions to interior design that were situated within the government-run technical education system. Following previous format, this chapter first gives biographical, disciplinary and experiential background to her established reputation as a design teacher from the early 1920s, followed by a description of her activities in interior design. This chapter then turns to individual and societal values and beliefs that underpin Shillito’s philosophy and approach to design, importantly, discussing wider initiatives impacting interior design education in Sydney. Finally, this chapter evaluates
Shillito’s significant contributions to the professional development of interior design and concludes with a summary of new concerns in the public education
1 Phyllis Shillito, ‘Colour tuning’, in Clive Carney, International Interiors and Design, Sydney, London, Melbourne, Wellington: Angus & Robertson, 1959, p. 50. 2 See Michael Bogle, Design in Australia 1880-1970, Sydney, NSW: Craftsman House in association with G+B International, 1998.
262 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8 sector for design disciplines. These in turn have implications for Phyllis Shillito and her participation in future developments of interior design in Sydney.
Biographical Background and Basis of Authority
Phyllis Sykes Shillito was born in Halifax, an inland town in North West England, on 28 April 1895 to George Sykes Shillito, a ‘thick and thin drawer’ and his wife,
Elizabeth, née Sealey.3 Halifax, located in South West Yorkshire, was at the centre of vast wool growing, spinning and weaving production areas serving the textile industry. Like many families of the area, the Shillitos had been involved with textile production for generations, Phyllis later crediting this background for her ‘love of textile designs’.4
Shillito’s early education included classes at Rishworth School from 1907.
In 1912, she enrolled in art and design at the Art School of Halifax Technical
College where her three-year curricula included theoretical and practical work in art, design and craft—excelling in the subject of embroidery. Following completion of this full-time program, Shillito continued her studies from 1915-18 also teaching part-time at the college in design and colour. In 1917, she attained first-class honours in the Design and Craft examination of the City and Guilds of
London Institute.
Shillito held numerous teaching positions in England from 1915-1923, including Visiting Art Teacher, Halifax New School (for boys); Senior Assistant
3 Christopher John Kent, Phyllis Shillito 1895-1980, A Review, M.A. Coursework Project, School of Design, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 1995. Kent’s material has provided biographical and informational content for analysis. 4‘Designing the Future’, Womans Day & Home, 21 Dec 1953, pp.18-19.
263 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8 in Design and Craft at Winchester School of Art; Visiting Art Mistress for
Winchester County School for Girls and Basingstoke High School for Girls; and finally in 1922, as Lecturer in Design & Craft, Liverpool City School of Art. From this extensive and diverse teaching experience, the young teacher was exposed to a range of students and situations under differing socio-economic conditions.
In these positions, Shillito was progressively promoted and acknowledged for achieving good results sometimes under ‘great difficulties - large classes and inadequate time’.5 She increasingly gained an esteemed reputation as a teacher of art, craft and design, being particularly noted for (a) her individual character and devotion to subject and to her students; (b) her conscientiousness, organisational and technical skills; and (c) her intellectual capabilities having ‘a thorough grasp of all the underlying principles of Art, both pure and applied’.6 Shillito was also singled out early in her career as a lonely, feminine voice in a male-dominated public education system. She later remembered being ‘the only woman on the staff of fifteen’ at the Liverpool City School of Art.7
Just prior to the first anniversary of teaching at the Liverpool School,
Shillito applied for leave to visit Australia with her family. Accompanied by her parents, the soon-to-be 28-year-old departed England on 3 March 1923, on the
‘Osterley’, travelling via the Suez Canal, Colombo, Fremantle and then to
Brisbane where Phyllis was reunited with her brother John who was recuperating there from war injuries.8 Shillito immediately gained a teaching position in the Art
5 Edward E. Anderson, ‘Testimonial letter’ 14 Feb 1921, p. 1; quoted in Kent, 1995, op. cit., p. 9. 6 Noel H. Lucuer, ‘Testimonial Letter’, 25 Jan 1919, p. 1; quoted in Kent, 1995, p. 8. 7 Beau Arts [Gallery], Shillito Exhibition Catalogue, 24 Apr 1930-10 May 1930; quoted in Kent, 1995, p. 10. 8 Kent, ibid., p. 10.
264 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8
Department of Brisbane Technical College where she became well-known for her
‘efforts to stimulate interest in the possibilities of design based on purely
Australian motifs’.9 From an artistic perspective, Phyllis was drawn to the cultural uniqueness of Australia’s Aboriginal art and Queensland’s geographical and botanical difference in its flora, fauna, colour and brilliant light as compared to England.
Just prior to completing two years of teaching in Brisbane, Shillito applied for and gained a position in the Art School (Darlinghurst branch) of Sydney
Technical College (from 1935 East Sydney Technical College, ESTC), initially employed as a ‘Teacher of Art [on probation]’ responsible for drawing instruction to dressmaking students.10 But not wishing to relinquish individual artistic pursuits, she negotiated as a condition of employment the right to paint, exhibit and sell her artwork outside of teaching responsibilities.
Shillito began at ESTC on 4 August 1925, teaching a variety of Lower
Division courses including the Introductory Art Course which was Stage I of a five-year, full-time Diploma award program. The Introductory course also prepared students for shorter Certificate courses including Dressmaking,
Modelling (sculpture and carving), Furniture, Jewellery and Art Metalwork, and
Window Display. An Intermediate Art Course followed as part of Upper Division courses leading to Diploma courses in Painting, Modelling and Illustration, as well as courses in Ceramics, China Painting and Applied Art. As the courses suggest, the intent of the technical school’s programs was to train students for
9 ibid., pp. 10-11. 10 Letter, 26 Mar 1925, NSW Public Service Board (PSB); quoted in Kent, 1995, ibid., p. 11.
265 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8 industry on the understanding that ‘95% of enrolled students came to “learn art for some commercial purpose”.’11 Interior design was not as yet defined within the school’s curricula.
In 1933, as efforts continued to better train art students for industry,12
Shillito was directed by the New South Wales Superintendent of Technical
Education, James Nagle, and Lecturer-in-Charge of the ESTC Art Department,
Sam V. Rowe, to found a ‘School of Applied Art and Industrial Design, as an additional Diploma Section in the Art Department at East Sydney Technical
College’.13 Two years later, Shillito organised a display of her students’ work from the new Design Diploma program at Blaxland Galleries. The exhibition brought Shillito recognition and acknowledgement from Superintendent Nagle, who was ‘pleased’ with the ‘consistency’ of work, and from J. S. MacDonald,
Director of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales, who further acknowledged her teaching abilities:
Miss Phyllis Shillito…is exceptionally well equipped to instruct, being naturally gifted out of the common and very well trained. Her own work in design is extremely good and she has a genius for imparting her knowledge…in the classroom…this lady possesses great ability, inventiveness, enthusiasm and thoroughness.14
11 ‘Department of Applied Art, East Sydney Technical College’, The Technical Gazette of N.S.W., vol. 21, Part 1, 1933, p. 3; quoted in Kent, 1995, ibid., p. 13. 12 As outlined in Chapter 3 Historical Development of Interior Design Education, most influential in initiating design for the practical arts was the pre-eminent Frenchman M. Lucien Henri, who brought with him to Sydney the Ecole des Beaux Arts traditions. Henri, another immigrant, had also encouraged students to use Australian motifs in their designs and envisioned a broadly-based School of Decorative Arts encompassing architecture, sculpture, modelling, terra cotta work, design, figure painting and landscape painting. Despite Henri’s significant influence on design in the decorative arts, his vision for a comprehensive school for the study of design was not achieved in his time. 13 Phyllis Shillito, Letter of Application for a higher position, 1937, p. 1; quoted in Kent, 1995, ibid., p. 14. 14 James Nagle, Letter to Phyllis Shillito, 2 May 1935, p.1; and J.S. MacDonald, Testimonial Letter for P. Shillito, 30 Apr 1935; quoted in Kent, 1995, ibid. pp. 14-15.
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The first Design Diplomas were awarded in May 1936 to an all-female contingent, ‘Of the five students who submitted work, Misses Helena Boden,
Beverly Jenkins, Linfay Lonsdale, and Dorothy Senior were recommended for the award of a Diploma in Design.’15 The work (over 200 pieces) was judged critically by ‘a comprehensive committee of designers’ as it was recognised the outcomes would set standards for those who followed.16 Student enrolments grew and, during the following year, one of the first diplomats, Dorothy Senior, was appointed to a part-time teaching position assisting Shillito.
In just over a decade in Sydney, Shillito had pioneered the Design Diploma, instigated new programs and increased student enrolment, solidifying her sound reputation as a design teacher. During this time, Shillito had also continuously raised the issue of her teaching status and financial position which had not progressed at the same rate as her initiatives and increased responsibilities. As she expressed in a letter dated 16 September 1937 to George Rayner Hoff, Lecturer- in-Charge of the Art Department, she believed promotion was due given her professional and personal efforts to meet current and future needs:
For the past five years I have been engaged in establishing and building up one of the most needed and important branches of Art in Australia – viz, Design…The future value of this section in relation to Australia’s secondary industries is incalculable and I visualise that in the very near future I shall find it necessary to cater for a greater number of trades and professions. Apart from my actual work as a teacher, I now devote a great amount of time in making contact with manufacturers in regard to the future employment of my students. This entails the visiting of factories at frequent intervals to be able to demonstrate the requirements necessary for the jobs they seek. All this is done at my own time and expense. 17
15 ‘First Australian Diploma Awards’, Sydney Morning Herald, 15 May 1936; results were awarded on 14 May and reported following day. 16 ibid. 17 Phyllis Shillito, Letter to the Lecturer-in-Charge, Department of Art, 16 Sept 1937; excerpts quoted from Kent, 1995, pp. 18-19.
267 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8
In addition to her regular duties, Shillito made known her engagement with the community:
…scarcely a week passes but some organisation approaches me to form centres for the study of general Design including Interior Decoration, Dress Design and Crafts as applied to their special requirements. I have already formed working centres at the Y.W.C.A. and the Children’s Library Movement where five of my students are acting in the capacity of instructors in Design and Crafts under my supervision. Recently I was approached by members of the University staff in respect of my training them in my methods of training designers.18
Her frustration was directed specifically to her efforts given her status as ‘an ordinary teacher of Art’. Also in justifying a higher salary, she quantified her claim:
This brings me to the financial aspect of the position. The full time students [Diploma] at fifteen guineas per year, which number to date 22, 16 part time [day] and 65 [evening] serves as a guide to you in support of my claim for promotion.19
Shillito also made special note of demands made upon her as the only woman teaching in a department with a predominately female student body:
Being the only female member of the staff [full-time] and students 90% of my own sex brings an added responsibility in the care and comfort of their lives during a change from adolescence to womanhood. In this direction constant demands are made on my time and judgment.20
In a follow-up letter a month later (18 October 1937), Shillito continued her quest for promotion outlining again in detail the growth of her department and extensive work in contrast to her lowly status:
Since the beginning of last year, 1936, I have had to extend considerably the syllabus for the Design Diploma Course to include further branches of design to meet present industrial requirements. The result is that this enlarging upon the syllabus has automatically added to the enrolment…as compared with last. The total enrolment for 1936 was 27 Diploma [day] and 107 [evening]. The waiting list and the number of students now enrolled –
18 ibid. 19 ibid. 20 ibid.
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even ignoring the applications of next year – has compelled the application for a full-time assistant for the Design Section. Present statistics and enquiries [sic] all point to a very much larger enrolment next year. A fact which should help my claim is that the Design Section has more students than any other Diploma course in the Department – of those twelve are sitting for their Diploma during the coming year. Referring to the Superintendents remarks re my rise in 1936 being eighteen months previous makes the situation farcical. If it were not so serious, considering that up to that period I had acted as Head Teacher of a Diploma Course for a period of four years! With the status of the lowest grade assistant. 21
Shillito concluded by emphasising the uniqueness of her position that,
‘nowhere in the Technical Education of N.S.W. is a Diploma Course convened and directed by a Grade II teacher which was my actual position at the time defined’.22 Finally in 1940, Shillito received promotion to Head Teacher. This was followed in 1947 to Lecturer in Art, in 1954 to Senior Lecturer and in 1958 to
Acting Head of the School of Women’s Handicrafts.23
Although class numbers had diminished during World War II, at its conclusion a record number of students resumed studies enrolling at ESTC through the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme (CRTS). Design courses were particularly popular with war widows, women estranged from their husbands, and returning ex-servicemen and servicewomen, giving Shillito further scope to develop courses in interior design, industrial design and fashion design within the Design & Crafts Diploma program.
21 Phyllis Shillito, Letter to Lecturer-in-Charge, Art Department, 18 Oct 1937; quoted in Kent,1995, ibid., p. 19. 22 Shillito also applied for the Lecturer-in-Charge vacancy upon the unexpected death of Rayner Hoff in a surfing accident (19 Nov 1937) but was unsuccessful. Pyllis Shillito, Draft Letter of Application for a Higher Position, actual date unknown, written shortly after the death of Rayner Hoff 19 Nov 1937; quoted in Kent, 1995, ibid., p. 20. 23 Christopher Kent, ‘Phyllis Sykes Shillito’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 16, John Ritchie & Diane Langmore, eds., Melbourne University Press, 2002, p. 236; Kent also tells in his MA thesis that Shillito was appointed acting head of the school of women’s handicrafts in 1941 but without official title.
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In addition to her teaching duties, Shillito was involved in a range of art and design activities for personal and community benefit. This included producing and publishing illustrative work for newspapers, books, and commercial applications, and giving lectures to community groups on design. 24 Shillito also assisted with judging of Arts & Crafts work at the Sydney Royal Easter Show from the 1950s-1970s, presented features on art and design on TNC TV Channel 9 in 1958, and informed women on aspects of fashion and dress design on Mary
Rossi’s ABC TV Channel 2 ‘Women’s World’.25 During the years 1960 and1961, she also assisted in a movement to develop the former Women’s Cell Block into theatre and exhibition space. Shillito importantly contributed major articles in the
1950s to local and acknowledged in international publications (Figure 8.1) for her theories of colour in relation to interior design (to be further discussed in following sections).
After 34 years of service to the School of Design at the National Art
School (NAS), ESTC, Shillito relinquished her position (29 May 1960), stepping down as Senior Lecturer in Art and Acting Head of the School of Women’s
Handicrafts.26 Shillito did not retire from teaching entirely. Within two years of her departure from ESTC, she opened her privately-run Shillito School of Design
24 Jean Walker, ABC archivist, 20 Mar 2001; according to Walker, Shillito was obtained (date unknown) by the Presbyterian fellowship to give lectures on design where the archivist first ‘found out about the Golden Mean…design principles…how to use lines [and] how to be strong [with these elements]’. 25 Bogle, op. cit., p. 133. 26 In Clive Carney, op. cit., p. 50; Carney elevates her status to Head, School of Design in National Art School and in School of Women’s Handcrafts [sic].
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Figure 8.1 Phyllis Shillito Source: International Interiors and Design by Clive Carney, 1959
(20 February 1962) at 36 Grosvenor Street, Sydney, where she continued teaching further generations of design students. Shillito, who never married, died 13 March
1980 at Bondi—her purpose complete—leaving behind a legacy of design which continued through the work of her many design students.
Activities and Participation in Interior Design
Phyllis Shillito’s working life in Australia was devoted to her students in the
Design & Crafts Diploma program, School of Design at ESTC, where she maintained her commitment to fundamental art principles as the foundation of good design which she in turn believed were essential to new industrial aims.
271 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8
Within this context, Shillito initiated instruction in interior design as an ‘applied art’ and specialised branch of ‘industrial design’.27 As teacher and head of design, her activities and participation in the development of interior design in Sydney responded to increased community and professional interest in the subject.
Shillito’s contributions manifested in expanded programs and instruction in design basics, textiles, and theories of colour. She furthered this understanding in the public domain through publications, promotion of student work, and legacy of students who continued to work and teach in diverse areas of interior design. Her participation in the development of interior design is described as follows positioned within the context of the time.
Teaching Interior Design
Interior design at ESTC evolved gradually from the late 1930s into a specialised subject area within the Design & Crafts Diploma program.28 Outside of Shillito’s
Diploma program, courses were also periodically offered called ‘Interior
Decoration Special’ (1940 and 1962), ‘Home Decoration Special’ (1961), and
‘Interior Decoration for the Home’ (1967).29 The offerings responded to increased
27 Shillito uses the term industrial design generically, meaning design for practical everyday objects and uses. See Phyllis Shillito, Draft Letter of Application for a Higher Position, no date, written after the death of George Rayner Hoff 19 Nov 1937; excerpt in Kent, 1995, op. cit., pp. 19- 20. 28 Early records for the study of Interior Design at ESTC are limited due to a loss of archival material as advised in July 1999, by Mary McPherson, History Officer for TAFE, who now holds any remaining records or statistics (revised in 1973); and Cameron Sparkes private collection. Sparkes recovered proceedings of the Advisory Committee for Interior Design at ESTC, 1965- 1973 at a time when a change in staff was underway and interest was not sustained in maintaining these archival records. 29 Schedule of Courses Conducted in New South Wales Technical Colleges from 1884 to the Present Day, prepared by Statistical Unit, Division of Educational Research and Planning, NSW Department of Technical Education, revised May 1973, p. 3. Open Training & Education Network (OTEN), An Institute of the NSW TAFE Commission, acquired from Mary McPherson, History Officer for TAFE. It is uncertain what Shillito’s involvement was in courses to the public.
272 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8 community interest in this area of design, but also demonstrated a growing awareness of distinctions between interior decoration and interior design, i.e. respectively, between amateur interest and professional endeavour.30
As a ‘specialised field’ within the Design & Crafts Diploma Course, students could nominate interior design as an area of concentration after studying fundamental principles believed common to all design subjects.31 Interior design courses included: colour theory, perspective, draperies, history of styles, period furniture, rendering; and craftwork in wood and plaster carving, metalwork, ceramics, textiles, and model construction.32 Shillito’s own areas of expertise— introductory design subjects, colour theory, textile weaving and design, subjects established through her previous English heritage, educational and teaching background were important to ‘interior, industrial, dress and textile design’.33
In her general design studies, Shillito used formal hands-on exercises to demonstrate the sequential process of design. The aim, as described in the school’s 1953 Handbook, was to give students ‘a working knowledge of the general principles of design and colour in relation to various materials and methods of production’.34 The intent, as exemplified in extant student notebooks by Barbara Abbott of 1947-49, applied theories to exercises using four separate studies: ‘Colour reference’, ‘Historical reference’, ‘Designs’, and ‘Aboriginal
30 As discussed by Margaret Lord, Interior Design had become the preferred term by most modern interior decorators in the profession.The appropriate designation was debated by The Society of Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA) resultant in designer over decorator as official appellation in 1951. 31 ‘Design and Crafts Diploma Course’, Department of Technical Education Handbook, 1953, quoted in Kent, 1995, op. cit., p. 97. 32 ibid. 33 ‘Making New Artists for Australia’, Daily Telegraph, Magazine Section, Apr 1950, p. 13. 34 ‘Design and Crafts Diploma Course’, in Kent, 1995, op. cit., p. 31.
273 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8 reference’.35 Designs created from the studies could then be applied to two- dimensional and three-dimensional products for multiple end uses.
The study of textiles was of general importance to both interior and dress design and was taught with an arts and crafts approach using hand techniques and available natural materials. During war-time, students worked within constraints of rationing. Wool, a major Australian export commodity, was readily available and used for weaving projects as were inexpensive imported cottons, such as mattress ticking and calico that were used for printing student textile designs
(Figure 8.2). Former student Roberta [nee Bell] Howland remembered that she
‘never did silk screen printing, it was too expensive…we did block printing, from lino.’36 Students experimented with natural dyes obtained from plants (onion and
Figure 8.2 Students weaving at Design School at ESTC, Pix, 1948
35 MAAS Archive, Barbara Abbott, Reg. # MAAS 96/226/1-4. 36 Roberta Howland, 18 Sept 1995; quoted in Kent, 1995, op. cit., p. 29.
274 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8 geraniums) because manufactured dyes became too expensive. Student designs applied to hand-woven or printed lengths of cloth would, in turn, be used for drapery and upholstery in interior design projects or for dress design.
Shillito also hired with varying degrees of success instructors to develop subjects outside her expertise. Former student Eve Dutton recalls in 1954 that
Shillito ‘employed a Dutch teacher, part time, he tried to teach Interior Design, especially model making…[but] he didn’t really know what he was doing.’37
Wanting to construct her model, Dutton decided to contact Edman Ryan & Co., of
Artarmon who, in turn, recommended Les Annesley, a furniture maker at
Homebush. Impressed by Dutton’s models (Figure 8.3), Shillito invited Annesley to teach at the school. The results were displayed at the 1955 New South Wales
Guild of Furniture Exhibition held at the Sydney showgrounds.38 Also in 1955, students designed exhibition displays for the Annual Mosman District
Horticultural Show at Sydney Town Hall.39 It is most likely that students could take auxiliary courses, such as architectural drafting at the college’s sister school, the School of Architecture, as was common in its exemplar the English technical school system.
As part of her teaching responsibilities outside the classroom, Shillito actively involved her students in numerous community activities and events with employment being the end purpose. Models were used to communicate three- dimensional student ‘designs for [everything from] furniture, exhibition stands,
37 Eve Dutton, 17 Sept 1995; quoted in Kent 1995, pp. 60-61. 38 Kent, 1995, ibid., p. 56; among the students was Tony Parker, son of the then owner of Parker Furniture, a Sydney manufacturer of contemporary domestic furniture. 39 Review of Current Activities in N.S.W. Technical Education, Jul 1955, vol.7, no. 6, p. 9.
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Figure 8.3 Model for Design of Shoe Store by ESTC Student Eve Dutton, 1955 counter display stands, modern homes, travelling caravans, [and] shoe stores’.40
They also became a valuable tool in publicising the Design School’s work, as seen in CRTS student John Harre’s model of free-standing furniture and custom cabinetry and Bill Symes’ proposed remodel the boardroom at Ultimo Tech. Their renditions of 1940s organic and modular design drew interest from Pix magazine
(Sept 1948) under the caption ‘Art in Industry’ (Figures 8.4 and 8.5).
In the 1960s and 1970s after leaving ESTC, Shillito continued private classes, teaching basic design as the founding principle of interior design. Plan
40 Review of Current Activities in N.S.W. Technical Education, op. cit., p. 8.
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Figure 8.4 Models by CRTS Student John Harre Studying Interior Design at ESTC, Pix, 1948
Figure 8.5 ESTC 2nd Year Student Bill Symes with his Remodel of Boardroom at Ultimo Tech, Pix, 1948
277 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8 drawings and 3D mock-ups (introduced in years two and three) were developed for a variety of interior design briefs. With the advent of ‘Colour Field’ and ‘Hard
Edge’ painting, large canvases were conceived as colour studies which could then be easily adapted for use in contemporary interior projects.41 This suggests that while maintaining her commitment to fundamentals, these were easily adapted to the needs of the time.
Publications on Interior Design
Shillito elaborated on her theories of colour for interior design in two major publications: her 1954 book, Sixty Beach and Holiday Homes, and 1959 article,
‘Colour tuning’ for Clive Carney’s International Interiors and Design. In the former, Shillito explains colour’s relationship to modern architecture and interior design devising theoretical colour schemes and giving specifications for locally architect-designed houses.42 Commenting on contemporary innovative ideas, she describes the modernist approach to integrating exterior and interior space.43 In her article, ‘Colour tuning’, Shillito turns to the ‘great value of colour’ and its influence on the ‘different aspects of man’.44 Stressed is the importance of understanding colour. Included is her own colour wheel system, the only colour illustration in Carney’s impressive publication (Figure 8.6).45 Her colour wheel system was built up from two different types of each primary:
41 Kent, 1995, op. cit., p. 72. 42 Phyllis Shillito, Sixty Beach and Holiday Homes, Sydney, NSW: Associated General Publication Pty. Ltd., 1954. 43 ibid., pp. 92-93. 44 Carney, op. cit., p. 50. 45 Needless to say, Shillito’s system was not world-known. In fact, outside her vast contingent of students who meticulously mixed colours to emulate the exemplar it was not widely known inside Australia either. This fact is interesting and important in that Shillito is featured at a time when her own position is under fire in the NSW technical education system.
278 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8
The yellow with a small touch of blue in it is mixed with the blue with a small content of yellow, hence the purer green. The red with a small content of blue mixes better with the bright pure blue to give us the luminous purple, and the red with the content of yellow mixed with the pure yellow gives us the better orange. In this way we avoid bringing in the third primary colour, which reduces the purity of the six colours.46
Figure 8.6 The Colour Wheel, Devised by Shillito and Illustrated with her article, ‘Colour tuning’ Source: International Interiors and Design by Clive Carney, 1959
46 Carney, op. cit., p. 50.
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Shillito’s acclaimed knowledge of colour alongside the ‘outstanding achievements’ of ‘leading [international] architects, interior designers, and decorators’ is somewhat curious, but perhaps explained by her acquaintance with the Carneys. The father, Clive, especially, designed and decorated the drawing room and a private suite at Government House for Queen Elizabeth’s visit in
1954. His daughter, June Carney, an Associate at ESTC (and possibly an instructor for Shillito in interior design) was a member of the American Institute of Decorators (AID).47 But also, colour was now recognised as a significant modern design element in interior design with Shillito’s inclusion in the Carney publication linking Australia to this international modern movement. Shillito's specific contributions to colour and to interior design’s curriculum is being presented here and will later be co-examined against the innovators of her time.
Shillito fostered numerous design careers including those of many ex- servicemen and women who entered the tech under the post-war Commonwealth
Rehabilitation Training Scheme (CRTS).48 The inclusion of men in interior design studies indicates it was not just a career for women. Prominent among returning servicemen in interior design were Edmund Dykes, Donald Johnson, Donald
Shaw, John Harre and Bill Symes.49 Dykes and Johnson would become founding members of the Society of Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA, est. 1951),
47 ibid., pp. 55-57. 48 In a phone conversation with Mrs. Edmund (Margaret known as Peg) Dykes, 4 Nov 1999, Dykes’ widow expressed how Shillito really ‘loved her ex-servicemen as she called them…[knowing how] difficult it was for men that returned from War duty to go back to the role of school boy’. 49 Mrs. Dykes also said Edmund was one of five students under the scheme to study at ESTC after the war: one woman and four men in the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme (CRTS).
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Johnson becoming the first President. Ex-servicewoman Joyce Harrison became a colour expert for the State Government, helping to design interiors of hospitals, schools and public buildings.50
After studying interior design with Shillito, Shaw travelled to England in
1949. In showing some of his ESTC work to Sanderson’s, a leading London interior decoration firm who specialised in wallpapers and textiles, Shaw was
‘appointed…their chief interior designer.’51 Returning to Sydney in the early 50s, he joined Taubman Paints in North Sydney as a colour consultant. He also supported the developing Society of Interior Designers becoming a member of its executive committee and, with a number of ESTC Design School graduates, participated in the Society’s first exhibition of rooms (1953) held at the Woollahra
Arts Centre. Other former Shillito students, Tony Parker (of Parker Furniture),
Tom Gillies and Mardi McElvenny, also were known for their interior design in
Sydney.
In addition to the many design practitioners that emerged from Shillito’s programs, a contingent of students subsequently taught design themselves.
Prominent among them in the government-run public education sector were
Dorothy Senior and Eve Dutton, who succeeded Shillito at the Fashion Design
School; David Denne, who became Head of Post-Graduate Design Studies, UTS; and Olga Kardos, who became Head of Design Studies, Design Centre, Enmore
TAFE. In the private sector, Mary White, in addition to her design work, established her private Mary White School of Art and Design, 1960, (see Chapter
50 ‘Making New Artists for Australia’, op. cit., p. 13 51 ibid.
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8); and Prue Logan Leith, who attended Shillito’s private School of Design from
978-79, subsequently starting the School of Colour and Design in 1983 with business partner Eva Fay; the school is still in operation today.52
Values, Beliefs and Philosophy of Design
Phyllis Shillito wholeheartedly believed in the value of design and its ability to improve the conditions and circumstances of people. This entailed higher standards of aesthetic production for industry-produced material and the idea that design training offered artistic students prospect of employment. Shillito internalised the ideals of her early English design reform education drawing from a continuum of aesthetic ideas and practical approaches that had reacted against the shoddy workmanship of industrialised Europe: the Aesthetic Movement which emphasised the importance of beauty in everyday things; design reformers who maintained that objects uniting beauty and utility could improve lives, including one’s character; and the English Arts and Crafts Movement that stressed the superiority of handmade works.
Raised within a working-class environment but having had the benefit of middle-class education, Shillito also knew her efforts teaching design had commercial value: the sum of each student’s tuition was the direct result of her talents and ability to increase and maintain enrolment. This sense of economic reality combined with her strong work ethic resulted in expectation of improved teaching status and financial award. This was demonstrated on various occasions,
52 Art & Design Education 1999, Ferny Creek, VIC: Design Graphics Pty. Ltd. & Colin Wood, Publisher, p. 142; The school’s intention to offer courses: ‘from client brief to rendering, product knowledge and final installation of a project…fostering personal creativity and flair’.
282 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8 specifically in her promotion of student textile designs for manufacture in Great
Britain, claiming any success was ‘a reward for the hard pioneering work’ she had accomplished in the design world of Australia.53 Her frustration lay in her inability to sufficiently equate these advancements to her own progress.
Central to Shillito’s struggle was the value placed on her design work as interpreted by prevailing community attitudes, commercial interests and government-directed educational system with new initiatives in mind. The resultant (de)valuation related primarily to three main issues that were often intertwined: (a) women’s place in design, (b) position of art in design and its relationship with the purpose of design education, and (c) new interpretations of design which redefined the roles of artist and designer.
In 1947, Frank Medworth, Lecturer-in-Charge at the National Art School,
ESTC, revealed the lingering negative sentiment towards women and their place in the arts, writing that he believed Professor Henry Tonks of the Slade Art School had given ‘sound advice’ to a young lady pupil directing her to ‘go home and do embroidery’.54 By implication, this suggested that women were not yet taken seriously in their art work and, therefore, were wasting the instructor’s valuable time. The sentiment was also an affront to the “lesser” decorative arts by its
“superior”, the fine arts. Although Shillito believed basic design, colour and textiles were serious and important studies providing practical career paths, the
53 Phyllis Shillito, Letter to Mr. G. Fhodes c/o Rylands Pty. Ltd. 13 Aug 1947, p. 1; quoted in Kent, 1995, op. cit. 54 Frank Medworth, ‘The Humours and Difficulties of Art Teaching’, Society of Artists 1946-7 Book, 1947, p. 42.
283 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8 end products at best were perceived by industry as low-yielding and, at worst, as frivolous domestic pastimes.
Medworth was also making distinctions regarding the purpose of public systems for training that had two ends in mind: one with prospects for employment, the other for personal satisfaction. He clarified as follows:
Under existing arrangements in New South Wales…the Art School at Darlinghurst can only be used for training in professional fine arts and industrial and commercial design - five years is regarded as a reasonable training period…[the school] cannot undertake to find places for the hobbyist, or person with a passing fancy.55
Medworth assured his reader this was ‘a matter of economy solely’ and he advocated that more schools, both government and private, be opened to cater for a community becoming more ‘art conscious’ having leisure time to pursue
‘unproductive frivolities.’56 This would meet the broader aims of educating
Australians.
Interior design was not yet officially recognised at this time as a profession in Australia although design was increasingly identified as an area of growing specialisation within the public education system. As such, its study was subject to overarching government-led policies and reviews on the value of education to industry and economy. Sydney’s policy on art and design education followed the lead from England, with Medworth in the same article outlining progress to date:
Recently, the British Board of Education changed its policy in art education so as to ensure that artists and designers would be of greatest value to the United Kingdom in its industrial and commercial rehabilitation. Not only, as before, are designers [of the decorative arts] expected to become fluent draughtsmen and good colourists, but the fine art students are now obliged to study crafts and manufactures and to show their acquaintance with the things by practical demonstration. The
55 ibid. 56 ibid.
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Intermediate Certificate in Art and the Diploma of Design are the awards of a progressive policy.57
This unintentionally credited Shillito’s efforts as an advance on the artist’s drawing alone. The notion of practical demonstration of craft no longer met industry standards and, under new debate, her tangible links to production were increasingly seen as inadequate for new commercial needs.
While Shillito was preoccupied with the details of running the Diploma program, multiple new initiatives were underway. By November 1952, the Art
Advisory Committee was considering ‘if there should be a division between the design section of the Art School and the pure art courses’.58 The NSW Director of
Technical Education indicated a desire to establish a school of Industrial Design using Norbert Dutton’s progressive British ‘Plan for a School of Technological
Design’ (actually conceived in 1943) as reference to determine the new direction of design. Dutton had prefaced his discussion by defining the term ‘design’ which he said was capable of widely different interpretations:
It may be concerned with visual aspect, as in painting and decoration, or it may imply the solution of purely practical problems, unrelated to aesthetics, as in engineering. In the architectural sense, design implies the solution of problems of both appearance and function…The aesthetic value of an architectural plan is dependent on the fulfilment of the specific practical requirements which it is designed to meet, and the architect is in fact the only kind of designer who is yet trained to relate the aesthetic factor to problems of economics and organisation.59
No mention was made of interior design, ignored due to the predominance of women in the program and its yet unidentified economic potential to industry.
57 ibid., p. 39. 58 T. Wilson, ‘Minutes of the Meeting of the Art Advisory Committee held in the Art Department, East Sydney Technical College’, 26 Nov 1952, pp. 1-2. 59 Norbert Dutton, ‘Appendix for: Plan for a School of Technological Design: The need for a new educational policy in and a proposal for its realisation’, written originally c. 1943, was referenced by the Chairman in a ‘Meeting of the Art Advisory Committee held in the Art Department’, ESTC, 7 Jul 1954, p. 2.
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It is uncertain what knowledge Shillito had of this report but its contents may have prompted at this time her own investigation and integration of interior architectural space into her discussion of design and colour theories.
The report (utilised rather belatedly in Australia) referenced Bauhaus philosophy and, in particular, Walter Gropius’s belief in design as the coordination of ‘all creative effort, to achieve, in a new architecture, the unification of all training in art and design. The ultimate goal… the collective work of art – the building – in which no barriers exist between the structural and the decorative arts’.60 Under new directives, ‘manual instruction figured, not as an end in itself, but as a basic training for the hand and eye, and a practical first step in mastering industrial processes’.61 It was also recommended that to accomplish new goals ‘a body of men [was required] of wide general culture as thoroughly versed in the practical and mechanical sides of design as in its theoretical and formal laws’.62
By the late 1950s, Shillito’s leadership as Acting Head of Women’s
Handicrafts (from 1941-1960) was increasingly criticised, her artistic interests questioned. Under pressure of commercial interests, it was believed training for dress-making and design required practical and technical skills rather than artistic ideas. As proposed,
Undoubtly [sic] there is a need for training in dress design from the purely art approach, but, in comparison with the numbers of practical designers required by industry, the demand is limited.63
60 ibid. 61 ibid. 62 ibid. 63 ‘Proposal to place School of Women’s handicrafts under a member of the staff of School of Art, East Sydney’, State Supervisor of Women’s Handicrafts, 15 Sept 1957, pp. 1-2; quoted in Kent, 1995, op. cit. p. 66.
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The same sentiment resounded as true for the future of all design specialisations and designers in industry. Interior design (a study dominated by women) had to be redefined into a larger educational scheme where women educators were retrained to contribute more fully towards this new industrial directive.
Medworth, writing from the perspective of an art instructor, had lamentably forecast in 1947 the problem of the artist in industry, ‘all he [the manufacturer] needs is an organisation to reproduce overseas articles, whether pottery, glass or any of the thousand-and-one objects for sale.’64 As one manufacturer explained defiantly, ‘I don’t want…designers…I’m the designer. I take a little bit from this and a little bit from that and - there’s your design. Cuts expense. And you can sell anything.’65 Past issues of absorbing the artist into industry which was recognised as ‘a slow process’ in a world where both official attitude and manufacturer’s experience prevented artistic appreciation came under even more pressure as the role of the designer was being reassessed and redefined.66
Past design reform initiatives had fostered the idea that ‘art must go hand in hand with industry’.67 Shillito’s own students had gained publicity in 1948 for their valuable artistic ideas that were acknowledged as allied to the ‘new industrial idea’:
These young men and women will have a profound effect on Australian life. The beckoning window displays of the big stores will be designed by them; the hoardings that shout porridge and boot polish and beer at us
64 Medworth, op. cit., pp. 42-3. 65 ibid., the economics of the situation had implications for the artist, designer and positioning of design education. By the late 1940s-early 1950s, retail associations had also started to produce booklets to train its sales staff in the furniture departments in the basics of interior decoration. 66 ibid., p. 42. 67 ‘The Department of Art at the East Sydney Technical College’, Art in Australia, 15 Feb 1935, p. 43.
287 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8
may be their work; the shape of the tables in our homes and of the humble iron in the kitchen, the pattern of our clothes and the design on our curtains – one day soon these may be the creations of East Sydney’s “art” students.68
In 1954, the Art Advisory Committee summarised the new requirements of the designer stating:
…the present-day designer is concerned with manufacture for distribution and sale, also with public services and utilities. He influences products in respect of fabrication and function as well as final appearance. He is also concerned with all forms of commercial support for the product…in modern conditions manufacture and distribution are part of the same industrial process, and industrial and commercial design…are inseparable aspects of a single problem.69
Under pressure of new technological advancements and commercial complexities,
Shillito’s idea of design once progressive was now superseded and her arts and crafts approach was deemed inadequate for future initiatives of design education in the government-run technical education sector.
Yet, Shillito’s adherence to her understanding of design was reiterated in a
1960 statement to the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘A student who has mastered the basic principles of design can design anything from a dress to a kitchen stove’.70
Applying universal principles to all products of design, she believed that through observation, experimentation, doing and making, the student gained knowledge for their chosen area of design. Within this commitment to basic principles of design, Shillito believed these unified aesthetic productions were intended for the right purpose, as explained in colour selections which were critical to the physical, psychological and spiritual health of individuals. Her artistic and theoretical ideas
68 ‘Art in Industry’, Pix, 11 Sept 1948, p. 20. 69 ‘A School of Design in New South Wales’, Report by the Art Advisory Committee to the Department of Technical Education, Dec 1954, pp.1-3; quoted from Kent, 1995, op. cit., p. 48. 70 ‘She Likes her Pupils Cheeky’, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 Mar 1960, p. 7.
288 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8 on design (modernism) were intertwined with the broader values, beliefs and ideals that reached back to the mid-nineteenth century yet forward to the Modern
Movement. Manifest in her teachings, they coalesced in a coherent practice of design.
Situated within the technical education system where training was geared to commercial purposes, Shillito subscribed to the idea that ‘art must go hand in hand with industry’.71 Seeing design’s future value to Australia’s secondary industries, she envisioned within her diploma program the need to cater for a greater number of trades and professions. Her students had gained publicity for their valuable artistic ideas acknowledged as allied to the ‘new industrial idea’.72
Apart from her actual work as a teacher, she devoted a great deal of time making contact with manufacturers for the benefit of student employment. At the same time, this value remained in aesthetic terms defining the designer as visual thinker and creator which increasingly was at odds with industrial technology’s true commercial aims.
In Shillito’s study of colour, she acknowledged creative instincts but emphasised learned rules: her rational system addressing functioning and purpose.
A ‘careful plan’ enabled students to ‘choose suitably for the purpose required’.73
Shillito began instruction with knowledge (information), comprehensively explaining theories using specific categories: colour intensities, sensitivity of value, colour rhythm, harmonies, contrasts, discords, scale of tones, and the effects of ambient light on colour; and using multiple examples. In her
71 ‘The Department of Art at the East Sydney Technical College’, op. cit., p. 43. 72 ‘Art in Industry’, op. cit., p. 20. 73 Shillito, 1959, in Carney, op. cit., p. 50.
289 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8 theoretically conceived colour schemes for the well-designed home, she extended her application of colour from objects to the fully integrated interior space, still writing of the modern home as ‘ART’:
Its interplay of closed and open spaces – textured walls and glass partitions - its colour schemes…generous wide glass screens [that] permit an exciting and dramatic flow of space and give by night and day equally exciting changes of light, atmosphere and views as one progresses through the house…vistas from all angles have been carefully studied…[having] an intimate and romantic relationship between them and the building…artificial lighting fixtures are planned to dramatise and accent the elegant lightness of the structure…Direct and indirect lighting throws light and reflected light in such form, creating dramatic patterns in the play of shadows and subtle gradations of colour.74
In her explanation of ‘Space’, Shillito detailed the architect’s design rationale for building, describing how it proceeds from the site’s geographic features, orientation to the sun, ease of maintenance and movement between spaces, to the effects of materials used in relationship to their respective spaces.75
This explanation was a demonstration of her understanding of interior space beyond formal elements to functional frame of reference. But how this was integrated into her programs of interior design is not demonstrated.
Shillito’s modernist use of cultural and historical material was as visual reference understanding stylistic precedents for pattern making, drawing and form, placement of motif, and in terms of value and colour.76 No attempt was made to link the designs symbolically, socio-economically or culturally to their historical past or cultural present. Focussing on underlying elements and
74 Shillito, 1954, op. cit., pp. 92-93. 75 ibid. 76 MAAS Archives, Barbara Abbott, op. cit., ‘Historical reference’, 1947-49; Abbott’s workbook shows historic examples included Byzantine art, Chinese art, Egyptian Coptic art, nineteenth- century English design, French, Norman design, Indian, Flemish tapestry and manuscript, Maya and Mexican art, Persian, Prehistoric, Renaissance, Russian, Saracenic design, Norwegian, Swiss, and Sassanian design used as examples for design patterns. Also, see Abbott’s ‘Aboriginal reference’ and ‘Designs’ workbooks of 1947-49 in same collection.
290 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8 principles of form, colour, pattern, contrast, and repetition, Shillito’s formalist method eschewed indigenous beliefs and mainstream values, preferring instead a simple interest in visual form. Using a systematic process of design, Shillito drew from realistic representations, distilling the idea to what she saw as essential abstract form. Using found objects (modern art and local Sydney subjects) for visual reference, sketches were produced, then transformed into two-dimensional decorative designs of simplified flat patterns and solid colouration. Unfortunately,
Shillito’s universalist ideas about form did not properly address the government's need for design for industry. Greater interest in broader cultural issues might have helped her link her design education to broader socio-economic needs.
While supporting the timelessness of universal principles, Shillito believed the Australian student had something unique to offer, their designs appealing both at home and abroad because of their originality, use of distinct natural phenomena and national culture: ‘the old land of the aborigine [sic] and the new land of beaches and wheat and sheep and sport’ provided inspiration for new motifs.
Lacking in centuries of exemplars and being ‘so far from the centres of ideas…[Shillito said students had to] build on their imagination’, this newness and distance of the country contributing to the process of design.77
Shillito proposed that colour has a powerful force physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually and, that it produces harmony in home and office, its conduciveness helpful to perfect health:
…moods are affected by ugliness and beauty, by sunny and dull weather; reactions to colour are likewise depressing or inspiring. Dark colours advance and make a room look smaller, whereas paler tones recede and lend spaciousness to the interior. Colour conditioning in hospitals,
77 Shillito, Letter to Mr. G. Fhodes c/o Rylands Pty. Ltd., op. cit.
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schools, and factories has been widely tested and the value of colour in aiding human efficiency and well-being has been acknowledged. As our economic and social life develops, these research findings will undoubtedly play an important role in everyday living.78
Shillito believed these ideas not only improved one’s aesthetic environment but one's outlook on life.
Above all, Shillito shared the Modern Movement’s vision of design for ordinary things, subscribing to its intentions, philosophies reflecting a spirit of the times ideology. Consistent with other approaches to design found elsewhere within the discourse on modernism, Shillito believed that:
x Design is fundamental to all creation.
x Design is a statement of social aims and responsibility.
x Basic principles result in unified aesthetic productions.
x Art is integral to new industrial idea.
x Rational planning should address functional purposes.
x Aesthetic value can be transposed to economic value.
x Cultural and historical material may be mined for visual reference.
x Abstraction is the most important aesthetic device.
x Universal principles are timeless and provoke the creative process.
x Design can transform one’s status, surroundings and outlook on life.
78 ibid., p. 54; given that Margaret Lord was lecturing on the subject in many public forums, Shillito may also be acknowledging or competing with Lord.
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Contribution to Professional Development
Phyllis Shillito never practiced as an interior designer; her understanding was theoretically-based and applied through teaching in the public technical education sector. Accordingly, her significant contributions to the professional development of interior design reside in her extensive understanding of fundamental principles and processes of design, and her legacy of students who became professional designers and teachers. Through these ideas and individuals, the discipline and profession further advanced. Her contributions to this end are summarised as follows utilising recognised concepts of profession and acknowledging her work as part of the professionalisation process:
1) Shillito contributed to professionalisation by pioneering interior design as
a separate study within the public technical education system in Sydney
situating it in the School of Design. This established interior design as a
practical career path for art students further shifting the activity away from
its amateur status as an élite past-time. Her programs for returning
servicemen also transformed the notion that interior design was more than
a feminine pursuit.
2) Shillito directed critical and requisite aesthetic knowledge for interior
design with her own instruction on abstract theoretical principles of design
and colour which were applied to objects and interior spaces. She
introduced new subjects beyond her expertise by hiring others to teach in
her diploma course for interior design.
3) Shillito gained professional authority through her overseas training,
experience and esteemed reputation as a teacher of design. Informed by
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design reform movements, from the onset she was recognised for her own
artistic skills and ability to obtain good results from others even in the
most trying conditions.
4) Alongside her teaching, Shillito raised community awareness sanctioning
interior design as a specialised field and promoting interior design through
student work in public forums and through the dissemination of basic
design and colour theories for interior and architectural design.
5) From her position as Head of Design at ESTC, Shillito fostered many
professional careers of designers who in turn further professionalised
interior design through their prominent memberships in the Society of
Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA, est.1951).
6) Shillito’s involvement in the business community was two-fold: her
commitment to provide good design to products and to gain employment
for her students and her emphasis on design as the basis of the study
created a culture of design that significantly contributed to a shift in the
field’s identity from ‘interior decoration’ to ‘interior design’.
Conclusion
This chapter has discussed Phyllis Shillito’s long and esteemed career in design education where she held an unwavering commitment to the aesthetic and social benefits of design. In a career spanning the breadth of the Modern Movement, she held a range of aesthetic ideals for design, working diligently within the framework of the public technical education system to instil these ideas in generations of students. In the process, she transformed the decorative arts into
294 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8 products for industrial design and instigated changes that would benefit the lives of ordinary people. This dual purpose she affected through the founding and development of the Design & Crafts Diploma for which she is most noted. Under stringent conditions of war and succeeding years of reconstruction, she sufficiently adapted her teaching ideas to meet academic and economic needs, initiating new programs and ambitiously creating a myriad of opportunities for student employment upon completion.
Although Shillito did not talk of herself as a feminist, her leadership and determination brought many changes in design education for women, improving her own teaching status and financial position and helping others in their personal and professional development. At a time and in a country where strong women were not wholeheartedly welcomed, Shillito was able to ‘hold her own amongst all those men’79 because she was cognisant of her talents in art and design, confident in her organisational abilities and motivated by a strong sense of purpose. Her activities were underpinned by a strong work ethic and keen sense of social responsibility towards her students.
Shillito belongs to an early generation of women who entered the technical school system in Britain under design reform initiatives, transporting a continuum of ideas and practices to a colonial outpost. It can be argued that she had
‘sufficiently infiltrated the world of design’ to teach alongside male artists and designers in technical schools, yet her experiences and outcomes were not equal.80
Trained as a teacher in art and design, Shillito became influential in Sydney’s
79 Cameron Sparkes, 26 Aug 1999. 80 Isabelle Anscombe, A Woman’s touch: Women in Design from 1860 to the Present Day, New York: Viking Penquin, 1984, p. 12.
295 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8 design developments of the 1920s to 1960s. Teaching within the government-run technical education system in Sydney, her experiences and work take on different dimensions from those of Proctor, McDougall and Lord: more directly impacting students seeking employment in design and more directly impacted by a male- dominated workplace where she struggled to obtain financial parity and equivalent teaching status. Never married, Shillito relied on earned income which was encumbered by a legislated system that regulated women’s pay lesser than men’s.
To advance, she repeatedly justified her claims with quantitative and qualitative data.
As evidenced in this chapter, Shillito’s contributions and expertise in design gained from her early design reform training related to subjects simultaneously progressive and conventional to the practical education of artistic women: her teaching and understanding of design both advanced and limited by social conventions. As was traditional of her era, Shillito was directed to areas of basic design, textiles and colour in which she excelled. Applying essential elements and principles to practical feminine concerns, her knowledge and expertise in these areas was progressive based upon an incorporation of modern formalist theoretical ideas and systematic instruction. She instilled in the minds of many students the significance of the creative thinking processes necessary for the invention of new ideas and unique products.
Shillito’s knowledge of textiles became central to late 1930s courses for interior design incorporated within her broad design curriculum. In the 1940s and under pressure of community interests, the specialised subject of interior design
296 Phyllis Shillito Chapter 8 was further defined. Shillito augmented her Design Diploma program studies by hiring others to teach in areas that were outside her expertise. Thus, as a program director she was cognisant of progressive changes. With reconstruction efforts underway, men entered her interior design program, making a myth of its engendered status. At the same time, students and officials alike would come to question the limited knowledge base that was gender bound.
As the requirements of ‘design’ and ‘designer’ were reassessed in the
1950s within the government-run education system, Shillito’s aesthetic ideas and arts and crafts approach to design production were scrutinised under pressure from commercial and industrial interests and requirements. Her teachings that purported aesthetic appearance using an arts and crafts approach to production became increasingly insufficient with new technologies and professional demands.
Ironically, while under fire locally, Shillito was recognised internationally for her esteemed expertise in colour and interior design. She also responded to the new modernist ideal for interior design integrating her ideas with architectural space: publishing her views and relating the understanding of colour, daylighting and space to the modern interior. In the end, under new realities of advanced education in design—as technician-designer took precedence over artist- designer—Shillito’s artistic influence within the public technical education sector waned.
The pioneering design teacher retired quietly under pressure of ever- increasing changes and conditions of a modernising technology-driven society, concluding her teaching career in her privately-run Shillito School of Design. At the same time, her curriculum for interior design at East Sydney Technical
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College (ESTC) was not formally reviewed by government, commercial and professional groups until 1965, taking another five years after her departure for
Interior Design to be recognised as a distinct advanced degree, attesting to the slow nature of progress and change, especially in interests still considered primarily a woman’s domain.
298 Mary White Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
MARY WHITE
Back of every Creation, supporting if like an arch, is faith…if one believes, then miracles occur. Faith has nothing to do with profits; if anything it has to do with prophets. Men who know and believe can foresee the future. They don’t want to put something over - they want to put something under us. They want to give solid support to our dreams. The world isn’t kept running because it’s a paying proposition. (God doesn’t make a cent on the deal.) The world goes on because a few men in every generation believe in it utterly, accept it unquestioningly; they underwrite it with their lives. 1
—Mary White, March 1963
Introduction
This chapter on the last of five Sydney-based women—Mary Laidley White— follows the same structure as preceding chapters giving first biographical, disciplinary and experiential background to her contributions in the development of interior design as a discipline and profession in Sydney. A description of
White’s activities as a designer, educator, and advocate of the profession from the
1950s to early 1970s follows, demonstrating her determined commitment and interest in all aspects of the arts, especially interior design, despite difficulties she faced personally and professionally. This chapter further analyses individual and societal values and beliefs that impact White’s contributions and underpin her idea and philosophy of design, subsequently, her approach to interior design. A summary follows of her significant contribution to professional development in
Sydney. The chapter closes giving analysis of White’s visionary role which paved
1 ‘Biographical Material 1920-1981’, handwritten document 25 Mar 1963, the beginning lines are words quoted from playwright Henry Miller, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-3.
299 Mary White Chapter 9 the way for future initiatives in interior design education but which ironically contributed to the demise of her own private school.
Biographical Background and Basis of Authority
Mary Laidley Mort White was born 27 March 1912 at Mt. Morgan, Queensland, the great grand-daughter of Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, and the daughter of John
Laidley Mort and Lucy Leibling Mort. Her father John was an engineer, working as a metallurgist until he left the field to join the family shipping business at
Mort’s Dock in Sydney. Mary’s parents each came from large families, John with seven elder sisters and Lucy as one of seven sisters, making her childhood full with aunts and female cousins.2 Yet, according to her long-time friend Jane Burns,
Mary and her father ‘made no distinctions between boys and girls’.3
Coming from a Catholic background, Mary’s first school was Rose Bay
Convent, where education, as Burns points out, was ‘sort of universal with a strong emphasis on art and literature…[this general liberal arts background meant there] wasn’t any emphasis at that time on women making their own way in the world.’4 Mary also boarded at Moss Vale before attending Fort Street Girls High
School (now home of the S.H. Ervin Gallery) where she received 4A’s and 3B’s in her Intermediate Certificate.5 Although advised to continue for her Leaving
Certificate, in 1928 Mary took up instead a Fine Art Scholarship at the National
Art School (NAS) at East Sydney Technical College (ESTC), attending from 1929
2 Sue McGrath, ‘Something that would last…Mary White, Founder of the Crafts Council of Australia’, Craft Australia, no. 4, Summer 1984, p. 106. 3 Jane Burns, 22 Mar 2001. 4 ibid. 5 ‘The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Application for Churchill Fellowship, 1966’, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-4.
300 Mary White Chapter 9 to 1932.6 According to Sue McGrath, Mary’s artistic interests were also influenced by her father’s ‘love of precision’ which he expressed through his home workshop and lifelong interest in photography.7
At ESTC, Mary diligently completed her course to 4th year level in three years through continual promotions and full-time attendance at day classes and additional study four nights a week from her second year on.8 However, just prior to completion and her Diploma award (which required full-time 5 years) from
ESTC, Mary interrupted her studies at age nineteen to marry Rupert Vivian White, the ceremony held at St Mary’s Basilica in Sydney.
Following their marriage, the couple first moved to Wollongong but later settled at a country property near Wellington, NSW, where Mary stayed until
1949. Four children were born to Mary and Rupert during this time: Edmond
Rupert Laidley White (14 December 1932), Jonathon Parker Laidley White (27
February 1935), Charles Sully Laidley White (1 May 1938), and Deborah Mary
Lucy White (16 August 1942). Years later, Charles was killed in a car accident
(1957) and Deborah died suddenly from an epileptic attack at her home (1972).9
Life on the country property during the 1930s Depression and subsequent
World War II years was extremely difficult for Mary. As Burns tells, ‘Rupert went off to war and left Mary with the property…Mary had trouble coping and money
6 ‘The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Application for Churchill Fellowship, 1966’, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-4. It is important to note that White may have taken some of Phyllis Shillito’s foundation classes in design but the Diploma of Design program had not yet been established. This would happen in 1933 with the first graduates in 1936. 7 McGrath, op. cit., p. 106. 8 ibid. 9 ‘Biographical Note’ prepared by Peter Arfanis, 20 Dec 1993, Mary White Archive, Acquired Archives MAAS, Powerhouse Museum, p. 6.
301 Mary White Chapter 9 got a bit desperate…[it was at this time that] Mary took to making hats.’10 White’s son Jon tells of his mother’s ‘strong-minded, larger-than-life’ personality but also of how difficult life was and that Mary had to learn a great deal about
‘managing…but eventually [she] found the country limiting.’11 It was during these isolating yet demanding years in the country that Mary also, according to
McGrath, read for the International University Course.12 Then in a radical move for the times, White returned to Sydney in 1949 alone wishing to continue her creative work. It was after the war and Burns further tells that, ‘Mary realised her marriage was on shaky grounds and with all the children at boarding school, she set out to find a way to design’.13 So, after seventeen years of marriage she boarded a train from Orange to Sydney to begin a career in design.14
Burns continues White’s story: ‘as luck would have it’ a lady on the train saw Mary’s hat box and ‘creation’ inside which ‘gave her encouragement to design’.15 Having left her husband and home on the understanding that she ‘must support herself entirely’ if she wished to live in Sydney, White began by working as a freelance designer with Russell Roberts, an Australian advertising firm, in
1950.16 There, she gained experience working on a range of design projects; and according to Burns, also attended Shillito’s classes at ESTC because she had not
10 Jane Burns, 22 Mar 2001. 11 McGrath, op. cit., p. 106. 12 ibid. 13 Jane Burns, 22 Mar 2001. 14 ‘Mary White–Personal Background’, attached to ‘Application for Churchill Fellowship’, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-4. 15 Jane Burns, 22 Mar 2001. 16 ibid.
302 Mary White Chapter 9 yet had any formal training in ‘design’.17 Soon after, White gained recognition for her alleged ability to combine function and glamour in interior design (Figure
9.1).
Figure 9.1 Mary White in Early 1950s Source: Mary White Archive, MAAS, Sydney
From the 1950s through 1960s, White became involved in numerous commissions for the design and construction of furniture, special projects, domestic and commercial interiors. In 1951, White also joined six other interior designers to found the Society of Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA), a group concerned with raising professional standards and developing a code of ethics for
17 Burns believed that Mary had not had any formal training in design and knew the next step was to get some, going to Phyllis Shillito’s school at this time to learn design. Mary White would have encountered Shillito years earlier at ESTC possibly taking classes in the Introductory course of the Diploma program for Painting, Modelling, Illustration, Ceramics, and Applied Art from 1929-32. Burns says designer/ceramicist and friend of Shillito’s Peter Travis would also be an influence to White in design.
303 Mary White Chapter 9 interior designers. The immediacy of her involvement indicates her commitment to professional advancement of the field. This combined with her expertise in
‘contemporary space-saving furniture’ gained her further public recognition displaying her designs at the first SIDA exhibition held in 1953 at Woollahra Arts
Centre (Figure 9.2).18
Figure 9.2 Display Details in SIDA Exhibition Catalogue, 1953 Source: Mary White Archive, MAAS, Sydney
White finally divorced her husband in 1954, at which time she opened a shop at Edgecliff selling custom furniture of her own designs.19 According to her
18 Mary White’s copy of SIDA 1953 exhibition catalogue is held in Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-8/1; the exhibition was held Tuesday, 1 Sept to Sunday, 12 Sept 1953; according to the catalogue, White’s studio was located at Level 10, 39 Martin Place, Sydney. Lower case reflects the catalogue’s usage of the current vogue in typology. 19 ‘Mary White–Personal Background’, op. cit. White states as a matter of fact that ‘my husband wished to re-marry, there was a divorce in 1954. I refused alimony.’
304 Mary White Chapter 9
‘Girl Friday’, Pat Pruden, ‘Mary developed a complex business. She sold furniture designed from her working drawings. She encouraged specially printed fabric or natural weaves, everything in a total environment had to work down to the ashtrays.’20 Pruden also indicates how daring this was at the time because,
‘completely individual work had to overcome great suspicion…people were nervous of decorators. [But] Mary won her place among the best.’21
By 1961 and despite having achieved recognition for her design work,
Mary decided to turn her furniture shop into the Mary White School of Art, subsidising the new enterprise with income as a consultant designer.22 White later explained her decision saying she had not really had her ‘heart in commerce’.23
But as Burns elaborates, White had suffered financial ‘reversals in her working life’ having ‘not taken into account that she should dot i’s and cross t’s’ in business dealings’.24
In starting her private school, White gathered together many painters, sculptors, designers and architects to teach her students within a studio-based environment. The school was small, unique and as friend Jane Burns describes, ‘a bit avant garde for the time’.25 Among the founding teachers were Faye Bottrell,
Heather Dorrough and John Coburn. Other early contributors were artist Brian
Dunlop, sculptor Robert Klippel and architect Patricia Horsley, the latter teaching architectural drafting and perspective skills alongside her employment assisting
20 Quoted in McGrath, op. cit., p. 106; this also follows the ideas of Shillito and her program of Design at ESTC. 21 ibid. 22 The location of White’s first school was 199 New South Head Road, Edgecliff, (Sydney) NSW. 23 ‘Mary White–Personal Background’, op. cit. 24 Jane Burns, 22 Mar 2001. 25 ibid.
305 Mary White Chapter 9
White with professional work for domestic and commercial design projects.26
White also engaged historians and university lecturers John Kaplan and H.D.
Nicolson to plan and deliver ‘a long and arduous series of lectures…in the history of art and aesthetics’.27 As the school progressed, other artists, designers and architects were hired to meet student needs.
White’s natural leadership style and interest in the promotion of the arts and design in the community gained her many official positions in societies and organisations. As Vice-President (1957-1960) and then President (1960-1966) of the Society of Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA), White’s ideal was ‘to raise the standard of the profession and having led the Society out of Egypt’, she did not seek re-election believing the organisation would benefit by the change in leadership.28 At the same time, White maintained her commitment to art education serving as a member of the State Executive of the Australian Society for
Education through Arts (ASEA) from 1965-1972. She also worked annually with the New South Wales Association of University Women Graduates acting as a
Career Counsellor to encourage interior design as a chosen profession.29 In 1964,
White had become a foundation member of the Crafts Association of New South
26 Patricia Horsley, 2 Feb 2001; Horsley gives approximate dates saying she started in either 1958 or 1959 and worked three days a week until 1963. Horsley studied architecture at the University of Sydney from 1948-1953 at which time 10% of program were women. According to Horsley, Ashworth was the Dean and among her teachers were George Molnar, Lloyd Rees, Roland Wakelin, Professor Hook (mechanical engineer), Professor Meyer (History of Art).She also remembers how White would sit at the drafting table and create her designs for her private commission work and then Horsley would execute them. 27 ‘Typescript of Accompanying Photostat [sic] of Letter from H.D. Nicolson Esq., Chairman of History Teachers Association’, 11 Jul 1966, in ‘The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Application for Churchill Fellowship, 1966’, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-4. 28 Included in documentation for Churchill Fellowship, ‘Mary White–Personal Background’ op. cit.; I have chosen to use dates given by White; other dates for holding these offices differ in ‘Biographical note’, p. 6, which suggests dates for President are 1962-67 and 1968-71. 29 Information included in documentation for Churchill Fellowship: ‘Mary White–Personal Background’ op. cit.
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Wales and later, Chair of the Steering Committee for the foundation of the Crafts
Council of Australia, an interest that would in time foster a new career promoting art, crafts and design in Aboriginal communities.
In 1966, White’s increasing awareness of the necessity to advance the understanding and study of interior design throughout Australia led her to apply for a Winston Churchill Fellowship. Encouraged by Nicolson as Chairman of the
History Teachers’ Association, and supported by H. Ingham Ashworth, Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, University of New South Wales (UNSW), White’s intention was to travel overseas ‘to widen [her] reference’ in the field of Interior
Design.30 White’s initiative had also germinated following earlier discussions in
1965 with Professors Ashworth and Haynes at the UNSW:
[the] possibility, and again later, the probability of the introduction of a course for Interior Design within the Architectural Faculty, [with those involved agreeing]…there is an overlap between Architecture, Industrial, and Interior Design. Interior Design being an important part [of design education] should become a separate subject.31
Unfortunately, White was not successful in her application.
Despite disappointment and in contrast to her grand plans to travel widely and gain first-hand knowledge from experts around the world, White continued to expand slowly at a local level ‘preparing a correspondence course for country people embracing Art Appreciation, history of furniture and simple Interior
Design instruction’.32 White had initially established her school on the basis of
30 Letters included in documentation for Churchill Fellowship: ‘Transcript of Accompanying Photostat [sic] of Letter from H.D. Nicolson Esq., Chairman of History Teachers Association’, op. cit. and Letter from Professor H. Ingham Ashworth, 27 Jun 1966; ‘The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Application for Churchill Fellowship, 1966’, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-4. 31 ‘The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Application for Churchill Fellowship, 1966’, op. cit., p. 3. 32 ibid., p. 4a.
307 Mary White Chapter 9 providing training for country girls knowing first-hand of their limited experiences. This demographic proved often catastrophic for White personally and the school financially as conditions of drought and ensuing responsibilities of country women forced them to remain at home. The scenario is described by
White in the following letter to a friend:
…Must have been about 1967 or so. The school was expanding and I took some other premises further down N.S.H. Road on the opposite side, [211 New South Head Road, Edgecliff] just as I had done that, we had that dreadful year of drought and as most of my full-time students were country girls, I had one cancellation after the other, they couldn’t afford to do without the girls as they had to work the place etc., so having 20 booked I ended up with 5-15 below my break-even point and had to continue, it nearly broke me. However, I managed, sold my flat at Potts Point and went to live at the back of the school. Dad died in 1968 and I went to live with Mum in her little house in Woollahra…In 1969 I went to live in a rented town house at Paddington-a 2-storey mezzanine with a terrific view…[then] the C of E [Church of England] who owned the school premises on a 99 year basis ran out of years and forced me to move. I had already given up the premises I had taken earlier because of financial strain. The Church moved me into a pub on the corner opposite Darling Point Road where I was for 18 months when the Eastern Subs Railway had to demolish it. So I found a house up at Bondi Junction at the back of Grace Bros in 1970 [11 Hollywood Avenue]. 33
To augment her income during these years, White wrote a series of monthly articles on homes that she considered interesting, illustrated by her own photographs. She also accepted commissions to photograph interiors and related trade products for publications.
During the early 1970s, White’s all-embracing interest in art, architecture and design, both contemporary and historical, involved her in two major public issues: the controversial resignation of Joern Utzon, architect for the Sydney
Opera House, for which she marched in protest and the fight to save the Queen
33 Quoted in McGrath, op. cit., p. 107. Also see, ‘Advertisement’ found in Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-10/2 which confirms the location of White’s school to this time.
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Victoria building from destruction. At this time, White with Sydney architect Bill
Lucas initiated the Sydney Arts Foundation (SAF), an organisation comprised of differing groups of people opposing the demolition of the historic building. The building supported by these groups became, as McGrath tells, ‘symbolic of the kind of heritage that forces of progress had become insensitive to’.34 At the same time, the old building was recognised as having extraordinary new potential as a multi-purpose environment for community use (Figure 9.3).
Figure 9.3 Proposed Plans for Development of Arts Centre, Early 1970s Source: Mary White Archive, MAAS, Sydney
34 Quoted in McGrath, op. cit., p. 108.
309 Mary White Chapter 9
White’s public involvement with the Opera House and Queen Victoria building brought her into contact with the Australian Council of the Arts, the group asking her at this time to go to Central Australia to report on Aboriginal crafts. In August 1971, she became a Craft Adviser for Aboriginal Projects under the auspices of the Crafts Council.35 White’s growing commitment to this new position alongside a downturn in student enrolment at her school finally caused her to close it in 1972. White moved to Adelaide to live at this time. Following the
Labor party’s election victory and creation of the Department of Aboriginal
Affairs that year, White was provided with a two-ton, four-wheel drive vehicle to travel from Adelaide to Alice Springs and across the Gibson and Tanami Deserts.
Her new social and artistic aims directed at ensuring decent prices for good
Aboriginal art and craft and bringing together other artists and Aboriginal people.
White’s involvement included the building of the Centre for Aboriginal Artists and Craftsmen in Alice Springs where Indigenous artists could sell their work.
In June 1974, White attended a major World Crafts Council (WCC) conference in Toronto, Canada and, in May 1975, attended the Asian Assembly of the World Crafts Council held in Sydney. In 1976, she was appointed Senior
Community Adviser at Dubbo, NSW, where she was involved with welfare work for Aboriginal people. While retiring from public service in 1977, she remained active with the World Crafts Council (1978), South Pacific Commission (1979) teaching in the Solomon Islands, and teaching with the Aboriginal Land Fund
35 According to McGrath, the role was funded through a combined grant from the Australian Council for the Arts and the then Office of Aboriginal Affairs. One of her major tasks was pointing the crafts in a new direction in relation to natural resources and, in some cases, instigating new cottage industries.
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Commission (1979). In her final retirement, she built a house on the family farm at Goonoo, near Yeoval in central western NSW (now her son Jon’s property), doing all the work apart from the original house frame and electrical wiring.
White’s reach in all aspects of art were diverse and extensive through local, national and international involvement. In addition to SIDA, ASEA and the
Crafts Council, White was active in the Institute of Australian Photographers, the
Furnishers’ Society of New South Wales, the National Trust, the Art Gallery
Society of New South Wales, and Zonta International, a world service organisation of professional women to aid women and children in need.
On 19 October 1981, Mary White died aged 69 of cancer: her energy, passion, social and civic commitment to life, art, design and humanity mirrored in her various interests and roles as designer, photographer, owner, director and facilitator at the Mary White School of Art (and Design), and as protester, promoter and protector of the public domain. In 2001, the Society of Interior
Designers of Australia (SIDA) inaugurated the Mary White Scholarship for the study of Interior Architecture at UNSW. The $2,000 scholarship commemorated
White’s contribution to interior design education, acknowledging her intention to provide opportunities for study in the field to students particularly those from country areas disadvantaged by limited resources.
Activities and Participation in Interior Design
Mary White was active from the 1950 to 1972 as a furniture and interior designer, as facilitator and visionary of her school’s program of study, as a photographer and advocate of the interior design profession. Her contributions are described
311 Mary White Chapter 9 from these perspectives. White’s writings on interior design, in contrast to the other women of this study, were few and differed in purpose. Instead of offering advice in a series of articles, published books or texts on home decoration and design, White wrote about interior spaces that she considered ‘interesting’, accompanied by her own photographs which she believed conveyed visually the greatest understanding of her intent for good design to the public (Figure 9.4). The featured spaces were inventive, economical and well thought-out solutions to design problems.
Figure 9.4 Mary White Photograph of an Interior Source: Mary White Archive, MAAS, Sydney
An example of her thrift and flair can be found in her 1966 article in
Australian Home Journal, where White wrote of the process and resultant effects of converting basement storerooms—such as the one in which she had moved in
1965—to liveable spaces:
312 Mary White Chapter 9
It took three weeks with one helper to paint those rafters and the walls. Then came the floor. The old and cracked cement had the dried oil paint of many colours and many years ground into it so thoroughly that removal was impossible. Glazing with a clear orange glaze seemed the solution. The underpaint showed through the glaze and the fine cracks looked like ancient treasure, and made a wonderful setting for Persian rugs, which could be changed about at will.36
Of a very different nature, White left behind personal musings that were really unresolved notations about design scribbled in the early hours of the morning. In a fourteen-page handwritten paper, she explored the deeper meaning of art, design and the nature of universal laws.37 White’s exploration of art’s universal laws will be discussed later in this chapter.
Through the 1950s-1960s, White gained many commissions for the design and construction of furniture and interiors. Selected design work is listed in the following Table 9.1.
White also designed furniture for many private commissions as well as for other interior designer’s projects, such as her work for the well-known Sydney designer, Marion Hall Best. Her interest and expertise in photography also involved her in many local and international projects. In the late 1960s, White photographed ‘a large American order from V’Soske Carpets’ which were then duplicated for salespeople around the world, for domestic albums, for mailings sent overseas and for exhibition photography.38 She also shot photographs of interiors in colour for the local Telegraph newspaper agreeing ‘for two reasons:
36 Quoted in McGrath, op. cit., p. 107; also see ‘Photographs–subject Files’ c.1960, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-11. White’s photos reproduced in Australian Home Journal include the homes of Edmund Dykes, David Jackson, Mr & Mrs. Cater, Len Bligh, and Pat Arnott. White’s own apartment in Paddington was photographed and appeared in Woman’s Day. 37 ‘Biographical Material 1920-1981 handwritten document’, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-3. 38 ‘Mary White–Personal Background’, Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Application, op. cit.
313 Mary White Chapter 9
Table 9.1 Important Commissions for Design of Furniture and Interiors by Mary White
Commission for Design of Furniture and Interiors
x AMP Cafeteria, Sydney Cove, n.d.
x General Motors-Holden, car interiors and exterior colours, (1953)
x Australian Consolidated Press, Canberra, n.d.
x International Press Conference, design and arrangements, Sydney, (1957)
x Sydney Morning Herald, Office of James Fairfax, Sydney, n.d.
x Senate Conference Room, University of Sydney, Sydney, n.d.
x BMA (now AMA) Conference Room, Macquarie Street, Sydney, n.d.
x Australian Sisalcraft Ltd., Board Room, Executive Offices and Executive Dining Room, Homebush (suburb of Sydney), n.d.
x Westons Biscuit Factory, Camperdown (suburb of Sydney), n.d.
x John A Gilbert, Ira Berk, Clyde Engineering, Sydney, n.d.
x St. Vincent Hospital ‘Little Shop, Paddington, NSW, n.d.
x The Wool Showroom, ‘The Export Centre’, Kent Street, Sydney, (1971-72)
x Proposed plan for the re-development of the Queen Victoria, n.d.
x Exhibition displays for Royal Australian Society (RAS), n.d.
Source: ‘Draft Application for Churchill Fellowship’, Mary White Archive, 93/343/1-4, MAAS, Powerhouse Museum, ‘The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Application for Churchill Fellowship, 1966’
(a) that it is a powerful weapon for promoting good design and, (b) that it will bring in some money towards the school.’39 From 1966 to 1967, White took many house and garden style photographs for Australian Home Journal including the homes of locally known people: the Edmund Dykes, David Jackson, the Caters,
Len Bligh and Pat Arnott.40 Other photographs included shots of craftspeople and
39 ibid. 40 ‘Series description’, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-11, p. 27.
314 Mary White Chapter 9 designers, including artist/ceramist Peter Travis and interior designer Marion Hall
Best for the Home Journal; and illustrations for Beatrice Bligh’s book, Down to
Earth. 41
After the conversion of her shop to a school in 1961, White in her characteristic style ‘went full blast’ to construct her program of study.42 The early curriculum included foundation courses for art, craft and design areas, art histories and aesthetics, and architectural drafting and perspective. The full design course offered in the daytime attracted a small core of students, but to augment studies
(and the school’s income) public lectures on aspects of art were held in the evening. Former instructor Fay Bottrell described the study as ‘a broad program’ geared to design, with White bringing instructors in on the basis of their particular expertise in various areas of design, in painting and sculpture, and in ‘anything that could be placed in an interior’.43 At the same time, students attending White’s school did not necessarily follow careers directly associated with interior design nor did everyone leave with intentions to work professionally; many ‘moved on, got married’ and used their study for artistic and cultural development applying it to their own homes.44
There is little data concerning the number of students who attended
White’s school from 1961-1972. Jenny Ledingham, a student in 1963, remembers they ‘were a small group’.45 Ledingham also describes the early program as follows:
41 ibid. 42 The characteristic is described by Jane Burns, 22 Feb 2001. 43 McGrath, op. cit., pp. 106-7. 44 Patricia Horsley, 2 Feb 2001. 45 McGrath, op. cit., p. 107.
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[it was] a basic course for an interior designer, [and although not a formally accredited program] it was an alternative to the Tech. Mary White was really practical, a creative woman and she gave us a broad art foundation. It was a stepping stone.
Ester Ginat, another student of the 1960s, remembers White’s pragmatic yet personal teaching approach and arts and crafts-based content, ‘she encouraged us to go to all the galleries, especially galleries like the Aladdin which showed craft design. We experienced pottery, tie-dying, batik, furniture making, as well as going through pure design. There were no other courses like it then. And it was very personal. Mary asked me to do a lot, let me organise displays, decorate exhibitions. She got us all involved.’46
More broad-reaching and philosophical in content was the lecture series on
‘Aspects of Modern Art’. Over a period of two years (1962-63), White worked with historians H. D. Nicolson and John Kaplan to develop the nine-month weekly art and aesthetics series. Nicolson and Kaplan delivered the majority of lectures but, sculptor Alan Ingham, musician Ken Robins, painters Dorothy Thornhill,
Frank Hinder, Elwyn Lynn and Jeffrey Smart, and designer Alistair Morrison contributed (Table 9.2).47
In the process of building her school, White made and catalogued over
6,000 slides on the ‘History of Art, Architecture and Furniture’ which gave visual examples from which to explain and critique design.48
46 ibid. 47 Lecture series ran from 2 May to 12 Dec 1963 at White’s school in two-hour sessions on Thursday nights from 6:00-8:00 pm. 48Mary White School of Art – ‘Letter to the Chairman, Australian National Advisory Committee for UNESCO’, 5 Jun 1966, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-1-4; see also, Patricia Horsley 2 Feb 2001; Horsley believes these slides were donated to the regional Art Centre at either Dubbo or Orange after the school closed.
316 Mary White Chapter 9
Table 9.2 Illustrated Lecture Discussions: ‘Aspects of Modern Art’, 1963
Topic Presenter Date
Element of Modern Art John Kaplan 2 May How Much Past is Present Harry Nicolson 9 May Sculptor Alan Ingham 16 May Nature and Art Harry Nicolson 23 May Basic Physical Part of Music Ken Robins 30 May
Art and Nature John Kaplan 6 Jun Size in Art Harry Nicolson 13 Jun Art in Everyday Life John Kaplan 20 Jun Public Art John Kaplan 27 Jun
Space in Art Harry Nicolson 4 Jul Faith and Art Harry Nicolson 11 Jul Faith and Art John Kaplan 18 Jul Music in High Society Ken Robins 25 Jul
Style Harry Nicolson 1 Aug Story of the Home Harry Nicolson 8 Aug Return to the Golden Age John Kaplan 15 Aug Painter Discussing Drawing Dorothy Thornhill 22 Aug Art á la Mode Harry Nicolson 29 Aug
The Human Form John Kaplan 5 Sept Music and the Enlightenment Ken Robins 12 Sept A Fresh Look at Nature Harry Nicolson 19 Sept Painter discussing Painting Frank Hinder 26 Sept John Kaplan 3 Oct Vulgarity Light John Kaplan 10 Oct Putting 19th Century in its Place Ken Robins 17 Oct Painter discussing Painting Elwyn Lynn 24 Oct In Search of New Standards John Kaplan 31 Oct
Designer discussing Design Alistair Morrison 7 Nov Pure Structures Harry Nicolson 14 Nov How Relevant is Surrealism Elwyn Lynn, Jeffrey Smart 21 Nov Dissolving Structures John Kaplan 28 Nov
Ultra Modern Music Ken Robins 5 Dec The New Freedom Harry Nicolson 12 Dec
Source: Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-4, ‘The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Application for Churchill Fellowship, 1966’, ‘Lecture Series for 1963, Aspects of Modern Art’
In 1964, White contemplated modifying the school’s name to ‘Mary White
School of Art & Design’ experimenting with a new letterhead and adding to the
317 Mary White Chapter 9
‘Syllabus and General Information’ a course entitled ‘Creativity in Advertising’.49
The ambitious intent of White’s proposed addition to her school’s offerings is recorded:
…some of the subjects embraced in this course will be elementary Philosophy, Semantics, Literary Criticism, The Place of Poetry, Contemporary Writing and its Sources, Psychology, The History of Western Art, The Sources of Modern Art, Colour Theory, Photography, Typography, Packaging, Rendering Techniques, Market and Consumer Research, Campaign Planning, Media Planning, Writing for Television, Film and Radio, Sociology.50
The new school name seems never to have eventuated and it is uncertain if the new program was implemented. Nonetheless, these attempts remain as an indication of White’s growing awareness (most likely due to her involvement with
ASEA) of the need for comprehensive educational approaches to teaching creative art and design disciplines—which was missing in current Interior Design education. Also if successful, a new program would have generated additional income.
Further illustrating her intentions for interior design, a syllabus dated to
June 1966 outlines a comprehensive three-year course combining ‘interior design subjects’ and ‘supplementary and crafts subjects’ (Table 9.3). Although it is uncertain if this comprehensive listing of courses represents a desired future state or the reality of the school’s program, it further demonstrates the extent of White’s exploration into curriculum development.
49 Mary White School of Art–‘Screenprinting information 1964’, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-10/8. 50 ibid.
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Table 9.3 Mary White School of Art, School of Interior Design
Diploma Course First Year
Interior Design Subjects Supplementary & Crafts Subjects
Elementary Architectural Drawing & Layout Block Printing Elements of Design Dyeing Colour Analysis Pottery Typography, Lettering & Layout Typing Drawing & Painting Weaving Mechanical Perspective & Sketching Bookbinding History of Art, Architecture & Furniture Screen Printing
Second Year
Measuring & Measured Drawings One basic craft in which to specialise Detail Drawings Model Construction Free Perspective Practical Timber Construction Rendering Techniques Market Research Theory of Architecture with Furnishings Application in: Furnishings Services (fixing, fitting, flooring, Interiors etc.) Furniture Building Services (heating, lighting, ventilation, History etc.) Theory of Design & Construction One half day off every two weeks to be Methods & properties of Materials employed profitably with written report Council Regulations relating to minor interior alternations, office partitions etc. Costing, Specification Writing & Office Practice
Third Year Evening Study
Furniture Design Photography and its use 3,000 word Thesis in subject of own choice No dark-room work entailed Advanced Construction Presentation of work
Exam at end of each year, Main exam at end of second year to decide eligibility for Third Year. Exam to be based on a one week design problem and a review of the previous two year’s work.
Source: Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-4, ‘The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Application for Churchill Fellowship, 1966’, attachment, no pagination
Painter and teacher John Olsen reflecting later described the quality and commitment of those involved in instruction at White’s school as aligning their ideals and goals with other famous national and international art and design schools:
319 Mary White Chapter 9
There were a core of students doing a design course, and they would also do life drawing, so there was this cross-fertilisation, all in a relaxed manner. Some did the night lectures as well, then there were people like Drysdale and French looking at what the students did. Probably, at the time, the students couldn’t grasp how much they were getting. Later I’ve heard them say how splendid they realise it was. Mary was an idealist. Her school was not programmatic, we didn’t discuss philosophies. She gave the best available. She gave scholarships to have quality. It was the sort of small, intimate situation you have in the finest schools where students come to masters looking for a personal relationship. We taught there for love and concern. It was like other schools, [Julian] Ashton’s and [George] Bell’s, that had a commitment. It would be fair to say Mary’s school could be seen in terms of Bauhaus ideals.51
In late 1967, White hired Harry Stephens who was in his final year of architectural studies at UNSW.52 Stephens was introduced to White by Charles
Wetton, an English graphic designer/furniture designer and graduate of Royal
College of Art, London, who also taught at White’s school.53 Stephens first taught
‘perspectives and things’ and later became Head Tutor at the school.
By the early 1970s, Mary White and her school were well-known and established yet remained burdened by unpredictable numbers and varying student needs. Stephens’ role besides teaching was to promote the special qualities of the school as indicated in his letter to a prospective student, ‘no set curriculum is adhered to but…the course[s] are assessed and evaluated by the staff in conjunction with the students.’54 The letter continued:
…the school operates on the basis of a small class with intimate contact between staff and [professionals] in a wide variety of related [fields] who
51 McGrath, op. cit., p. 107. 52 Email from Harry Stephens to this writer, 23 Oct 2004; Stephens first attended University of Sydney [UoS] studying architecture but transferred to The University of New South Wales [UNSW] in his third year at the time of Ashworth. Stephens first worked for White in her office at Woolloomooloo over the Christmas period of 1967 after she had left the Hollywood Ave. Bondi site. Stephens mainly taught ‘perspectives and things’. He started teaching P/T in the Architectural Faculty at UNSW Oct 1970 and writes that he left teaching at White’s in 1970. However, a letter dated 7 Jan 1972 indicates Stephens worked on until that time. 53 According to Stephens, Wetton worked at NSW Government Architect's office and designed the Taronga Park Zoo’s Wombat logo among other things. 54 ‘Letter to Mr. K. Harrison from Harry Stephens, 7 Jan 1972’, in Mary White School of Art– ‘Correspondence and Student details’, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-10/1.
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try to involve the students in their particular real problems. We feel that in this way we provide a facility very lacking in the existing fields of education. Each student is encouraged to regard the school as a “home away from home” and for this reason has access to the school and its facilities at any time.55
The letter suggests that White’s vision to expand her curriculum placing interior design education at a higher level was not matched but rather was limited by the realities of small class sizes.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a twelve-month correspondence course was developed to increase the school’s enrolment. The course consisted of sixteen lessons; eight in each section: the first section covering ‘exercises in basic design and colour’ followed by a second series of exercises ‘relating to the average home, leading to ways of re-designing space from [an] individual study of one’s own problem areas’.56 Fees for the correspondence course cost $200.00 and included enrolment fee, an equipment parcel, Interior Design Text and Illustrations (Figure
9.5).
55 ibid. 56 ‘Course Info and Enrolment Forms’, 1967-72, and ‘Twelve Months Correspondence Course in Interior Design’, no pagination, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-10-2; in the same file another earlier version of the correspondence course outlines the basic design section and the interior design section. In the [second] Interior Design section, Lessons 1-8 covered an Introduction to Interior Design, Use of equipment, measuring, Plan, Elevation, Section; Mechanical Perspective; Bedroom/Bathroom/WC; Hall/Study; Living/Dining; Kitchen/Laundry; Materials and measuring up for materials; Complete scheme for house. According to Stephens, 23 October 2004, he developed the drawing component, particularly the perspective drawing instructions.
321 Mary White Chapter 9
Figure 9.5 Mary White School of Art Correspondence Course Equipment Source: Mary White Archive, MAAS, Sydney
For those students who were able to attend Summer School, practical work was offered at the school (Monday through Friday from 29 January to 9 February
1968) at an additional cost of $60.00. The correspondence course continued until the school’s close in 1972 with some alterations to the Design Text and
Illustrations.57 The following gives an overview of the course clearly identifying distinctions in the content and complexity of on-site and correspondence courses
(Table 9.4).
57 ‘Interior Design Course’ see ‘Design Text and Illustrations’, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-10-4; two differing sets of course Illustrations and Design Text exist, while similar changes were made from 1967-1971.
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Table 9.4 Correspondence Course Content—Mary White School of Art
Lesson Section 1 - Exercises in Basic Design and Colour
Design: Introduction 1 Line, Balance, Motif, Continuity or Flow 2 Shape and Size affected by Direction 3 Shape, Texture and Tone 4 Shape Construction and Rhythm 5 Experiment in Colour 6 Colour 7 Harmony and Contrast 8 Search in Tone
Section 2 – Interior Design
Introduction: Interior Design, its qualities, possibilities. The Design Approach. Elements of Design 1 Use of equipment. Measuring. Plan, Elevation, Section 2 Mechanical Perspective 3 Bedroom/Bathroom/WC 4 Hall/Study 5 Living/Dining 6 Kitchen/Laundry 7 Materials and measuring up for materials 8 Complete scheme for house
Source: Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-10-2, ‘Course Info and Enrolment Forms’1967-72, ‘Twelve Months Correspondence Course in Interior Design’, and MAAS 93/343/1-10-4, ‘Interior Design Course’ see ‘Design Text and Illustrations’
An optional extra part-time honours course of one year was also available.58 To attract yet more additional students, shorter one- and two-year certificates courses were also developed to give ‘an understanding of good design to people who want to learn how to improve their home environment…to wives with limited time…people who work during the day…advanced or apprentice students working in design or allied fields and people living outside Sydney’ and
58 ‘Mary White School of Art, Courses for the 1971 Academic Year’, typewritten sheet indicates school was located at 11 Hollywood Avenue, Bondi Junction, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-10-2. Recorded fees for the 1971 academic year for the two-year full-time diploma course held in Sydney with classes running from 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM each day were $932.00 per annum plus a $60.00 enrolment fee. Basic equipment costs were an additional $140.00. The following year, tuition increased to $1,000.00 plus enrolment fee and equipment.
323 Mary White Chapter 9 advertised locally (Figure 9.6).59 Surviving as a business, necessary as it was, often compromised White’s idealised aims to advance critical and requisite knowledge for professional development.
Figure 9.6 Advertisement, c. 1971 Source: Mary White Archive, MAAS, Sydney
At the same time as founding member of the Executive, Vice President and President of SIDA and through her involvement with ASEA, White worked to upgrade standards of profession and education. This contributed to advancements for Interior Design courses which paved the way for diploma levels in the government-run technical school, ESTC, and Interior Design as a separate subject within the Faculty of Architecture at UNSW.
59 ibid.
324 Mary White Chapter 9
Values, Beliefs and Philosophy of Design
In 1950, Mary White had set out to find a way to design following years of economic hardship and isolation in rural NSW, where she had held the primary responsibility of raising four children and tending the couple’s property. White was conscious that her move to the city would most likely lead to divorce and the necessity to support herself financially: each at odds with societal norms, family expectations and her Catholic background. White’s personal fortitude and determination extended to professional efforts advancing the arts through individual work and her involvement with many people, organisations and causes.
As Burns attests, ‘people relied on Mary because she had enormous capacity to solve things...a philosophy she used in everything she did’.60 Her achievements were incessantly hampered by financial and personal setbacks of which she rarely complained, ‘Mary didn’t talk of her problems…shrugged them off and just got on with things’.61
Influenced also by her early liberal arts education and studies in art and design, White sought answers probing the philosophical meaning of art while practically and creatively addressing everyday problems of design. Her deeper inquiries appear to have been a way of making sense of the world. For White, the meaning of life itself was ultimately linked to what she saw as art’s universal truths manifested by the creativity and responsibility of artists. Embedded in a hand-written document of musings in fourteen pages, White refers to philosopher mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) who wrote of the eternal quest for
60 Jane Burns, 22 Mar 2001. 61 Burns also tells of the tragedy of White’s daughter who died suddenly from an epileptic attach.
325 Mary White Chapter 9 greater truth: ‘You would not seek me if you had not already found me’.62
White’s continual search for answers great and small propelled her to seek new experiences and greater understandings.
In applying for the Churchill Fellowship in 1966, White sought greater knowledge of her subject first-hand and felt frustrated that her understanding of
‘Art’ had been acquired through secondary sources.63 By this, she was expressing her awareness of Australia’s distance from European and American centres of modern experimentations. At the same time, she believed her combined strengths drawn from her collective experiences made her a viable candidate because this all-encompassing background enabled her to select material for use in design education, as noted:
[as] a ‘practising Interior Designer and designer of furniture…a specialist professional photographer of interiors…an integrator of relevant work and thought from many fields of art, an entrepreneur and an organiser of ways and means…[that had brought together]…universities, architects, artists, historians, sculptors, potters, teachers, industrialists, students and the public’64
White also wished to utilise for the benefit of interior design her extensive personal contacts from friendships and memberships in various arts and design groups locally, nationally and internationally. If awarded the Churchill
Fellowship, White had arranged through ‘her association with ASEA, INSEA and
Peter Bellew at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris introductions to the design schools in each capital of the cities and art centres she intended to visit’.65 With her IAAP cards she would gain free admission to Museums everywhere, and as
62 ‘Biographical Material’, handwritten document, op. cit., p. 3; front page is dated ‘4:30 AM 25th Nov 1963’. 63 ‘The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Application for Churchill Fellowship, 1966’, op. cit., p. 3. 64 ibid.
326 Mary White Chapter 9 she outlined, through her ‘association with the American Institute of Interior
Designers (AID), Mr W. Hamilton their executive officer, will arrange for me to meet and talk with American designers and to visit their training centres’.66 White had also organised with Peter Haupt who had just been appointed to construct an
Interior Design Course within the Architecture Faculty at the Berlin University to observe his work and hoped to be guest observer at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) while in America. In this way, she would be able to return with advanced knowledge and greater insight in the developments of interior design abroad.
White’s plan was extensive, forward-thinking and comprehensive, but as previously indicated unsuccessful. Not being granted the opportunity to gain from this international training ground first-hand, she forged ahead drawing on her educational and experiential backgrounds integrating further current ideas imported through books and trade journals. Drawing from this background, she established her philosophy of design. In her late night scribbling, she importantly wrote:
[of the great] tradition of the “whole man” [the artist] who thought not only with his hands but also with his head and who looked about not only with eyes of flesh but also with the eyes of the mind-who not only fashioned works of art, but also created utopias & who expressed himself wholly in his work.67
In White’s thinking as an interior designer and teacher, the act of making, the idea and the individual could not be separated.
65 ibid., p. 3a.. 66 ibid. 67 ‘Biographical Material’, op. cit., p. 3.
327 Mary White Chapter 9
As a teacher, White wished to expose professional aspirants not only to modern developments in design generally, but to the continuing themes of ‘Art and Applied Art which appear historically’.68 In the illustrated lecture series,
‘Aspects of Modern Art’, instruction went beyond practical and technical exercises to underlying intellectual ideas. Recommended modernist texts were incorporated to expand the minds of students, such as: Herbert Read, The Meaning of Art; Roger Fry, Vision & Design; Kenneth Clark, Landscape into Art; and Eric
Newton, The Meaning of Beauty; augmented by trade and popular journals: Art and Australia, Australian Home Journal, Domus, Mobilia, English House &
Garden, and Architecture in Australia.69
White spoke and wrote little of her aesthetic or social ideas, using actions instead to articulate her commitment to design and its resultant social and economic benefit to people and their spaces. Early instructor Bottrell said, ‘Mary wanted people to know that art was a richness, art was company and art represented the human spirit.’70 To instil in her students how design mattered to people in their everyday living, students worked with actual materials, situations, and spaces, learning how to assemble artefacts within a particular situation and place things in a living space, as opposed to a gallery environment.
White’s belief in the benefit of design for the improvement of people’s lives was particularly demonstrated in her concern for country women, helping
68 ibid. 69 Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-10/4, MAAS, Powerhouse Museum. Draft copies of text and illustrations produced at White’s school were sent to students on enrolment. These included lessons and exercise to complete and return for grading. The books and magazines named were listed as recommended reading. 70 McGrath, op. cit., pp. 106-7.
328 Mary White Chapter 9 them to improve the aesthetic environment of their own homes. Through the study of interior design, White set out to empower country women to gain new perspectives on their remote locations by using their newfound skills in design to transform space to place. Later, White transferred her aesthetic and social mission to advance the lot of Aboriginal artists and provide venues to sell their works.
White’s aesthetic aims translated to civic aims in moves to preserve and sustain past historical achievements for new design purposes, as well as making way for new aesthetics.
In her search into the meaning of design, White found in modernist thought the notion that:
the universal cannot be expressed purely so long as the particular obstructs the path. Only where this is no longer the case can the universal conscious (in truth that is) which is at the origin of all art, be rendered directly, going forth to a purified art expression.71
This inquiry into universal truth and its relationship to time White found in her wide reading was explained through art which ‘cannot appear before its proper time for it is the spirit of the time that determines artistic expression, which in turn reflects the spirit of the time.’72 This notion of universal truth as an expression of a present consciousness reinforced the idea that design was not to do with styles, but was a way of seeing the world within the context of time.
Harry Stephens recalls how White’s all-encompassing approach to designing was manifested at the school:
…teaching at Mary's was very wide. We covered everything. Looking back on it I can see that it was here that I began to develop my holistic way of teaching. Every aspect of the work needs to be considered and at every level. So I taught construction, structures, colour, technical drawing...the works. I tried to integrate all the parts into a meaningful
71 ‘Biographical Material’, op. cit., p. 6. 72 ibid.
329 Mary White Chapter 9
whole for them and went on to develop this approach to the teaching of the first year architecture students at UNSW for the following twenty years.73
Patricia Horsley, who worked for White in the 1960s, also commented on her holistic outlook as the personal translated to spatial terms believing White’s approach to designing was as follows:
…a reflection of her own personality and…character that she wouldn’t want to look at things solely in two dimensions, it would need three dimensions for the full reality of the thing to be properly realised in her terms…Her own gifts were for the whole object.74
In her early career, White became well-known for her space-saving furniture that was designed on the concept of functional modular components. In her interiors, she demonstrated this through practical means using materials suited to the space and its use. Linked to function was White’s overarching desire to humanise space. Horsley recalls that in working with White, there were ‘some interesting assignments…various factories and warehouses…[that] needed to be either updated or in some way…made more human’.75 White’s belief that design was an essential humanising influence in people’s lives and was reinvigorated by the teachings of Buckminster Fuller on his visit to Australia in the 1960s. This ideal also spurred White and others to fight to save the Queen Victoria Building in the name of good design for the benefit of the public domain. Bill Lucas, co- founder of the conservationist movement, recalls: ‘From 1965 to 1975 Mary
White and I were both intent to find a way to apply the concept of using total resources for the whole of humanity using design to apply it economically and
73 Stephens, 23 Oct 2004. 74 McGrath, op. cit., p. 107. 75 ibid.
330 Mary White Chapter 9 sensitively’.76 Although different in purpose, the wholistic nature of this philosophy shares something in common with concepts of sustainability and eco design.
In rethinking Interior Design as a subject and as a profession in the mid
1960s, White found a need ‘for a resolution of the simplicity’ which had emerged from her understanding of these many aspects of art.77 Internalising the teachings of others, White mused over the idea and processes of simplification as a formalist means of reduction of visual details but also as inner essence linked to universal laws:
…varying methods of simplification are possible. One method consists in the elimination of details so as to retain only those judged the most important which become the subject matter. Another seeks the fundamental law hidden in each detail and strives to represent this law itself.78
Further exploring these ideas through the abstract and spiritualist painter
Mondrian, White believed in that a central idea or ‘fundamental law’ enabled the integration of all components. According to this position, ‘painting from that moment on becomes simply a variation on the theme of the identity of the details.
Instead of eliminating the details, we can amplify a single detail in accordance with the law discovered. Each object (each detail) suggests the universal law pre- existent in the mind.’79 Designing was an intellectual and spiritual activity and, while an individual experience, it was greater than the individual.
76 ibid., p. 108. 77 ‘The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Application for Churchill Fellowship, 1966’, op. cit., p. 3. 78 ibid., p. 1. 79 ibid.
331 Mary White Chapter 9
The intensity of White’s inquiry into the deeper aspects of art reflected her spiritualism which informed her understanding of art and design. Her inner strength and commitment to the arts and design was underpinned by faith and her belief in the ability of individuals to effect change for the future.
White’s valuing of people and the human spirit—her belief in art and design as essential to people’s lives—translated theoretically and philosophically to her understanding of design. Her understanding of this integrated process can be summarised as follows:
x Art and the artist are part of a great holistic tradition.
x Design matters to people in their everyday living.
x Art and design are an expression of the spirit of the times.
x Design is the integration of parts into a meaningful whole.
x Functionalism in design reflects a humanising influence.
x Design acknowledges modern developments and historical continuity.
x Abstraction is an aesthetic device underpinned by universal concepts.
x Art is simplification - a reduction of details which defines its essence.
x Design’s ability to transform space to place, in turn, transforms its
creator.
x ‘Back of every Creation, supporting if like an arch, is faith.’
Contribution to Professional Development
White’s efforts in the professionalisation of interior design in Sydney from the
1950s to the early 1970s were directed to raising standards of education and ethics through both study and practice. Her professionalism was defined by personal
332 Mary White Chapter 9 qualities that extended to her work as a designer including the manner in which she dealt with her clients. Bottrell, who witnessed this often, says: ‘Mary was a professional person, and her whole approach was professional. Near enough was not good enough for Mary. She was a person of excellence.’80 She understood the importance of ‘expressing something of someone else’s hopes…meeting someone else’s needs, with aesthetics built into the solution.’81
A summary follows of White’s contributions to professional development of interior design in Sydney utilising, as in previous chapters, recognised concepts of profession and the professionalisation process:
1) Through her commitment to raising standards for interior designers, White
instigated multiple initiatives to secure the future of interior design
education, first with her private school and then through initial discussions
to include the study within the university system at UNSW and to advance
the study at ESTC which would eventuate through her former instructors.
2) White advanced the study of interior design incorporating in her
curriculum critical and requisite knowledge. She implemented a wide-
ranging program integrating academic (formal) and experiential (informal)
study. Students were examined and upon completion were awarded her
private school’s Diploma or Certificate of completion. Instructors were
credentialed and drawn from a wide range of disciplines.
3) White gained professional authority through her reputation as a designer
and through her social standing in the community.
80 McGrath, op. cit., p. 108. 81 ibid.
333 Mary White Chapter 9
4) Her work was further sanctioned in community through her extensive
participation and memberships in art, design, civic, educational and
humanitarian organisations and forums.
5) Joining others, White was at the forefront in founding the Society of
Interior Designers in Australia (SIDA), acting as Vice President and
President over a period of ten years. Her dedication to the professional
organisation demonstrated in her work on the development of educational
and professional standards. Fellow designer Barbara Bridge tells of
White’s concern with:
…raising people’s standards [in design] and raising the standards of students. She was conscious of being ethical. She wanted a code of ethics for designers. And this was at a time when we were often regarded as nutty. Women interior designers were a bit of a joke. It was difficult to establish respect - especially as magazines ran features which took over our role.82
Official recognition was realised on 24 September 1964 with the
incorporation of SIDA as a public company (Figure 9.7). A key
objective (3b) in the Memorandum of Association was to establish a Code
of Ethics:
To advance the standards of interior design and decoration howsoever and wheresoever possible to uphold in practice a Code of Ethics and Professional Practices of mutual benefit in professional public and trade relationships and to promote educational programmes with a view to improving the art of interior design and decoration.83
82 ibid., p. 106. 83 ‘Certification of Incorporation of Public Companies’, p. 1, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-8/1, SIDA, 1964, 1972-81.
334 Mary White Chapter 9
Figure 9.7 Incorporation of SIDA, 24 Sept 1964 Source: Mary White Archive, MAAS, Sydney
6) White identified herself as a designer, first and foremost, consciously
aware that design was crucial to being professional in her work as a
furniture designer, photographer and interior designer. She never referred
to the field as interior decoration or the practitioner as interior decorator,
although as seen in Chapter 7, there remained a tradition of this in Sydney
during her active years.
7) In addition to aesthetic, cultural, historical, architectural and technical
knowledge relevant to design, White’s comprehensive curriculum included
335 Mary White Chapter 9
practical business skills to further professional standards of future
practitioners.
Conclusion
This chapter has discussed Mary White’s commitment to excellence in all that she endeavoured and her personal sacrifice in achieving beneficial outcomes for the greater good of others. Leaving her married home in country NSW after seventeen years and forging out on her own, she went against the social and Catholic conventions in 1949, contradicting societal norms and expectations of her time.
After years of isolation with tremendous responsibility caring for four children and tending an impoverished country property while her husband was away at war, a career in design provided White new opportunity and independence. Her determination to succeed in design extended to the greater public domain. By establishing the Mary White School of Art in 1961 and operating it until its close in 1972, she advanced educational standards and training for interior design providing an alternate comprehensive program of study in Sydney. Through wide- ranging initiatives in numerous organisations and involving many people, she re- positioned the discipline of interior design within a university setting. White’s efforts and leadership in the newly founded Society of Interior Designers of
Australia (SIDA, 1951), led to greater standards for practice including incorporation for the organisation establishing a Code of Ethics by which the field was further professionalised.
Described as a ‘principled modernist', White held high ideals instilling in the minds of many universal principles including the importance of design as a
336 Mary White Chapter 9 humanising influence in people’s lives.84 Understanding interior design as an artistic and practical career, White believed in establishing a foundation of basic design principles before diversifying or channelling students’ ‘energies’ to specialised interests.85 This was evidenced in her thinking and bold self- description as ‘DESIGNER, interior, industrial, general, Photographer of interiors,
Director of Art School and Teacher’.86 In her creative, practical, and problem- solving approach, she applied this idea to all aspects of design. As a facilitator of her school’s program for interior design and believing in a diverse and stimulating curriculum, she amassed a wide range of artists, designers, craftspeople, architects and historians to teach design.
Responding also to past perceptions of interior decoration and new requirements of interior design, White insisted on the inclusion of architectural training in her program of study. This was based on her belief that as ‘a practising
Interior Designer and designer of furniture…[there is a] necessity for architectural thinking in terms of space and function, and of a sharp division which relegates
“Interior Decoration” to a superficial activity.’87 It can be argued that White’s integration of principles of architecture and interior decoration’s art fundamentals and practices culminated in her understanding of interior design.
At the same time, wishing to reconcile her ideas on interior design and feeling the tyranny of distance, she applied to travel overseas to observe first-hand new developments. On her return, she pledged to implement new standards for the
84 Stephens, 23 Oct 2004. 85 McGrath, op. cit., pp. 106-7. 86 ‘The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Application for Churchill Fellowship, 1966’, op. cit., no pagination. 87 ibid., p. 3.
337 Mary White Chapter 9 study ‘in Universities and Schools’ other than her own.88 White was unsuccessful, but undeterred in her mission not only through her own school but by initiating talks within the architectural faculty at UNSW. Burns suggests, ‘Mary had a vision for Sydney’, stemming from her heritage as a Mort.89 White’s ancestors had helped pioneer the wool industry in NSW: she wished to advance design.
Important to this was White’s early liberal arts education and her later studies in art and design at ESTC.
White’s expertise and involvement in numerous regional, national and international organisations and activities efforts would contribute to the new local authority. As a private business owner, she struggled to make ends meet. As a visionary, her work was attached to broader social and civic aims of the community. White had chosen interior design as an area of study believing it would assist women particularly those in the country plagued by distance from the advantages of city life. She raised protests within the public domain to protect historical sites while promoting progressive sustainable movements (although the term had not yet been coined) and design innovation.
It can be said that her advanced studies in art interrupted by marriage hampered her start and ultimate artistic goals, but advancing age and financial setbacks were major contributing factors. These obstacles did not deter White’s political activism and civic responsibilities; however, her support for the education of country girls inevitably added to her own commercial plight and final demise of her school.90 One can only speculate that White could have
88 ibid. 89 Jane Burns, 22 Mar 2001. 90 Megan Dixon, ‘Scoring for Art’, Australian Country Style, Aug 1997, p. 87.
338 Mary White Chapter 9 substantially bolstered the development of Interior Design education had she been supported by the Churchill Fellowship to ‘meet and talk with the important designers in San Francisco, New York, London, Copenhagen, Paris, Berlin,
Zurich, Milan and Rome…[also visiting] Egypt and Greece.’91 The requisite funding of $10,500.00 for the fifteen month travel most likely exceeded funds available. Lack of support also reflected that the field, while expanding, remained in its infancy still not having yet established its value to Australian industry.
Also, despite good intentions, the UNSW was unable at this time to fulfil their desire to include interior design in their curriculum encumbered by their own financial limitations. In time, however, Stephens, influenced by White’s ideals, directed his efforts to proposing a course for interior design at the university based on a similar one developed at the Mary White School of Art.92 White’s influence also contributed to new efforts to offer an advanced degree program in interior design at ESTC with an Ad Hoc committee established in 1965 and headed by former instructor John Coburn.
In the history of interior design in Sydney, Mary White not only practiced and promoted good design, but she defended its position as a separate field of study, identified the need for change in educational requirements and enabled advancement of professional standards. White, like Lord, was at the forefront of setting educational and professional standards and advancing a code of ethics for interior design, facilitated through the Society of Interior Designers in Australia
91 ‘The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Application for Churchill Fellowship, 1966’, op. cit., p. 3. 92 UNSW Archive, Item 35/CN 590 8/9, ‘Interior Design and Industrial Design’, Faculty of Arch, Prof. Roberts; also see Letter to Mr. K. Harrison from Harry Stephens, 7 Jan 1972, in ‘Mary White School of Art – Correspondence and Student details’, Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-10/1.
339 Mary White Chapter 9
(SIDA est. 1951). These women were instrumental in having the profession’s jurisdiction formally incorporated in 1964 in the state of New South Wales, paving the way for a national association.
By the early 1970s with continuing financial burdens, White was forced to close her private school but found new opportunities in the public realm to support humanitarian causes and to advance art and design toward the organisation and promotion of art and craft work by Aboriginal artists. White’s commitment to higher educational and professional standards for interior design redirected to newer goals for the benefit of Indigenous artists.
Through her individual work and expansive Interior Design programs,
White had defined design in wholistic terms, conceiving and executing outcomes as total works of art, for practical, functional and humanising purposes and for the socio-cultural economic benefit of others. From the modest beginnings of interior decoration in the early 1920s, White and her predecessors progressively contributed to the discipline and profession transforming the study and advancing
Interior Design in Sydney.
340 Collective Analyses Chapter 10
CHAPTER 10
COLLECTIVE ANALYSES
Introduction
This research has questioned to what extent the development of interior design as a distinct discipline and profession in Sydney can be attributed to the initiatives of five women. Importantly, this study has investigated ways their initiatives were influenced by modern attitudes towards the theory and practice of design, and whether, in turn, their activities had impact on the development of interior design in Sydney. Subsequently, this study has asked to what extent the women’s understandings of design were common, distinct or different from each other and, importantly, from prevailing (male-dominated and architecturally-driven) representations of modernism in histories of interior design. Finally, this study has asked how this local history can explain complex interrelationships between women and modernity in interior design.
The intent of this chapter is to give collective analyses of the women’s contributions to the development of Interior Design in Sydney by first evaluating the five Sydney women's writings and activities against foundational issues of gender and profession as introduced in Chapter 1, and then examining links with issues raised in Chapter 2 on modernity and modernisation. The collective analyses will be in three main areas: (a) the five women’s understanding of modern art and design, making use of abstract and applied knowledge deemed critical to a profession; (b) their contributions to the professional development of interior design in Sydney by establishing a culture of profession and jurisdiction;
341 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 and (c) their combined contributions to the development of Interior Design as a discipline. Through this analysis it is expected that the significance of these women to interior design will be determined.
Reflections on Foundational Issues of Gender and Profession
A review of literature in Chapter 2 gathered together multiple issues concerning historical representation and interpretations of the early women of interior design, many of whom were known as interior decorators. Focusing on issues of gender and professional recognition, this investigation found that there continues to be:
(a) a lack of acknowledgement of women as foundational leaders despite a growing body of literature on interior design; (b) diminished status of their work—evolved around stereotyped images of their so-called reliance on taste, social milieu, natural talent and lack of formal training—implying that the women were without theoretical knowledge; and (c) a general distancing from ‘interior decoration’ which has occurred as new concerns took precedence over historical evidence. This research shows that the pursuit of abstract knowledge informed the diverse activities of each of the five professional pioneers in Sydney. Each area establishes a basis for (re)evaluation of women’s historical contributions to interior design as a profession.
A Critique of Women’s Contributions to Interior Design
As discussed in Chapter 3, modernisation is a term used to describe the powerful objective forces of modernity, its dominant principles linked to democratic ideals and industrial aims of modernising societies. Significant to modernisation is development which in turn is tied to Enlightenment notions of progress and
342 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 advancement deemed essential to social, cultural and economic betterment of individuals and societies. Essentially, in the process of modernisation, increasing systems of rationalisation came to dominate all ways of thinking and living. This significantly impacted concurrent reform and activist movements of the nineteenth century and subsequent socio-cultural developments.
As part of the modernist initiatives, democratised education gained women entrance into art and design schools. Yet under lingering patriarchal systems, women were directed to specialised domains, such as art and some branches of design, resulting in a conflicting situation for women—as evidenced in the history of interior design. While women gained authority from formal education
(disciplinary knowledge based on so-called rational principles), their jurisdiction
(where and the conditions under which they operated) remained bound largely by engendered domains. Thus, modernisation for women meant that in order to further advance socially and economically, they were required to work within the norms and standards of society, applying attained knowledge and skills to artistic activities within settings still differentiated by sex. In a society that had not yet accepted women or their work wholeheartedly as significant to capitalist industrialised aims, women had to negotiate within and outside previous
(traditional) boundaries to achieve professional status and jurisdiction. This gave rise to contradictory situations and professional rivalries which were interlinked to rising differentiations in the status and purpose of art and design, the latter of which included applied (decorative and industrial) arts, design, architecture, interior decoration and interior design. Disciplines differentiated further through programs of specialised education.
343 Collective Analyses Chapter 10
Despite common dilemmas of gender, Proctor and her successors’ stories and experiences from the 1920s to 1960s were not identical. Personal circumstances and individual experiences combined with the larger extraordinary events of their modernising times—of which wars, economic depression, and reconstruction were significant—to give shape to very particular narratives. Yet, as this study argues while these women’s stories are individual and distinct, collectively they are representative of their times.
Operating within different settings, the women commonly and differently advance interior design. This is mobilised within a public domain that by the early twentieth century had deemed interior decoration not just an artistic pastime and preoccupation for women waiting to marry, but a useful study and career path for single, divorced or widowed women. At a time when interior decoration was not yet established as a discipline or profession in Sydney, and when women by no means had secured equal status (much less pay) in the public domain for their work, the field’s development was vulnerable. The professional and disciplinary development was subject to commercial and government interests, both sectors of which were primarily under the direction of men. As an emergent design specialisation, it was left up to artistically-trained women to raise a consciousness of the field, define its requisite knowledge base and interpret the theoretical ideas of their time.
In developing a new discipline and, in turn profession, they established their authority by appealing to a broadened audience of men and, in particular, women. This study acknowledges diverse settings from which the women mobilised their efforts using various media and different training sectors to
344 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 advance the discipline and profession within established patriarchal systems. This suggests a complex relationship existed between the sexes and that usual oppressive readings of men’s domination over women do not entirely explain the dynamics of the situation. Rather, the study argues that it was through a web of personal, socio-cultural, and professional relationships that these artistic women were acknowledged as experts in design and that through their theoretical understandings, they both modernised and professionalised interior design. The complexity revealed in their individual and collective stories simultaneously challenge and uphold previous notions during this critical juncture of the field’s historical development as a discipline and profession.
Each story and experience conveys the socially significant differences that gender rendered for the development of interior design as a discipline and profession from the 1920s to 1960s in Sydney. Yet importantly, they reveal the complex interaction of external factors that were important in creating an avenue for women to establish jurisdiction for the modern discipline and profession of interior design.
Modernism in Interior Design: Collective Analysis of Five Women’s Understandings of Design
Critical to this study has been the investigation of women’s idea of design.
Identified as modernism in interior design—where abstract, artistic, theoretical and applied ideas prevailed—the question is: To what extent were the women’s ideas shared, distinct or different from each other’s or from prevailing (male- dominated) understandings of modernism in histories of interior design?
Importantly, this study has investigated interior design’s development influenced
345 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 by the fine arts’ predominant formalist arguments of early to mid-twentieth century and as symbiotically related to architecture’s critique of form and its rational ordering, three-dimensionality, and insistence on structural functionalism and technic.
To give context to this analysis of modernism in interior design, Table
10.1 summarises key individuals and artistic movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries whose ideas impacted the women’s understanding of design.
The intention is to demonstrate how they shared common and diverse ideas prevalent in design’s aesthetic discourse.
Within the wide range of modernist ideas and ideals, design was defined aesthetically, socio-historically and technically through idea, technique, material, process, practice and production. Progressively, notions of taste, beauty and the study of traditional styles, manners, customs and beliefs gave way to an emphasis on modern realities of everyday living. Although new directions were interpreted differently by individuals and groups with diverse interests in mind, modernist concerns focussed on form as visual idea then function which translated to aesthetic purpose. Together the five women exhibited a complex mix of past traditions combined with innovative experimentation, moderate conservatism, simple and luxury materials and productions, organic harmony, sensitivity to individuality and one’s environment and spiritual vision. Each sought to curb what they saw as the ills of industrialisation. Moral truths and ethical principles were understood as democratic goals worth fighting for the betterment of humanity.
346 Collective Analyses Chapter 10
Table 10.1 Influential Sources of Modernist Ideas for Five Women, 1920s to the 1960s
Key Individuals, Movements Key Features and Characteristics and Theoretical Sources for Women in Aesthetic Discourse on Design
Thea Proctor, active 1922-1940s
Julian Ashton Art School, Sydney Drawing as structural foundation of art Precision of craftsmanship
Aesthetic Movement Beauty & taste rejecting function Japonisme ‘Art for art’s sake’ Decorative aestheticism
New English Art Club Form & colour over representation Modern British painters
Australian artist George Lambert Drawing as foundation of art
Neo-classical painter Jean Auguste Drawing as refinement of idea Ingres
Modernist critic Clive Bell, Art, 1914 Formalism/simplification of form Aesthetic emotion
Roger Fry, modernist Formalism/simplification of form Vision & Design, 1920 Reorientation to rationalism
Interior decorator Nancy McClelland & Accuracy of period style, good taste, concepts of historian Harold Eberlein beauty as related to culture, time, people and place
Nora McDougall, active 1927-1950s
American educationalist Frank Alvah Principles underlying distinct historical periods as Parsons foundation Education & individual character through home environment Application of universal principles Aesthetics & taste combine with economy, quality of material, hygiene, functional efficiency
347 Collective Analyses Chapter 10
Table 10.1 Influential Sources for Five Women, 1920s to the 1960s (continued)
Key individuals, Movements Key Features and Characteristics and Theoretical Sources for Women in Aesthetic Discourse on Design
Margaret Lord, active 1936-1966
Melbourne artists George Bell & Elements & principles of art Arnold Shore Artistic sensibility
Central School of Art, London Drawing & drafting as foundation to design
Historian Herbert Cescinsky Authenticity of period styles People’s customs & beliefs Connoisseurship & good taste
Colour theorist John Holmes Purpose & impact of colour in design
Interior decorator Marie Louise Aesthetics combined with structure, trade, business Arnold practices
Architect Louis Osman Beauty & structure in design
Interior decorator Herman Schriver Principles of salesmanship
European luxury class designers New forms using luxury materials Dominique, Andre Arbus, Jean Fine craftsmanship Royere, Jaques Adnet Glamour & sophistication
English furniture designer Democratic ideals moderate modernism simple, Gordon Russell functional honesty & integrity of material & production
German Bauhaus Functional purpose, technology, efficiency, scientific response to aesthetic & economic rationalism to meet industrial aims & needs
Scandinavian designers Jen Risom, Organic form Alvar Alto Natural material, honesty in finish & production
American decorator William O’Neill Principles & practices of interior decoration
Furniture designer TH Robsjohn Recreation of classical furniture modern Greek Gibblings Klismos chair
Furniture designers and Wood, metal & plastics in modern furniture design: manufacturers Dunbar, Knoll, Arum Internationalism
348 Collective Analyses Chapter 10
Table 10.1 Influential Sources for Five Women, 1920s-1960s (continued)
Key individuals, Movements Key Features and Characteristics and Theoretical Sources for Women in Aesthetic Discourse on Design
Phyllis Shillito, active 1940s-1970s
Aesthetic Movement Beauty in everyday things ‘ art for arts sake’
Design Reform Re-establish art with industry to benefit masses Arts & Crafts Movement Re-orient art/artist to purpose Unite beauty & utility Reject ugliness Superiority of hand-made works
German Bauhaus Systematic instruction fundamental principles & theories of colour & design exercises, projects & materials experimentation & creativity
Mary White, active 1950-1972
Ancestral Sydney family: Mort Civic responsibility & duty Love of precision & practical hands-on approach
Rosebay Convent school Humanist doctrine from liberal arts education ‘Faith as back of all creation’
Phyllis Shillito, ESTC Design essential foundation to all creation, universal principles applicable to all design
Roger Fry, Vision & Design, 1920 Artist’s talent put to practical use All art is simplification Reorientation to rationalism
Kenneth Clark, Landscape into Art 1949 Disparages much of modern art Landscape painting in harmony with human spirit & environment
Herbert Read, Meaning of Art, 1968 Art as direct measure of man’s spiritual vision
Eric Newton, The Meaning of Beauty, Beauty 1950, 1962
Buckminster Fuller Total resources for whole human economical & sensitive design
Art and Australia, Australian Home Current & wide-ranging ideas, products & Journal, Domus, Mobilia, English Houses materials to local environment & Garden, Architecture in Australia
349 Collective Analyses Chapter 10
This continuum of ideas is reflected in Paul Greenhalgh’s conceptualisation of twelve features of modernism in design, giving rise to modernist debates on the artistic theoretical ideas and ideals, providing also a basis to compare the women’s modernist ideas of design. At the same time, this analysis is ultimately concerned with expanding definitions of modernism in interior design beyond prevailing architectural histories of modernism, thus offering a richer critique of modernism in histories of interior design. Additionally
Greenhalgh’s critique enables a (re)valuation of the early women’s contributions to the professional development of interior design. For purposes of critique,
Greenhalgh’s features appear in enumerated headings with a brief description of his idea followed by a collective analysis of the women’s modernist ideas within each category:
Decompartmentalisation of Human Experience
Greenhalgh describes this idea as the single most important feature of modernism in design:
The over-arching concern of the Modern Movement was to break down barriers between aesthetics, technics and society, in order that an appropriate design of the highest visual and practical quality could be produced for the mass of the population.1
Each woman in common and different ways subscribed to modernist ideals of producing appropriate design of the highest visual and practical quality for twentieth-century society. At the same time, their responses were subject to their own time. Thea Proctor’s life (1879-1966) preceded and spanned two distinct
1 Paul Greenhalgh, ed., Modernism in Design, London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 1990, p. 8.
350 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 phases of the Modern Movement, the Pioneer phase (1914-1930s) and the
International phase (1930s-1970s), her formative years predating much of the industrialised development impacting Australia, her initiatives isolated within an artistic sphere. Thus, her modernism is characterised foremost by previous notions of taste guided by underlying art principles which translated to an idealised beauty and formalist approach to interior space. Proctor arrived back in Sydney (1922) when modernism in Australia was seen as a minority movement in fine art but was accepted as an aesthetic idea of simplified form and use of bold flat colour in commercial productions. Her concern for interior decoration was as an artist and her ideas on design, while not promoted to a wider Australian population, were nevertheless intended for this audience. Proctor believed Australians could improve their aesthetic sensibility through artistic training and broad cultural knowledge. Within her concept of design, she embraced a process of reasoning and visual ordering as seen in her talk on ‘Design’.2 As she stated:
…composition is something that is quite mathematical…Every line you place in a certain shape must either conform to that shape or be in apposition to it. If you have a pronounced line going in one direction you must have another in the opposite direction to balance it…You can build up a composition on one pyramid.3
Proctor’s ideas restricted her role to that of a modern taste-maker, using art and design for purposes of cultivation and beautification of Australia.
Nora McDougall (1900-19??) was more grounded and realistic in her approach to modern problems, giving practical advice in the 1940s to an ordinary audience. She believed the best results were achieved from ‘good hard thinking’
2 Proctor, ‘Design’, 1926, op. cit. 3 ibid.
351 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 and planning in all of design’s aspects. McDougall encouraged individuals to have definite ideas that could then be realised with the help of ‘decorator and architect in a concrete form’. Her adoption of ‘education through environment’ was tied to the broader democratising aims of her time set within a framework of middle-class values with the intention to break down barriers between art, industry and society in order that good design was made affordable to ordinary people. This she accomplished through popular means, publicising her ideas in a weekly that boasted 650,000 readers and, later, at department stores reaching the consumer more directly.
Margaret Lord (1908-1976) had referred to the design reformers of the nineteenth century as ‘a few thinkers’ who realised that something had to be done to bring the decorative and functional arts back to a sound basis. She believed it essential that the artist be allowed to control design and that good design required forethought equally on the part of designer, manufacturer, and public. Lord’s concern for uncontrolled design ‘thrust on the market’ was the speed in which inexpensive furniture was produced and believed good design would only emerge when its producers and public attained real appreciation of art. Her solution was education of the Australian masses.
For Phyllis Shillito (1895-1980), design was fundamental to the creation of all things without discriminating between specialisations. Reiterating her idea in a
1960 statement to the Sydney Morning Herald, she said: ‘A student who has mastered the basic principles of design can design anything from a dress to a kitchen stove’.4 Was Shillito, by this conviction, treated unfairly by her technical
4 Newspaper article, ‘She Likes her Pupils Cheeky’, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 Mar 1960, p. 7.
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(industrial) design peers or, as the researcher would argue, had commercial interests just not reconciled the important economic and social relationships between aesthetics, technics and society? For women, the barriers would never totally be broken down until they were included in the highly industrialised training ground promoted to men. Shilito’s efforts had gained her students access to the secondary industries, yet even then, the outcomes remained aesthetically tied to design’s visual aims.
Mary White (1912-1981), as a broadly-educated person, referred to art and the artist as part of a great wholistic tradition. In her late night scribbling, she wrote of the great ‘tradition of the “whole man” [the artist] who thought not only with his hands but also with his head and who looked about not only with eyes of flesh but also with the eyes of the mind-who not only fashioned works of art, but also created utopias & who expressed himself wholly in his work.’5 Thus, in
White’s musings the barriers to be broken down were between the act of making, the idea and individual’s experience none of which could be separated if an appropriate design of the highest visual quality and use was the intention.
Social Morality
Design was intended to improve the conditions of the population; and as such was a statement of the social aims of the age.6
Social benefits were connected to physical and psychological needs and cultural improvement. Proctor’s artistic idealism removed her from many of the harsher realities of her life. Cognisant that design could aesthetically improve
5 Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-3, ‘Biographical Material’, hand-written document, p. 3; front page is dated ‘4:30 AM 25th Nov 1963’. 6 Greenhalgh, op. cit., p. 8.
353 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 even the most humble interior, she related designing interior space to composing a social setting where one could surround oneself with interesting objects separate from the mundane aspects of everyday living.
McDougall related a well-decorated home—even if not the most expensive—to one which radiates peace and contentment. She further identified the ‘ingredients’ naming character, balance, harmony, interest, unity, comfort and appropriateness of purpose as essential to meeting these aesthetic and social aims.
Social responsibility meant instilling modern ideals in the home’s inhabitant in which aesthetic expression of one’s own character was based on contentment of position and acceptance of individual circumstance. Aesthetic improvement translated socially into making a house a home.
Lord firmly believed that design was intended to improve the conditions of the population. She demonstrated this three-fold: (a) in her correspondence courses for servicemen and women who through the act of drawing house plans helped them envision future homes; (b) in writings, interviews, lectures and broadcasts where she cast her mission for better design suitable to local climate, material and economic conditions; and (c) through project work where she addressed the physical and emotional health, safety and welfare of her clientele.
Each was a statement of the social aims and responsibilities of her time. Shillito shared in this social responsibility by tirelessly improving employment prospects for her students and in turn, through her belief in their inventive designs as valuable contributions to industry through successful productions.
White spoke and wrote little of her aesthetic or social ideas, using actions instead to articulate her commitment to design and its resultant social, civic and
354 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 economic benefit to people, their spaces and lives. To instil in her students how design mattered to people in their everyday living, students worked with actual materials and spaces, learning how to assemble artefacts within a particular situation and place things within living environments. White’s belief in the benefit of design as a social function was particularly demonstrated in her concern for country women helping them improve their home’s aesthetic. Interior design gave women in remote locations opportunity to gain new perspective: in transforming space to place, women gained new awareness of their abilities to design. Later,
White transferred this aesthetic and social mission to the development of avenues to advance Aboriginal artists with the sale of their art works. White’s social intentions translated to civic duty in issues of sensitive preservation, sustainable
(readaptive) resources and advancements of new design aesthetics.
Truth as a Moral Value Transposed as Aesthetic Quality
Truth as an ideal led, therefore, to a wholesale rejection of decoration, especially when it was perceived to be an element added after the major constructional work had taken place. Decoration could only mask the structural and spatial honesty of the object.7
The modernist rejection of decoration by name and definition is problematic to these women as interior decorators and designers, especially as architects promoted the building’s structure over objects and surface treatments within. Proctor, McDougall and Lord used the term interior decoration with ease and often interchangeably with design. Proctor believed art decoration for the home was based on sound design which she, in turn, related to principles of
7 ibid., p. 9.
355 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 composition. Her stance on design purported invention rather than imitation which was exemplified through simplification of significant form: each representative element becoming part of the design.
McDougall, in following her modern precepts of sincerity and appropriateness, emphasised expressing one’s own truth (one’s own living and working conditions) to create a new beauty through the decoration of one’s home.
The term ‘decoration’ was not defined by McDougall as a superficial application of decorative elements. It was a traditional term not yet debated in popular arenas.
As a modernist, she stripped away unnecessary details of overly embellished mouldings of past eras to achieve an unadorned simplicity, meeting her client’s particular needs and social status, and, in turn, expressing essential modern ideas of beauty and functional appropriateness. Truth as an ideal, translated to selecting for place and purpose; for example, designing with the suitable type of furniture and discouraging the copying of past traditions in favour of understanding fundamental principles.
Lord, Shillito and White shared these ideas, understanding truth as an expression of a present consciousness reinforcing the idea that design was a way of seeing the world within the context of time and circumstance. This re-enforced the idea that design was an essentialised truth, an appropriate and honest expression that could not appear before its proper time.
The Total Work of Art—Gesamtkunstwerk
In the Modernist world, the various visual arts would work in conjunction in order to create a total work of art…The fine, applied, decorative and
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design arts should be a single continuum, allowing for their different practical functions and production techniques.8
Proctor considered the field of interior decoration an art for the home to be carried out by the decorative artist. Furnishing and decorating a room could be compared to composing and painting a picture. She equated designing with having good taste and also to a process of simplification which involved an ordering of the parts to the whole. She applied the same process to a variety of activities: flower arranging, selections of colour schemes for fabrics and furniture in room settings, in determinations of automobile colours or for the design of theatre backdrops. In her purview, anything could be elevated to an art form. Proctor did not discriminate where art could be found, but argued that design was the common quality underlying the works of not only the great masters of old but the best modern productions. McDougall did not discuss in abstract formal terms the notion of a total work of art, her idea of artistic creation went beyond the harmonious unification of visual elements. In designing interiors, she considered the correct selection of materials and methods of production in furniture, furnishings, and accessories, in conjunction with the architectural background.
In November 1937, Lord visited Paris during the world exposition and was
‘very stimulated by it as a spectacle’ but more significantly by the art and architecture of Paris itself. It was there that Lord first became fully aware of the importance of detail and the relationship of small parts to the whole especially through the contrast of Old World productions and new experimentations on display. The contrast of old and new, she believed, heightened her awareness of
8 ibid., p. 10.
357 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 the common qualities and differences in artistic productions. Lord was wholeheartedly concerned with visual expression but also valued designing interiors based on the sum of one’s experience of past and present. Additionally, she believed the customs and manners of society gave rise to aesthetic expression that could accommodate the individual needs and wishes of her clientele. This allowed for eclecticism within her design for people and an acceptance of anomalies if they pleased the individual. A deep-seated belief in comforting the body, pleasing the eye and interesting the mind underpinned Lord’s philosophy of design, which translated to the desired total work of art.
Shillito’s commitment to basic principles produced unified aesthetic productions. In her colour schemes theoretically conceived for architect-designed homes, she demonstrated her understanding of the modernist architectural idea of fully integrating exterior and interior. When Shillito described the ‘well-designed’ architectural interior as ‘ART’, she had in mind ideas pertaining to colour rendering of interior space through a wide frame of reference, citing architecture and its space beyond, the interplay of closed and open spaces, of textured walls, glass partitions, and light.
Former employee Harry Stephens recalls how White’s all-encompassing approach to design manifested in her school’s broad program, revealing a wholistic way of teaching that integrated all the parts into a meaningful whole for students. Interior design, in White’s estimation, required architectural thinking to free it from past associations that had cast it as a superficial activity. This idea distinguished design as a three-dimensional conception with each detail carrying the essence of the same idea to achieve a unified whole. But White’s intention was
358 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 also to distance interior design from past connotations of interior decoration that had devalued women and their artistic work activities. Patricia Horsley saw
White’s wholistic approach to designing as a reflection of her own personality and her character in that she wouldn’t want to look at things solely in two-dimensional spatial terms; interior design required three dimensions for the full reality to be properly realised. White’s thinking thus was not just for the whole object as an aesthetic or functional production but as part of the human story. Design mattered.
Technology
Technology had to be used in its most advanced forms in order to facilitate economy and, from this, availability. Mass production and prefabrication were embraced as being the means through which Modernism would arrive on the streets. Beyond this, the standardisation of components would allow for the rapid erection and repair of objects.9
Each of the women had limited opportunity in the ideals and realities of advanced industrial production. Proctor’s limited involvement with Ford Motor
Company in the production of new colour determinations for their car industry remotely positioned her with the mass production of goods and, while her painted furniture designed for Grace Bros. attempted to infiltrate the market place of ordinary Australians, its mode of production remained aligned with arts and crafts traditions. Not even Proctor’s magazine covers which offered modern design in reproduced form were distributed widely.
To the modern housewife the kitchen, in McDougall’s estimation, was
‘equivalent of the heart in the human body – without it [she professed] we could neither walk nor talk’. From her position in the retail sector, McDougall was at the
9 ibid.
359 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 centre of industrially manufactured goods promotion. The kitchen represented the efficient and convenient workplace for the woman who spent three-quarters of her day there. Aware of her modern female audience, McDougall celebrated new labour-saving appliances that while acknowledged as costly, were described as the tools by which women carry out a job bigger than any outside career. McDougall, in her practical manner and analytical approach, was highly critical in her assessment of quality material and sound structure in items of manufacture. She recognised that part of the designing process was ‘knowing’ firms who, in supplying good material and construction methods, would stand by their reputation, rectifying any defects that might have occurred in mass production.
Lord had studied the newest ideas in lighting design and in theories of colour and paint systems pioneering applications in factories, offices and hospital environments and writing and lecturing on their benefits, efficiencies and effectiveness. Interested in possibilities of new materials, her own design work was limited like many designers in Australia, to custom pieces rather than mass production.
Shillito’s educational background and teaching career was situated within the technical education system where training was geared to commercial purposes and art was deemed to go hand-in-hand with industry. She saw design’s future value to Australia’s secondary industries visualising in her diploma program the need to cater for a greater number of trades and professions. Her students had gained publicity for their valuable artistic ideas because they were acknowledged as allied to the ‘new industrial idea’. And, apart from her actual work as a teacher, she devoted a great deal of time making contact with manufacturers for the benefit
360 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 of student employment. At the same time, this value remained in aesthetic terms defining designer as visual thinker and creator, the outcome produced with hand skills which increasingly was at odds with industrial technology’s true aims.
White was also tied to craft production, finding benefit in individual productions for her relatively status-conscious clientele, promoting its strengths through the Crafts Council and later in her work with Aboriginal artists. Her association with mass produced items was tied to her enthusiasm for photography which she used to promote well-designed interiors to Australian audiences and for product literature used for world-wide marketing.
Function—Connected to functioning was rationalism.
…the successful functioning of all designed produce was deemed of great importance…In the conviction that household appliances and furnishings must be rationally related to each other, the Bauhaus is seeking—by systematic, practical and theoretical research in the formal, technical and economic fields—to derive the design of an object from its natural functions and relationships.10
The modernist’s notion of rational functioning had little application in
Proctor’s visual aesthetic and idealised fantasy world. On the other hand,
McDougall related successful functioning to economic planning, believing that planning the design of one’s room saved money because it avoided costly mistakes. She went so far as to compare the advantages and disadvantages of pre- purchase savings plans and buying on instalment. Economic planning was tied to value and quality, and to the benefits of new inventions which she believed increased human functioning. Appliances saved women time; modern inventions
10 ibid., p. 10.
361 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 like ventilation hoods were hygienic, especially in kitchens and bathrooms. Clean- looking colours, washable surfaces, open spaces and streamlined forms were part of the new domestic rationalism.
Lord rejected the ‘stark and unsympathetic’ experimentations of the early modernist ‘Operating Theatre Period’ in favour of the democratic conservatism of
English furniture designer Gordon Russell and the organic work of the
Scandinavian designers whom she found more human. Lord understood, however, that the early experimentations had served their purpose: instilling in designers an appreciation of the advantages the machine could offer and the importance of the creative process which meant a design project would be approached with greater thought and insight to the problems involved. Lord was academically aware of functionalism as an ideal of Gropius and Le Corbusier, and their principles of structural form relating to use and function, material and method of manufactured production. In turn, Lord promoted the concept, especially because it meant that furniture of good design could be made available to ordinary people.
In Shillito’s study of textiles and colour, she acknowledged creative instincts, but emphasised learned rules as part of a rational system related to function and purpose. Her use of colour systems offered ‘a careful plan’ that enabled students to choose suitably for the purpose required. In basic design studies, she believed lines and shapes related to the idea for which the design was being produced. Shillito began her instruction with knowledge (information), comprehensively explaining theories using specific categories, for example, colour intensities, sensitivity of value, colour rhythm, harmonies, contrasts, discords, scale of tones, and the effects of ambient light on colour; then gave
362 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 multiple examples. In her explanation of ‘Space’, she detailed the architect’s design rationale for building, describing how it proceeded from geographic features of the site, orientation to the sun, ease of maintenance and movement between spaces, to the effects of materials used in relationship to their respective spaces. This explanation of interrelationships of exterior and interior was a demonstration of her understanding of modernist space going beyond formal elements to functional purpose. But how this was integrated into her teaching program for interior design is not demonstrated.
White, early in her career designing furniture, became well-known for space-saving furniture designed on the concept of functional modular components.
In her interiors, she demonstrated this in practical terms using materials suited to the space and its use. Linked to functioning, White’s overarching desire was to humanise space, her beliefs re-invigorated by the teachings of Buckminster Fuller on his visit to Australia in the 1960s.
Progress—The concept of progress was a central driving force.
Modernists believed in the idea of aesthetic advance, rather than simply of aesthetic change.11
Proctor’s modernist outlook was relative in aesthetic terms to Australia’s conservative forces in artistic production. Her modern ideas on design, already old-fashioned by European standards, were considered unintelligibly dangerous in
Sydney. Progress was a driving force behind the ‘Advance Australia’ campaign, to which she subscribed linking national progress to ideas of beautifying
11 ibid., p. 11.
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Australia. McDougall recognised more specifically that interior decoration was always in a state of change which she equated to a ‘cause and effect’ notion. She found it ‘fascinating to trace the progress of some furnishing style or feature down the ages to its modern counterpart’. McDougall also wrote of progress as technological change, acknowledging the scientific and machine age that had rendered new ideas and products. In the domestic interior, the new requirements of living included ‘washing machines, electric light, sweepers and irons [which as
McDougall stated] are all made to help the housewife, and so a progressive and open mind—not a biased one—is needed by every home-maker’.12 The dividends—in her estimation—were leisure and happiness. Technology not only produced new inventions for the home but brought ‘overnight’ new ideas from overseas: ‘distance means nothing to us…our living has become international’.13
However, McDougall also cautioned her readers of the ‘pitfalls’ of change: ‘one is the determination to be in the forefront of fashion, another is seeking to be different at all costs, and a third is over-cautiousness’.14 Thus, progress did not equate to fashionability nor did it mean that the next new style, colour or design, was necessarily good but without experimentation there would not be change.
Lord relentlessly campaigned for better standards of design in Australia.
Her mission for aesthetic advancement was directed to designers, manufacturers and the trade alike to ‘create visual examples of those [modern design] theories
12 Nora McDougall, Interior Decoration for Australians, Australian Army Education Service, Melbourne: Ramsay Ware Publishing Pty., 117-129 King Street Ltd., p. 46. 13 ibid., p. 3. 14 ibid., p. 12.
364 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 which can be seen by the general public’.15 Always ready with solutions, Lord suggested one method of establishing this goal was to urge furniture stores and shops to emulate practices of furniture stores in America and England who had permanent displays of planned interiors designed by ‘top-line decorators’. Bereft of museums, the intention was to display progressive designs to help educate the general public and architecture and design school students. Lord was aware of
Australia’s limitations but believed change was required in order to meet current and future needs. To meet the challenge, educational initiatives in design that considered local conditions were necessary:
…if we are to take advantage of the present-day rapid changes in methods of manufacture, new processes, and new materials, we must have instruction in the subject…The need is great in Australia; our interiors are too often an undiscriminating imitation of imported styles, with little comprehension of our own problems of furnishing.16
Shillito transposed her aesthetic ideas in design into economic terms establishing their value to industry which, she believed, could be achieved through her students’ originality and artistic potential. She also believed she was training designers for future needs and their unique productions were an advance on past imported renditions. From a personal perspective, she was frustrated that her successful progress in this direction did not equate to her own advancement financially and in teaching status. From a broader perspective, the notion of progress in design education came under review in the 1950s as artist-designers
15 ‘International Design For Modern Homes …’, no pagination, newspaper clipping taped on sheet with other clippings dated Jun-Jul 1952 referring to Miss Lord’s trip abroad; Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-4/1:2. 16 ‘Guide to Home Furnishing’, Sydney Morning Herald, Mar 1945, no pagination; Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 93/1304-5, 1945.
365 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 came into question in favour of technician-designers and businessmen (the male gender used deliberately to capture continuing patriarchal bias).
For White, progress was tied to the human condition. Concerned with the potential of others, she was wary of the intentions of the men of profits who ‘want to put something over us’ rather than ‘something under us’.17
Anti-historicism—synonymous with anti-decoration.
Anti-historicism also led to a redefinition of the meaning of the word ‘style’. Prior to the twentieth century, styles were associated with particular periods or cultural groups and used in order to reflect their meaning in the object. It has been previously inconceivable that a designer could have his own style, or that an object of aesthetic value could have no style.18
None of the women were anti-historical or anti-tradition in a purely modernist sense. The study of period styles in architecture, furniture and furnishings formed the basis of specialised education for Lord and McDougall. In the first decades of the twentieth century, historical studies offered precedents for understanding the customs and manners of people, the values and beliefs underlying artistic productions. Progressively, histories of art, architecture and furniture focused on stylistic characteristics, patterns and motifs which provided visual exemplars to analyse compositional aspects of design. Proctor’s interest in historical precedents was in their ability to set standards believing that Australia as a country lacked a stylistic history and was without tasteful historical exemplars.
In this, she betrayed her own traditionalism and reliance on the past.
17 Mary White Archive, 93/343/1-3, MAAS Powerhouse Museum, Biographical Material 1920- 1981, no pagination, handwritten documentation. The lines are drawn from playwright Henry Miller. 18 Greenhalgh, op. cit., p. 11.
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McDougall and Lord both reviled the Victorian clutter of the nineteenth century and held the classical exemplars of the seventeenth and eighteenth century valid, but understood they were beyond the reach of ordinary Australians. Within reach, but rejected, were the manufacturer’s shoddy renditions of ill-conceived traditionalism. This dilemma disheartened Lord when she arrived back in Sydney in 1940. Witnessing the low level of interior decoration, she attributed it to a false snobbishness on the part of many Australians who put up a pretentious show interpreting ‘moquette velvet lounge suites and horrible bedroom pieces with loud veneer and mirrors with edges like pie-crusts’ as the last word in elegance.19 This abuse of past styles led to the wholesale rejection of the notion of style amongst pure modernists.
Yet for Lord, her study and travels in Europe, the contrasts and contradictions of old and new had made her even more conscious of design. She understood the relationship between the customs, manners, values and beliefs of each era and generation of people, applauded the designers who melded together new social requirements and methods of production with traditional materials, and was not afraid to maintain an air of glamour and sophistication even under new conditions of her time.
In a 1952 interview with Betty Pepis in New York, Lord further commented on the style dilemma for Australians, believing that the limited nature of Australian design and the lack of designer input as compared to European or
American systems had resulted in an accumulation of styles rather than a distinct
19 ibid.
367 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 one. Lord described the design problem to Pepis that had resulted in an eclecticism forged out of necessity:
No such overwhelming choice faces the Australian interior designer…not [because of] a dearth of ideas, but a man-power shortage in her homeland [that] limits the amount of well-designed modern furnishings available. As a result, the Australians have developed a technique for blending contemporary designs with furnishings from older periods, usually Regency and Victorian pieces, that the earlier settlers on that continent brought from their native England. The resultant décor is cumulative rather than carefully and strictly designed or confined to a single period.20
In her exercises on design, Shillito’s students used historical material as visual reference to understand design as pattern-making and style as drawing and form, placement of motif and, in terms of value and colour.21 No attempt was made to link the designs symbolically, socio-economically or culturally to their historical past. Even in using Aboriginal motifs, Shillito directed the study to underlying elements and principles of form, colour, pattern, contrast, and repetition, without critical interest in Indigenous values, beliefs or social predicament. History was not irrelevant, but less relevant, less essential to the knowledge of the modern designer—the customs and manners of past cultures no longer holding the same claim. Within this context of time, just as McDougall found the tracing of a style fascinating, Lord believed period pieces added interest.
Historicism related more to the study of stylistic features than on-going themes.
At the same time, White looked deeper into the continuing themes of art when she engaged historians Nicolson and Kaplan to develop a serious study on
20 ‘Home Design Seen Widening in Scope, Australian Decorator Here Says Décor Is Developing International Spirit’, The New York Times, Tuesday, 10 Jun 1952. 21 See Barbara Abbott, MAAS 96/226/2, 1947-49 ‘Historical reference’,; Historic examples included Byzantine art, Chinese art, Egyptian Coptic art, nineteenth-century English design, French, Norman design, Indian, Flemish tapestry and manuscript, Maya and Mexican art, Persian, Prehistoric, Renaissance, Russian, Saracenic design, Norwegian, Swiss, and Sassanian design.
368 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 aspects of modern art (See Table 9.2). This was not a survey of historical styles or traditions but of key aesthetic concepts underlying modern art. In the process of building her school, White made and catalogued approximately 7,000 slides on the History of Art, Architecture and Furniture for the purpose of visual example to explain and critique design.
Abstraction—The key aesthetic device employed by the majority of designers.
Abstract art eliminated figurative and symbolic elements in favour of the manipulation of ‘pure’ form. The search for purity was closely related to the idea of truth…The abstract form of an object was normally developed within the parameters of the structure, rather than as an addition to it.22
Many early twentieth-century artists responded to the formalist critique of line, form and colour, believing in the pictorial composition as an end in itself.
Proctor’s art never reached or aspired to this level of abstraction. More two- dimensionally decorative, Proctor’s work remained outside the mainstream of the modern art movement. In applying the same principles to interior decoration, she described the effects of positive and negative space, strong colour and flat planes within the space of a room. McDougall and Lord used an integrated approach, discussing formal elements and principles of design—line, shape, colour and texture, harmony, contrast, repetition, etc—in relation to the room and its components and materials—walls, doors, windows and floors, selection and arrangement of furniture, textiles, lighting and accessories. Shillito’s formalist approach eliminated figurative and symbolic elements in favour of the manipulation of ‘pure’ form. Using a systematic process, she began with a
22 Greenhalgh, op. cit., p. 12.
369 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 realistic object for visual reference, then had her students produce sketches which were transformed into two-dimensional decorative designs of simplified flat patterns, distilling the essential idea into its abstracted form.23
White moved beyond this conception. In rethinking Interior Design as a subject and as a profession in the mid 1960s, she found a need had arisen ‘for a resolution of the simplicity’ which had emerged from her understanding of the many aspects of art.24 By this, she was distinguishing between a formal method of stripping away unnecessary details to seek deeper essential meaning underpinning design. She wrote in her research on the subject:
All art is simplification—that is to say—the reduction of detail to what is essential. Hence all art moves toward style, which is simplification converted to style. But varying methods of simplification are possible. One method consists in the elimination of details so as to retain only those judged the most important which become the subject matter. Another seeks the fundamental law hidden in each detail and strives to represent this law itself.25
White explored these ideas through the work of modern abstract artist
Mondrian who chose the latter approach. Her exemplar as an artist (over architect, industrial or interior designer) freed her of practical and functional necessities in order to arrive at the essential concept which she believed had to be first pre- existent in the mind.
Internationalism/universality.
If barriers between disciplines and classes of consumer were to be eliminated, and if historical styles as indicators of chronological divides were to be proscribed, then inevitably national differences had to go.
23 See Barbara Abbott, MAAS 96/226/2, 1947-49, ‘Designs’ workbook. 24 Mary White Archive, MAAS 93/343/1-4, ‘The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Application for Churchill Fellowship, 1966’, p. 3. 25 Mary White Archive, 93/343/1-3, MAAS, Powerhouse Museum, ‘Biographical Material’, handwritten document, p.1; front page is dated ‘4:30 AM 25th Nov 1963’.
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Therefore, the Modern Movement was unavoidably internationalist in outlook and sought universal human consciousness.26
Modernism’s essential tenet of universality was in opposition to the dominant national tradition that had risen in late nineteenth-century Australia, leading to and extending well beyond Federation in 1901. In the fine arts, conservatives maintained traditions, particularly within the dominant male contingent of artists. In the decorative arts and architecture, a plethora of styles persisted emulating Old European traditions to a revived classicism. Modernism, according to Mary Eagle, was found more in ‘all the arts that pertain to living’ which she in turn related more to women.27 Heather Johnson calls this ‘an odd little phenomenon’ in Australia in which women could lead because there were no modernist men in the fine arts leading the way.28 The arts of everyday living were an avenue for women to express their versions of modernism.
As a pioneer modernist, Proctor aspired to universal principles of design which she believed was common to all of the arts. This formalist reading, however, did not suppress individuality or national considerations of climate and lifestyle. McDougall discussed internationalism in terms of modern communication and transportation that had eliminated distance, while Lord wrote and spoke of the results of adopting universal ideas, ‘A sophisticated room in
London today looks much the same as one in New York, Paris or Rome.’29 At the same time, Lord noted on her return abroad in a newspaper article titled
‘International Design for Modern Homes’, that modern design was ‘moving
26 Greenhalgh, op. cit., p. 14. 27 Mary Eagle, ‘Modernism in Sydney in the 1920s’ in Study’s in Australian Art, Ann Galbally & Margaret Plant, eds. 1978, p. 89. 28 Heather Johnson, 25 Oct 2003. 29 Lord, 1969, op. cit., p. 171.
371 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 towards two allied but distinctive styles—European: interiors built around what is known as typically Scandinavian style; and Pacific: designs inspired by the
East.’30 Both solutions were based on organic restraint of material and design elements but suggested that international could no longer be described as indistinguishable but took on particular local, regional or national characteristics.
Common to these aesthetic ideas was good proportion, simplicity of line and form, which were features proposed by the modern movement and defined broadly as international in style.
Lord told, however, of the problems of adopting an internationalist style— losing one’s individuality. She supported individualism over standardisation and encouraged women to retain their own ideas and individual touches in furnishings
‘no matter how nonsensical, the trend today is towards simplification through mass production, and only by adding personality and individuality can this appearance of standardisation be changed.’31 While supporting the timelessness of universal elements and principles of design, Shillito also believed the Australian student had something unique to offer. She said, textile designs using Australian subject matter for reference appealed both at home and abroad because they were
‘original’ in their use of distinct natural phenomena and national culture, ‘the old land of the aborigine and the new land of beaches and wheat and sheep and sport’ provided inspiration for new motifs. From her perspective as a new arrival from old England, she believed that the newness and distance of the country contributed
30 ‘International Design For Modern Homes …’, no pagination; newspaper clipping taped on sheet with other clippings dated Jun-Jul 1952 referring to Miss Lord’s trip from Sept 1951-Jun 1952 abroad; Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-4/1:2. 31 ‘Decorator Urges Women To Use Their Own Ideas’, newspaper clipping, no source, no date, no pagination; Margaret Lord Archive MAAS 92/1304-5, 1951.
372 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 to the process of designing. Lacking in centuries of exemplars and being ‘so far from the centres of ideas’, students had to ‘build on their imagination’.32 White longed to experience the international scene first-hand by applying for a scholarship. But this was realised second-hand through long-distance learning and self-study, imported journals and goods and delayed overseas travel in her role with the Crafts Council.
Transformation of Consciousness
Design was perceived to have the ability to transform the consciousness of those who were brought in contact with it, having the potential to not only improve their environmental conditions but also to shift their psychological outlook.33
Proctor was caught up in an era when critical discourse maintained that the artist as creator required artistic sensibility. This was related, on the one hand, to ones’ sensitivity for art—having feeling and emotion and, on the other, to clear thinking—aligned with rationalism. For McDougall, design manifested in the relationship between quality, integrity and honesty of material used in one’s home and the inhabitant’s acceptance of her/his social and economic positioning. This stemmed from her belief in education through environment and the ability of design to transform the individual. Lord’s first exposure to interior decoration in
London was steeped in tradition; however, the limiting conditions of World War
II and subsequent reconstruction period required transferring the knowledge gained from her previous experiences in a privileged world full of diverse product to new realities of a broadened audience and designing hampered by a scarcity of
32Phyllis Shillito, Letter to Mr. G. Fhodes c/o Rylands Pty. Ltd. 13 Aug 1947, p. 1; quoted in Kent 33 Greenhalgh, op. cit., p. 14.
373 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 goods and quality productions. Both McDougall and Lord’s sensitive, intellectual and practical ideas made palatable and comprehensible to a primarily amateur audience—the hobbyist-amateur and homemaker—the significance of design.
This transformed past notions of interior decoration as an élite profession geared exclusively to the wealthy to an idea that it belonged to everyone.
In her theoretical discourse on the transformative potential of colour,
Shillito outlined its psychological, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual conduciveness in producing harmony for home and office. She elaborated, stating:
Man’s moods are affected by ugliness and beauty, by sunny and dull weather; reactions to colour are likewise depressing or inspiring. Dark colours advance and make a room look smaller, whereas paler tones recede and lend spaciousness to the interior. Colour conditioning in hospitals, schools, and factories has been widely tested and the value of colour in aiding human efficiency and well-being has been acknowledged. As our economic and social life develops, these research findings will undoubtedly play an important role in everyday living.34
Colour not only could improve one’s aesthetic environment but one’s outlook on life. White, as indicated earlier, was concerned with the ability of good design to enhance the human condition. Design mattered not only in aesthetic terms but in the creation of important avenues by which individuals could also be transformed by their belief in themselves to create.
Theological Intensity Interpreted as the Spirit of the Times
A great epoch has begun. There exists a new spirit.35
Each of the women shared the Modern Movement’s vision of how things could be designed in application to everyday life, demonstrated in their impressive
34 Phyllis Shillito, ’Colour tuning’ in Clive Carney, International Interiors and Design, 1959, p. 54. 35 Greenhalgh, op. cit., p. 14; quoting Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus, 1926.
374 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 contributions to the development of interior design in Sydney. These contributions incorporated diverse intentions, philosophies and tenets of their time. Proctor was caught up in the transitions of her time, not quite relinquishing the vestiges of past aristocratic traditions but firmly committed to the new spirit of modernism.
McDougall joined in promoting the benefits and purposes of modern technologies to a new consumer society, reinforcing at the same time one’s surroundings should be a reflection of character and circumstance. Lord maintained the glamour of pre-war days while instilling in others the necessity of change. Through her highly visible public exposure, she promoted new standards of design and a new professionalism for women. Shillito, believing design was a creative and innovative activity, directed its value to practical matters and addressed realities of life by preparing students for useful employment. Lord and White were most deeply reflective of the times and the way in which design was attached to human activity and a way of seeing and experiencing the world. While Lord found changes in living conditions had the most impact on individuals and their productions, White’s inner strength and faith underpinned her belief in the ability of individuals to effect future change.
Five Sydney-based women shared the aims and ideals of the Modern
Movement, interpreting modernist ideas within the realities of their time, their work with interior spaces and newly-established clientele. Subject to cultural constructs and extraordinary events of their times, the women’s modernism in interior design (re)established universal principles, (re)interpreted on-going social themes and cultivated humanist ideals while incorporating technological advancements within the context of home and everyday living. Their approaches
375 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 to designing were artistic and intuitive, practical and rational. Above all, while upholding qualities of excellence in form, technique and material, the women defined the new beauty through individualism and national character believing design had the ability to transform not only one’s surroundings, but also one’s own status, outlook and character. This vision, capturing the spirit of the times, is summarised as follows in Table 10.2.
Table 10.2 Analysis of Women’s Key Features of Modernism in Interior Design
Greenhalgh Nora Margaret Features of Thea Proctor McDougall Lord Phyllis Shillito Mary White Modernism 1879-1966 1900- 19?? 1908-1976 1895-1980 1912-1981
1.Decompartm Significant Planning by Art underlying Design Art and artist as entalisation of form and its decorator & idea of design undifferentiated part of a great human simplification architect in by specialisation wholistic experience tandem with user fundamental to all tradition for artistic whole creation
2. Social Art’s fantasised Peacefulness and Harmony for Design was Design morality vision removed contentment as happiness and statement of mattered to from harsher aesthetic and well-being of social aims and people in the realities social ideal people responsibility everyday living
3. Truth as a Translated to Sincerity and Integrity of Translated to Social mission moral value good art as appropriateness as material and employment and civic duty transposed as basis of sound New Beauty honesty of opportunities for to minorities aesthetic design (Truth) purpose (truth) students and value and sensitive quality of productions preservation
4. The ‘total Design as Unification of Planning Basic principles Design as work of art’ common visual, correct essential to good resultant in integration of quality selections design unified aesthetic parts into a underlying all working with production meaningful works of art others whole
5.Technology Distanced by Translated to Convenience Future value of New media of time and place efficiency and and comfort of art integral with photography as to new hygiene in the space & labour- new industrial tool in technologies modern manner saving devices in idea promoting everyday needs good design
6. Function Invention of Economic usage Functionalism Rational planning Functionalism connected to form not tied to planning Form tied to to suit functional with design as rationalism imitation and new aesthetic function and purpose humanising structure influence
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7. Progress - Relative, tied to Progress as a state Benefit of new Progress in which Design advance movements of change holding technologies for aesthetic value underpinned by socially by towards both ‘dividends’ improving lives transposes to modern technologies beautification and ‘pitfalls’ of people economic value developments
377 Collective Analyses Chapter 10
Table 10.2 Analysis of Women’s Key Features of Modernism in Interior Design (continued)
Greenhalgh Features of Thea Proctor Nora McDougall Margaret Lord Phyllis Shillito Mary White Modernism 1879-1966 1900- 19?? 1908-1976 1895-1980 1912-1981 8. Anti- Common Classical Historicism as Cultural and and continuing historicism quality found in exemplars held in honest historical material themes that ie. anti- exemplars both high esteem and expression of its as visual appear decoration past and tied to customs of age reference historically present beliefs of the age
9. Abstraction Abstraction Integration of Simplification Abstraction Abstraction as as key tied to formalist elements and without the reduction of an aesthetic aesthetic critique principles with appearance of details as key device device used by materials and standardisation aesthetic device underpinned by designers components universals
10.Internationa Beauty as Modern Beauty and Timelessness of Art is lism / harmonious communication national universals and simplification – universalism creation of and transportation character as a unique character reduction of ideal and eliminated result of share in creative details – its universal order distance circumstance process essence
11. Transform Artistic Quality of Transform Design has ability Design could consciousness sensibility material and national to transform one’s transform space (emotion) and sound structure consciousness as status, to place also clear thinking based on honesty condition of surroundings and transforming its (rationalism) and integrity change outlook on life creator
12.Theological Individual Promoted benefits Living Modernist vision Back of every intensity ‘spirit expression as and purposes of conditions as interpreted as creation is faith of the times’ particularising new technologies key factor spirit of the times belief in element of art re-enforcing impacting individuals to social intent change effect change
Contributions of Five Women to Professional Development of Interior Design
This study has identified women as foundational leaders to the development of interior design in Sydney. Beyond the women’s understanding of design, the following provides a collective analysis of five women’s contributions to concepts of professional development. Criteria adapted from models by Hall, Abbott and
Wilensky (Chapter 3) describe essential components and processes that an occupation takes to become a profession. The criteria as follows are used:
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1) First training established followed by first schools then university
education as steps in the professionalisation process.
2) Systematic theory either theoretical (abstract) or applied, especially, based
on research.
3) Professional authority which enables a professional to dictate what is
‘good or bad’ for a client.
4) Community sanction received both formally and informally, and given
through training and education criteria and standards, including
credentialing.
5) Professional association and code of ethics formally and informally
enforced.
6) Professional culture and identity that includes language and symbols to
differentiate professionals from ‘outsiders’.
Recognising that professions operate within the historical and contemporary context of time, these criteria account for changing yet recurrent patterns of activity and relationships among individuals and groups within and outside professions. These criteria also explain how professions operate within systems of society, are interdependent on a complex mass of contingent forces and are not static but adapt with the times.
Training as Steps in Professionalisation
Thea Proctor in 1922 led the way in Sydney identifying interior decoration as a study, initiating the first training in her classes on art and design. Nora
McDougall and Margaret Lord were early contributors to specialised instruction in
379 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 interior design, formulating the first correspondence courses for the Australian armed forces during World War II. Lord wrote the first recognised ‘text’ on the subject in Australia and initiated talks in the 1940s to include ‘interior decoration’ in the curriculum at The University of Sydney. The attempt was unsuccessful.
Again in the mid 1960s, Mary White held discussions within the Department of
Architecture at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and advanced initiatives at East Sydney Technical College (ESTC) through her role as President of the Society of Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA) and curriculum model from her private school. White’s initiatives can be credited in the longer term to the establishment of interior design education within the university system at
UNSW and advanced degrees at ESTC, each respectively eventuating through her former employees.
Shillito pioneered interior design courses and Design Diploma within the government-run technical education system in Sydney situating the study within
ESTC’s School of Design. Established initially through her design curriculum of the late 1930s, a separate identity was formed for the study by the mid-1940s. This importantly established interior design as a practical career path for art students thus shifting it away from amateur status and the notion of interior design as an
élite and frivolous past-time. Lord and Shillito’s programs of study for active and returning servicemen also de-gendered the field.
Systematic Theory Based on Research
Each woman, through her understanding of universal design principles. provided the study of interior decoration and, subsequently interior design, with
380 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 an abstract theoretical base acquired through academic (formal) study in the fine or applied arts and furthered with research through self-discovery and conscious application. Common to all was an understanding of formal aesthetic principles believed essential to creative artistic compositions of two-dimensional surface treatment and three-dimensional spatial arrangement. Proctor’s knowledge addressed visual, aesthetic and decorative concerns of design which translated into her idealised artistic vision and realised in formal compositions and her expertise with colour. McDougall spread widely her aesthetic, functional and practical design ideas to broadened population of consumers including homeowners and salespeople. Her interest in orientation of sun as an aspect of colour selection and concern with comfort and design of seating extended artistic theories of design to functional issues of form and pre-conceptions of environmental design and ergonomics of furniture.
In conjunction with these ideas, Margaret Lord’s ‘text’ on interior decoration further offered a systematic approach to designing interior space.
Seeking both intellectual and practical approaches to design, Lord researched the subject continually throughout her lifetime. Her self-study reached back to the historical past revealing the relation of people to objects and spaces, and was forward thinking concerned with present needs and technological possibilities.
Lord looked to the future prompting others in the benefits of ‘good’ design. Her theoretical ideas were underpinned by a visioning of the never-ending possibilities of design grounded by practical benefits of planning to meet aesthetic, functional, and emotional desires and needs, translating to ideas of beauty, comfort, effectiveness, efficiency and interest in the spaces of her residential and
381 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 commercial clientele. Lord’s diversely-constructed career writing, teaching, broadcasting and specifying focused her work on theorising and designing rather than on merchandising or selling.
Phyllis Shillito in her primary career of teaching within the government- run technical education system directed general and specialised programs of instruction using principles and processes of design, believing fundamentals underpinned all design disciplines. Her rational, experiential and integrative approach to design used multiple exercises, projects and media to experiment first-hand with the systematic ordering of idea and material in the creative process of craft production. In White’s wide-ranging program for interior design, she believed in a wholistic universal approach melding academic (formal) and experiential (informal) study, theoretical inquiry and practice combining aesthetic, socio-cultural, historical understanding with architectural-thinking, technical knowledge and problem-solving activities for the enhancement and humanising of interior environments.
Professional Authority
Each woman gained professional authority based on her artistic education in either the fine and/or applied arts, with additional studies in interior decoration and/or design. Except for White, all had overseas experience which was highly prized. Proctor’s reputation as an artist gained her authority on art decoration for the home. She further demonstrated this in her exhibition of rooms where modern design principles were applied. McDougall and Lord gained reputations from their study and experience of interior decoration, respectively, from the prestigious
382 Collective Analyses Chapter 10
New York School of Fine and Applied Arts (NYSFAA), and in London, through combined study at the Central School of Art, Victoria & Albert Museum, travel and a coveted apprenticeship at the Mayfair design studio Reens-Arta. Shillito was among the early women who gained entrance to design schools in England, graduating from Halifax School of Design, part of the British-run technical education system. In addition to White’s study and experience of art and design
(under Shillito) achieved locally, she gained authority from her Australian heritage being the granddaughter of a Mort, an early prominent family in Sydney.
Although this was not flaunted, it was important and indicated a shift had occurred from the dominance of overseas training to new local authority.
Community Sanction
Each woman in various ways attained community sanction for their work in the development of interior design. This was achieved either formally or informally (a) through contributions to training programs and the setting of educational criteria for interior design; (b) with the establishment of standards in design promoted through popular press, radio and television broadcasts, commercial retail stores and artistic and professional forums; (c) through credentialing, not only their own but through hiring of others to teach specialised subjects for interior design; and (d) through examination and award. Lord’s authority was sanctioned in the community through her cultivated image in the press and professionally by her reputation as a competent and trained interior decorator furthered through public recognition, personal and professional referral.
McDougall’s reach was popularly sanctioned through the Weekly magazine which
383 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 enjoyed wide publication; while Shillito gained acclaim through local and international publications and with her students’ participation in community events. Her own gains were made gradually, fighting for advancement in teaching status and financial parity internally while recognised more readily outside the public technical education system—included in an international publication on designers. Students taking instruction under the direction of Lord, Shillito and
White were examined and, in the two latter cases, upon completion were awarded
Diplomas or Certificates of completion.
Professional Association and Code of Ethics Enforced
At a time when interior decoration was in its infancy with no distinct society to advance its aims, Proctor’s founding of the Contemporary Group was important in forming an early alliance between modern principles and interior design. Lord and White provided leadership as founding members of Society of
Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA, est. 1951), the first professional organisation for interior design in Sydney, setting standards informally and advancing jurisdiction formally in 1964 with the incorporation of SIDA, further professionalising the practice and establishing a code of ethics in Sydney.36 White also acting as Vice President and then President over a period of ten years demonstrated her dedication to the advancement of professional standards. In her
36 Lord’s interest in advancing the profession of interior design in Australia is evidenced in extant documents from the inaugural conference of The American Institute of Decorators on the subject of education for the Interior Architect and Decorator in the United States held 1938 in Chicago. The Proceedings, 1938, 1939, 1940, were most likely acquired during her visit to the United States in 1951 during a time of the first discussions and foundation of Society of Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA, est.1951) in Sydney. Eight individuals, including Margaret (Lord) Wardell, signed the Certificate of Incorporation for the Society of Interior Designers of Australia, 24 September 1964. See Mary White Archive, MAAS, 93/343/1-8/1 SIDA, 1964, 1972-81.
384 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 position as Head of Design at ESTC, Shillito fostered numerous professional careers of designers who, in turn, further professionalised interior design through prominent memberships in SIDA. Although McDougall is not recorded in SIDA membership lists or activities, through her work she demonstrated strong consciousness for ethical behaviour between designer, client and retail trade.
Professional Culture and Identity
Proctor referred to herself as an artist and the activity as interior decoration or the art of house decoration. This was not a rebuff, merely a statement of fact.
She gained her reputation as an artist and demonstrated her professionalism in the precision of her work and in the way she conducted her life. McDougall, in her publication, Interior Decoration for Australians, raised the question, ‘What is
Interior Decoration?’, to which she gave comparative reply associating the professional interior decorator with ‘a medical general practitioner’, who must have knowledge and understanding of a great number of ‘things’. Thus, she instilled in her audience the concept of professionalism that she held for her field.
As a home decoration expert, she cultivated a broad audience making receptive the notion of modern design. At the same time, this association with the ordinary
Australian and amateur homemaker was at odds with new professional directions.
Lord was fervently concerned with being professional and associating herself with the design community. However, she displayed little interest in arguments of identity or name change from ‘interior decorator’ to ‘interior designer’ and satisfied with past associations and cognisant of the practitioner’s real work. Lord also implemented professionalism by instigating new business
385 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 practises, charging consultation fees for work in lieu of product-based remuneration and working on commercial projects. As early as July 1940, Lord had accepted a position ‘on a consultant basis…designing the decorations for the
Imperial Airways Building on the Gold Coast.’37
Although Shillito did not refer to herself as either an interior decorator or interior designer, her emphasis on design as the basis of the study created a culture that significantly contributed to the shift in identity from ‘interior decoration’ to
‘interior design’. Mary White identified herself as a designer, first and foremost, consciously aware that design was crucial to her professional work as a furniture designer, photographer and interior designer. This represents a shift from artist to designer. She never referred to the field or practitioner as interior decoration or interior decorator, instead distancing the study from past associations. White’s work in the professional organisation and promotion of interior design at a university level confirms her commitment to professional culture in Sydney; while her work at civic and community level solidifies her reputation to these ends. This collective picture of the women’s contributions to professional development is summarised in Table 10.3.
37 ‘The Craze For Steel Furniture Has Gone, Australian Girl Decorated London Homes’ Sydney Morning Herald Women’s Supplement, Tuesday, 2 Jul 1940, no pagination, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304 Scrapbooks, 1940-41, 1952.
386 Collective Analyses Chapter 10
Table 10.3 Analysis of Women’s Contributions to Professional Development
Professionalisation Thea Nora Margaret Phyllis Mary Process and Proctor McDougall Lord Shillito White Concepts of Profession* a. 1922 - a. 1927 - a. late 1936- a. late a. 1950 - late 1930s 1950s 1966 1930-70s 1972
Becomes full-time xx x occupation**
First training school x
First government school x
First university x school***
First local professional xxx association
First national association
First state license law
Systematic theory x x x x x
Professional authority x x x x x
Community sanction x x x x x
Code of ethics x x x x
Professional culture - x x x x x includes language and artist interior interior teacher interior symbols decorator decorator designer
* Professionalisation process and concepts of profession adapted from models of Wilensky first steps and, Abbott and Hall expanded definitions of profession based on components. ** Interior decoration (subsequently, interior design) had become a full-time occupation by this time; thus, x refers to whether the occupation/profession was the individual’s full-time career. *** White initiates talks with UNSW which eventuate through former employee, the architect Harry Stephens.
Empirical Narrative of Requisite Knowledge: Topics of Interior Design
Mindful of growing literature on the knowledge base of interior design, this study also gives an empirical narrative of the requisite knowledge as embedded in the women’s topics of interior design. Thea Proctor’s classes, as discussed, were
387 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 directed to an élite group of art-minded individuals. Although no known curriculum exists, she introduced her students to art fundamentals, especially studies in colour, and wide-ranging interests across the fine and decorative arts.
The content of Proctor’s classes largely revolved around exposure to ‘all the arts about town’ and through books and magazines. Her model from New York on the study of interior decoration was comprehensive but not innovative for the time, giving historical overview, design basics and theory, practical information on materials, furnishings and arrangement, extensive advise on business practices and new ideas for apartment living. Although Proctor made use of many aspects of its contents as evidenced in her work with painted furniture and appropriate selection of French styling for David Jones beauty parlour, her vision and study remained that of the artist not interested in practical functions or business. Equally, the historical side was waning.
Nora McDougall utilised her training and education from NYSFAA directing her study to ‘ordinary folk’. The familiar topics of interior decoration as indicated in Table 10.3 focused on planning, proper selecting, choosing and arranging of furniture, furnishings, flooring and accessories, colour schemes based on orientations to the sun, space-saving and labour-saving ideas, efficiency and hygiene in the home, lessons in curtain making and, importantly, the many practical aspects of how to make your house a home. McDougall discussed specifics of environmental, ergonomic and anthropometric relationships (although not discussed in this terminology) and working with trades and other professionals, providing sound aesthetic, functional and economic advice to the consumer.
388 Collective Analyses Chapter 10
Margaret Lord gained her wide-ranging knowledge base from formal and informal study, through experience and continual travel that exposed her to new ideas. Thus, her instruction reflected a strong knowledge of the past incorporating also the newest ideas on materials, furniture and furnishings, colour theory, lighting design and techniques, effectiveness and efficiencies in wide-range of settings and socio-cultural and psychological interrelationships of design to interior space. Her correspondence course included problem-solving exercises, drawing, drafting and written critiques. Her practical work included special needs populations, designing for factories, hospitals and children’s spaces. Lord’s interest with art, design and architectural communities expanded her vision of interior design. Given the opportunity of advanced education, Lord would have furthered her theoretical discourse on interior design.
Phyllis Shillito’s personal expertise remained in textile weaving, dyeing and printing, theories and practices with colour, and introductory and advanced design subjects, believing the latter fundamental to all design creation and production. At the same time, she was cognisant of the broader subjects of interior design. Under her direction and within the technical education sector, a range of expertise from industry and education were appointed to teach in areas outside her scope. As evidenced in school handbooks, interior design courses included: colour theory, perspective, draperies, history of styles, period furniture, rendering and craftwork in wood and plaster carving, metalwork, ceramics, textiles, and model construction. It is curious that she didn’t take advantage of the system’s sister architectural school to augment studies as was the practice of British technical
389 Collective Analyses Chapter 10 schools, a missed opportunity for the early study of interior design from the 1930s to 1950s.
Mary White incorporated a wide range of topics for interior design, including especially a strong cultural, historical and theoretical emphasis augmented with architectural knowledge and skills that focused on three- dimensional drawing, structures and technologies. Students studying within the studio environment often worked with real clients on a broad range of projects gaining hands-on experience, as well as business skills. White’s employment of artists, sculptors, painters, designers, ceramists, historians and architects attest to the broad program geared to all aspects of design. Above all, her concern was for the development of the whole student and wholistic designer who would have central to their design aims people and sensitivity to environments.
The requisite knowledge for the interior designer shifted from the early
1920s to 1960s from a study grounded in artistic practice and historical precedent towards a modern study that acknowledged past styles but progressively incorporated new technologies, social and environmental issues of their time.
Underlying each of the women’s instruction were basic design theories and principles, drawing techniques, furniture selection and arrangement, materials and colour studies. Relative to each phase was the future direction of interior design.
Each woman believed her instruction was progressive. Table 10.4 summarises the range of subjects reflecting core knowledge and shifts over this period of time.38
38 Table adapts Joy K Potthoff & Bonadine Woods, ‘Content Analysis of Seven Introductory Interior Design Texts Published between 1986-1994’, Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences, Summer, 1995, pp. 59-64. The listing incorporates topics found in the women’s articles, texts and courses on interior decoration and interior design. Ultimately, this individual and collective
390 Collective Analyses Chapter 10
Table 10.4 Topics/Subjects of Interior Design
Topic/Subject Descriptive Features TP NM ML PS MW
HISTORICAL Historical, stylistic precedents xxxxx OVERVIEW of architecture furniture furnishings as basis of aesthetic appreciation; before 20th century, 20th century
INTERIOR DESIGN Interior design practice, xxxx PROFESSION business aspects with clients and trades; professional organisations
DESIGN THEORY Visual perception, light, colour, xxxxx key components, effectiveness of a scheme using colour exercises, experimentation observation; integral relationships of elements of design; daylight, artificial light effects in interior design. Elements, principles Design defined and evaluated
DESIGN Drawing techniques & detailing xxxxx COMMUNICATION Verbal & written presentations
HUMAN FACTORS Ergonomics, anthropometrics xxxxx Special need populations, especially health facilities, children’s rooms, factories, residential, offices Psychological effects of design elements esp. colour, lighting Cultural influences through travel, experience of life conditions
DESIGN PROCESS Design analysis, programming xxxxx through practice; model rooms to design, decorate; client work, experience with trades & other professionals; planning essential to process; problem solving
analysis of topics contributes to an understanding of the development of a knowledge base for interior design in Sydney capturing continuance and shifts from the 1920s to 1960s.
391 Collective Analyses Chapter 10
Table 10.4 Topics/Subjects of Interior Design (continued)
Topic/Subject Descriptive Features TP NM ML PS MW PLANNING Space planning consisted xxxxx RESIDENTIAL primarily with furniture INTERIORS arrangement, furniture design, colour schemes, furnishings & accessories for private homes
PLANNING Space planning included xxx COMMERCIAL furniture selection & INTERIORS arrangement, furniture design, colour schemes, furnishings & accessories in office, healthcare, institutional, hospitality settings
INTERIOR Lighting key component, xxxx SUPPORT aesthetic, functional, SYSTEMS psychological, technical Electrical relating to lighting
MATERIALS Wood, Masonry, Concrete, xxxx Ceramics, Glass, Metals, Plastics, Textiles
STRUCTURAL Structural knowledge of xx x SYSTEMS AND architecture & relationship to INTERIOR interior decoration; Cabinetry, FINISHES Ceilings, Doors, Floors & coverings, Interior Trim, Fireplaces, Stairways, Walls & coverings, Windows & coverings
FURNITURE Selection & arrangement xxxxx Function & types Materials & construction History & style
ACCESSORIES Functional & decorative x x x x x
FUTURE New materials, stylistic xxxxx DIRECTIONS developments in interior design, new inventions.
The [x] indicates that the topic/subject of interior design formed a part of the knowledge base of each woman as evidenced in writings and instructional material. At the same time, the women’s understanding and emphasis within the subject areas would have varied.
392 Collective Analyses Chapter 10
Conclusion
This chapter has drawn together individual and collective analyses explaining the development of interior design as a discipline and profession in Sydney.
Importantly, this chapter has demonstrated the women’s significance as foundational leaders focusing on their contributions and explaining how they progressively advanced interior design in Sydney through understandings of critical and requisite knowledge of interior design. The intent of this chapter has ultimately been to provide a history of the Sydney development, integrating it into the wider critique of modernism and modernity in interior design.
393 Conclusion Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
CONCLUSION
This study concludes by gathering together the objective and subjective aspects of the modern described as five women’s experience of modernity discussing also the significance of this research. In concluding, recommendations for future research are made referencing women’s contributions in light of current developments in interior design.
Five Women’s Experience of Modernity in Interior Design
Evident from the individual and collective stories of five Sydney-based women, each had common yet different experiences of their modernising times: each experience and contribution interconnected with the significant transformations taking place globally and locally from early 1920s through the late 1960s. Their stories, while individual, are representative because they are not isolated from broader ideas, extraordinary events or everyday experiences taking place in world- wide and local contexts that impacted interior design. As such, their experiences of modernity reflect the significant changes taking place not only for women but for the field of interior design during this period. Their stories confirm that socio- historic and economic processes and personal experiences, artistic activities and theoretical ideas cannot be easily separated. Also, while each experience is distinct to its time, there is a relationship with the past.
Women were active participants in the development of interior design as a discipline and profession in Sydney. Selections of these five women were made
394 Conclusion Chapter 11 especially because they entered the field at various times with different backgrounds, were influenced by differing attitudes and ideas and formulated instruction within different settings. As such, their stories and contributions collectively are representative of diverse factors and forces impacting on the
Sydney development. As modern women, they were both inadvertently caught up in the larger processes surrounding the development of interior design in Sydney, but also conscious, even self-consciously aware of their roles in forging new directions in areas that had little or no precedent locally. As artists, teachers, designers, interior decorators and interior designers, they were the cultural experts directing new developments in areas that had yet become fully established but had been identified as ideal for women.
These women were not the first to take up practice of interior decoration and design in Australia, but as teachers they represent the discipline’s vanguard, their contributions significant to professional development in Sydney. Central and critical to the profession was design. This study argues that the women’s understanding of design was interrelated to cultural and aesthetic experiences of modernity, mobilising professional jurisdiction through personal, professional, social and aesthetic spheres (Fig. 11.1).
This conceptualisation of women’s experience of modernity as such is characterised by (a) a personal sphere tied to the biological designation as female and culturally constructed engendered domain defined as feminine, (b) a professional sphere interconnected with aspirations to advance socially and economically within and outside the engendered domain of interior decoration— subsequently interior design, (c) a social sphere that created an avenue for
395 Conclusion Chapter 11
Personal Sphere Professional Sphere
Design (Art)
Social Sphere Aesthetic Sphere
Figure 11.1 Conceptualisation of Personal, Professional, Social and Aesthetic Spheres advancement through principles of development, rationalisation and emancipation prompting notions of personal and professional progress, and (d) an aesthetic sphere linked to essential theoretical ideas of the time realised through artistic expression and interrelated to social and professional spheres.
Ultimately, the complex web of interrelated systems reference respectively issues of gender, profession and modernity, synthesising objective external forces and subjective internalised ideas and responses of women and the development of interior design. This socio-historical and cultural system of interconnections both impact and explain women and modernity in interior design.
Significance of this Research: A Legacy of Design
This research has demonstrated ways in which women were seminal to the development of interior design as a distinct discipline and profession. Covering the period from the 1920s to 1960s, this study identified Thea Proctor, Nora
396 Conclusion Chapter 11
McDougall, Margaret Lord, Phyllis Shillito and Mary White as foundational leaders who progressively shaped interior design in Sydney through common and diverse understandings of design. Positioning them within local and international contexts, this research has redressed the lack of institutional history for interior design in Sydney and contributed to a wider picture of women and modernity in interior design.
Although foundational issues of gender and profession gave impetus to this study, issues of modernity explain the significance of women in the development of interior design in Sydney from the early 1920s to early 1970s. Believing that historical and current representations have stereotyped the early women of interior design overshadowing critical research into the nature of their contributions, a theoretical framework has addressed a complex set of issues. Chapter 2 raised issues of gender giving rise to these stereotypes and then provided theoretical conceptions of profession and the professionalisation process to establish criteria for an analysis of their contributions to professional development. Chapter 3 related these issues further to overarching issues of modernisation, modernism and modernity, defining and explaining each concept and their interrelationships then integrating their relevance to this study of women and interior design. Chapter 4 positioned women within the historical development of interior design giving motivations for its emergence as a specialised modern field, distinct discipline and engendered profession. The chapter also situated the Sydney development within local and world contexts.
Each of the Sydney women’s stories demonstrate differing aspects in the development of interior design (first known as interior decoration) as a discipline
397 Conclusion Chapter 11 and profession from the 1920s to 1960s. This included the various roles women played, different positioning within private and public domains, educational and professional advancements and limitations, and alliances formed with artistic, social, professional and commercial interests. This study also demonstrates that developing a student body and clientele took time and was subject to the times.
The study has traced the shift from interior decoration to interior design, noting in particular the impact of modernist doctrine distinguishing also distinctions and rivalries between design specialisations. This is significant for future research as it
(re)values the specific work of interior design and prompts further study into early principles of interior architecture and decoration.
This study centres on women’s experiences and contributions. It discusses their modern feminist responses to patriarchal systems tracing the shift of interior decoration from pastime, natural talent, ideal career, occupation, feminine interest and preoccupation to interior design as a modern profession. This study has found that while the discipline and profession were often bound by feminine jurisdiction—through individual efforts and women’s authority as cultural experts—interior design was legitimised in the public domain. Women were at the forefront of professional organisation repositioning instruction from women’s interest to professional study within differing institutionalised systems. The development was gradual and subject to a complex, contingent set of interactions as indicated by the women’s conventional and progressive, common and different approaches to design. As foundational leaders, their contributions modernised and professionalised interior design.
398 Conclusion Chapter 11
To investigate the contributions of these women, this study has linked microhistory to issues of gender and profession and theories of modernisation, modernism and modernity to explain complex interrelationships. By focusing on the experiences and contributions of five Sydney-based women during this modernising period of the field’s development, the study has critically explained the paradigm shift from interior decoration to interior design, tracing the women’s understandings of design within an interior design context, linking these conceptualisations to modernism and, subsequently, their theoretical ideas and responses to professional advancement.
This study has demonstrated in what way these women contributed to modernist discourse, approached designing, and devised programs of instruction.
The study also shows how they significantly impacted the direction of interior design towards a modern practice and study in Sydney. This ‘antipodean’ examination of broader issues, formed by long-term interdependent systems under pressure of continual social and technological change, has put individual faces to these issues to uncover reasons for the early women’s lack of recognition, offering also insight into distinct cultural peculiarities significant to developments of interior design. This research demonstrates that the subject of women and modernity in interior design is socially, historically and globally significant and important to greater understanding of the field as an ever-changing discipline and profession.
399 Conclusion Chapter 11
Possibilities for Future Research
Having established women’s legacy to interior design as a discipline and profession in Sydney, this researcher’s hope would be that f urther critical research be conducted to integrate individual and collective stories and contributions from other cities and states, thus, to amass a broader history of the Australian development of interior design. This would include interfacing interior design and architecture professions including also male modernist designers who contributed to developments in interior design. Were male interior decorators and designers marginalised? Did they subscribe to conservatism often seen typical to Australia’s masculine culture? Were they bound by codified conventions albeit different ones from women? In what way would their stories and experiences demonstrate different understandings of design? How did men practice differently within the field’s development? What analyses could be made regarding modern aesthetic theory and ideology in the subsequent approaches of teachers of interior design?
Alternately, greater focus could be placed on the relationship of modernism and post-modernism, especially with growing interest on issues of style and taste regarded by pure modernists as retrogressive. As interest increases in the subject and as the field expands within broad sectors of society, matters of social class distinctions that go beyond the preponderance of representations of interior design as a practice and product for the wealthy could be further explored delving further into the field’s democratisation. Further for discussion would be (a) local versus global difference, (b) tracings of human dimensions so pertinent to interior design,
(c) ergonomics and psychology of design, and (d) environmental and sustainable issues pre-existent in the early practices of interior design.
400 Conclusion Chapter 11
Concluding Remarks
This study has consciously looked back in order to give context to current professional issues in a field that has a predominan ce of women. As part of a larger social construct, the convergence of gender, professional and contemporary issues is central to ongoing evaluations of women, their education, roles and positioning in society that impact future contributions in the development of interior design. The complex nature of interior design reminds us that no single factor can sufficiently represent or explain its history, and that as a specialisation responsive to societal needs, it is continually subject to change. Tracing this history, its motivations, traditions and ruptures illuminates commonalities, as well as biases, complexities, contradictions and paradoxes within the field.
This dissertation makes a contribution to a growing historical consciousness of the field identifying core values and beliefs impacting its development that began with the emergence of the ‘profession’ in the late nineteenth century and its identification as an ideal career for women. The study reveals underlying ideological, philosophical, and political differences within the field that go beyond simple polarities of traditional and modern, emotional and rational, decoration and design, art and technology, women and men, feminine and masculine to name a few, questioning from a present-day perspective what role gender and myriad differences will play in future understandings of design and transformations in the discipline, practice and professional jurisdiction? This legacy of gendered understandings of design provides new insight into the field’s critical abstract knowledge base, giving also an explanation for continuing emphasis on specialisation that has evolved with societal change and has been
401 Conclusion Chapter 11 marked by distinctions and growing rivalries within the profession under the names ‘interior decorator’, interior designer’ and ‘interior architect’.
How can the field go forward to develop areas of specialisation and scholarship that expands its knowledge base? White and Dickson suggested in
1994 that increased collaboration among industry, practice, and education for graduate research would broaden the intellectual foundation of the profession by freeing the development of interior design’s knowledge base from an insular position.1 Guerin and Martin furthered this proposal by believing development of abstract knowledge is the essential component ‘required to secure interior design’s professional jurisdiction’?2 It is the belief of this researcher that this historical study has contributed in a positive way to a wider understanding of interior design and its development, reaffirming the significance of individuals who were caught up in the changes of their respective times advanced the practice, profession and discipline.
1 A.C. White & A.W. Dickson, ‘Practitioner’s Perceptions of Interior Design, Graduate Education and Implications for the Future’, Journal of Interior Design, Interior Design Education Council, vol. 20, no. 1, 1994, pp. 27-35. 2 Denise Guerin & Caren Martin, ‘Expand your Knowledge Base: Using Research in Interior Design Solutions’, 2002, http://www.merchandisemart.com/neocon/proceedings/t246.htm.
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Archives
Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences (MAAS) Archives, Powerhouse, Sydney
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Margaret Lord Acquired Archives: MAAS 92/1304 – Series #1-26.
MAAS ‘Administrative History/Biographical Note’ prepared by Helen Yoxall, 10 June 1992.
MAAS 92/1304 – 4/1:2 Scrapbooks, 1940-41, 1952. (see also Newspaper articles)
MAAS 92/1304 – 5/1:19 Newcuttings, 1937-70. (see also Newspaper articles)
MAAS 92/1304 – 6/1:4 Issues of magazines featuring articles by or about Margaret Lord, 1941-53. (see also Popular Magazine articles)
MAAS 92/1304 – 13 Exhibition Catalogue for Society of Interior Designers of Australia, 1953.
MAAS 93/1304 – 14/1:14, Textbooks and other Publications; includes: Proceedings of the Round Table Discussions on Training for the Interior Architect and Decorator, Seventh Annual Conference, Chicago, Jan 1938, Committee on Education of The American Institute of Decorators, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, N.Y. Proceedings of the Round Table Discussions on Training for the Interior Architect and Decorator, Eighth Annual Conference, San Francisco, Mar 1939, Committee on Education of The American Institute of Decorators, 595 Madison Ave, N.Y. Proceedings of the Round Table Discussions on Training for the Interior Architect and Decorator, Ninth Annual Conference, New York City, Jan 1940, Committee on Education of The American Institute of Decorators, 595 Madison Ave, N.Y.
MAAS 92/1304 – 19 Photographs of interiors of the ships Monowai and Kanimbla designed by Margaret Lord, 1948-51.
MAAS 92/1304 – 25/1:7 Publications by Margaret Lord, 1944-71; includes books by Lord with original covers.
403 Sources
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MAAS 93/343/1-3, Biographical Material 1920-1981; includes handwritten 14- page document.
MAAS 93/343/1-4, Application for Churchill Fellowship, 1966; includes: ‘The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust’; ‘Mary White – Personal Background’; ‘Letter to the Chairman, Australian National Advisory Committee for UNESCO’, 5 Jun 1966; and type-written Letter from H.D. Nicholson Esq.: Chairman of History Teachers’ Association, 11 Jul 1966. . MAAS 93/343/1-8, Society of Interior Designers – Newsletters, Notices and Articles of Association, 1964, 1972-81; includes White’s copy of SIDA exhibition catalogue, 1953.
MAAS 93/343/1-10, Mary White School of Art – Papers and Photographs, 1964- 73; includes: ‘Correspondence and Student details’, Letter to K. Harrison from Harry Stephens, 7 Jan 1972; ‘Advertisement for Mary White School of Art’; ‘Course Info and Enrolment Forms, 1967-72’; ‘Twelve Months Correspondence Course in Interior Design’; ‘Mary White School of Art, Courses for the 1971 Academic Year’; ‘Screenprinting information 1964’; ‘Design Text and Illustrations’.
MAAS 93/343/1-11, Photographs – subject Files, c.1960s; includes White’s photos reproduced in Australian Home Journal, 1966-7.
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National Archives of Australia, Canberra, ACT
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404 Sources
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University of New South Wales (UNSW) Archives, Sydney
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405 Sources
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Carr-Saunders, A.M., Professionalization in historical perspective, In: Vollmer, Howard M. & Mills, Donald L., eds., Professionalization, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1966.
DeKoven, Marianne, ‘Modernism and Gender’, In: Levenson, M., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 174-193.
Eagle, Mary, ‘Modernism in Sydney in the 1920s’, In: Galbally, Ann & Plant, Margaret, eds. Study’s in Australian Art, Melbourne: Dept of Fine Arts, University of Melbourne, 1978.
Giles, Steve, ‘Afterwork avant-garde, Modernism, Modernity: a Theoretical Overview’, In: Steve Giles, ed., Theorizing Modernism: Essays in critical theory, London: Routledge, 1993.
Greenwood, Ernest, The elements of professionalization, In: Vollmer, Howard M. & Mills, Donald L., eds., Professionalization, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1966.
416 Sources
Grimshaw, Patricia, ‘Writing the History of Australian Women’, In: Karen Offen, Ruth Roach Pierson & Jane Rendell (eds.), Writing Women’s History International Perspectives, London: Macmillan, 1991, pp. 151-169.
Habermas, Jürgen, ‘Modernity – An Incomplete Project’, Translated by Seyla Ven-Habib, In: The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, Hal Foster, ed., Washington, Post Townsend: Bay Press, 1983, pp. 3-15.
Kent, Christopher John, ‘Phyllis Sykes Shillito’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 16, John Ritchie & Diane Langmore, eds., Melbourne University Press, 2002, p. 236.
Kirkham, Pat & Sparke, Penny, ‘ “A Woman’s Place”?: women interior designers – 1900-1950’, In: Pat Kirkham, ed. Women Designers in the USA, 1900- 2000: diversity and difference: Jacqueline M. Atkins…[et al.]. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, c. 2000.
Mackay, Mary, ‘Almost Dancing: Thea Proctor and the Modern Women’, In: M. Dever, ed. Wallflowers and Witches: Women and Culture in Australia 1910-1945, St Lucia, Qld, 1994, pp. 26-37.
Mansfield, Elizabeth, Art History and Modernism, In: Mansfield, ed. Art History and its Institutions, London and NY: Routledge, 2002.
Massey, Anne, ‘The Myth of the Independent Group: Historiography and Hagiology’, In: The Independent Group: Modernism and Mass Culture in Britain, 1945-1959, Manchester University Press, 1995.
Riley, Jean, ‘The Movement’s Contribution to the Visual Arts: Three New South Wales Case Studies’, In: Philip Candy & John Laurent, eds. Pioneering Culture: Mechanics’ Institutes and Schools of Art in Australia, Adelaide: Auslib Press, 1994, pp. 210-225.
Sheppard, Richard. ‘The Problematic with European Modernism’, 1993, In: Giles, Steve, ed. Theorizing Modernism: Essays in critical theory, London: Routledge, 1993.
Shillito, Phyllis, ‘Colour Tuning’, In: Carney, Clive, International Interiors and Design, Sydney, London, Melbourne, Wellington: Angus & Robertson, 1959, pp. 50-53.
Smith, Terry, ‘Modernism’, In: Turner, Jane, ed., Dictionary of Art, NY: MacMillan & Co., 1996, pp. 775-7.
______‘Modernity’, In: Turner, Jane, ed., Dictionary of Art, NY: MacMillan & Co., 1996, pp. 777-9.
417 Sources
Strecker, Jacqueline, Colonalizing Culture, The origins of art history in Australia, In: Mansfield, Elizabeth, ed., Art History and its Institutions, London and NY: Routledge, 2002.
Journal Articles
‘An Ideal Australia’, Advance! Australia, vol. 4, no. 5, 1 May 1928, p. 191.
Anderson, Ethel, ‘The Art of Miss Thea Proctor’, Art in Australia, 15 Apr 1932, p. 8.
Art in Australia, vol.2, no.1, Feb 1922, p. 46.
Birdsong, Craig & Lawlor, Patti, ‘Perceptions of Professionalism: Interior Design Practitioners Working for the Top 100 Firms’, Journal of Interior Design Education and Research, vol. 27, no. 1, 2001, pp. 20-34.
Birks, Edith Napier, ‘Careers for Women, No. 13-Domestic Architecture’, The Woman’s Record, vol. 3, no. 3, 6 Sept 1922, Adelaide, p. 9.
Burdett, Basil, ‘Thea Proctor-an appreciation’, Art in Australia, 3rd Series, no. 43. Apr 1932, pp. 10-57.
‘Components of the Modern Interior’, The Architectural Review, vol. 82, Jul-Dec 1937, pp. 291-298.
Cross, Anita, ‘The educational background to the Bauhaus’, Design Studies, vol. 4, no. 1 Jan 1983, pp. 43-52.
Dethier, Kathryn, ‘The Early American Journals of Interiors: Reflections of an Emerging Profession’, Journal of Interior Design Education and Research, vol. 17, no. 1, 1991, pp. 37-42.
Entwistle, Clive, ‘An Approach to Interior Design’, The Architectural Review Supplement, vol. 82, Dec 1937, pp. 225-228.
Findeli, Alain, ‘Design Education and Industry: the Laborious Beginnings of the Institute of Design in Chicago in 1944’, translated by Charlotte Benton, Journal of Design History, vol. 4, no. 2, The Design Historical Society, 1991.
‘Foreword by the Editor’, The Architectural Review Supplement, vol. 82, Dec 1937, p. 223.
Ginzburg, Carlo, ‘Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 20, no. 1, Autumn, 1993, pp. 10-34.
418 Sources
Habermas, Jürgen, ‘Modernity versus Postmodernity’, New German Critique 3, Fall 1974, pp. 49-55.
Hartmann, Heidi, ‘The Historical Roots of Occupational Segregation: Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Job Segregation by Sex’, Signs vol.1, no.3, 1976, pp. 137- 69.
Harwood, Buie, ‘Comparing the Standards in interior Design and Architecture to Assess Similarities and Differences’, Journal of Interior Design Education and Research, vol. 17, no. 1, 1991, pp. 5-18.
Hughes, Quentin, ‘Before the Bauhaus, The experiment at the Liverpool School of Architecture and Applied Arts’, Architectural History, vol. 25, 1982, pp. 102-113.
‘London Showrooms: Reens-Arta’, Decoration, no. 25 Jun 1937, pp. 41-42 and cover.
Lord, Margaret, ‘Problems of Interior Decoration’, Architecture, Apr 1950, pp. 55-58 & 65.
McDonald, James, ‘An interview with Thea Proctor’, Art in Australia, new series, no. 1. Feb 1922, pp. 46-7.
McGrath, Sue, ‘Something that would last…Mary White, Founder of the Crafts Council of Australia’, Craft Australia, no. 4, Summer, 1984, pp. 105-11.
McNeil, Peter ‘Designing Women: Gender, Sexuality and the Interior Decorator, c. 1890-1940’, Art History, vol. 17, no. 4, Dec 1994, pp. 631-657.
______‘Rarely Looking In: the Writing of Australian Design History c. 1900-1990’, Journal of Australian Studies, no. 44, Mar 1995, pp. 48-63.
Medworth, Frank, ‘The Humours and Difficulties of Art Teaching’, Society of Artists 1946-7 Book, 1947, pp. 38-46.
Morgan, Helen, ‘Thea Proctor in London 1910-11: Her Early Involvement with Fashion’, Art Bulletin of Victoria 36, 1995, pp. 27-.
Murray, Sally, Exhibition Review, ‘The Talented Thea Proctor’, Look magazine, Jul 1987, Sydney: Art Gallery Society of New South Wales, p. 20.
Pollock, Griselda, ‘Vision, voice, and power: Feminist art history and Marxism’, Block 6, 1982, pp. 2-12.
Potthoff, Joy D., & Woods, Bonadine., ‘Content Analysis of Seven introductory
419 Sources
Interior Design College Texts Published Between 1986 and 1994’, Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences, Summer, 1995, pp. 59-64.
Proctor, Thea, ‘Design’, Undergrowth, Sept/Oct 1926, no pagination.
______‘Modern Art in Sydney’, Art in Australia, vol. 3, no. 73, 5 Nov 1938, pp. 24-30.
Proudfoot, Peter, ‘Architectural Education in Sydney 1833-1983’, Architectural Education 3, London: RIBA Magazine, 1983, pp. 73-97.
Rosenfeldt, Ron, ‘Historical notes on the establishment of the Society of Designers for Industry and its development into the Industrial Design Institute of Australia 1947-1969’, Mar 1999, Design Institute of Australia Federal Secretariat, Hawthorn Victoria.
Seddon, Jill, ‘Mentioned, but Denied Significance: Women Designers and the ‘Professionalisation of Design in Britain’, Gender & History, vol. 12, no. 2, Jul 2000, pp. 426-447.
Spry, Constance, ‘Flower Decoration’ in ‘Components of the Modern Interior’, The Architectural Review, vol. 82, Dec 1937, pp. 291-8.
Sweetapple, Dora, ‘Thea Proctor’, Art Gallery of New South Wales Quarterly, vol 5, no. 2, Jan 1964, pp. 180-183.
‘The Department of Art at the East Sydney Technical College’, Art in Australia, vol. 15, no. 2, Feb 1935.
Turpin, John, ‘Omitted, Devalued, Ignored’, Journal of Interior Design, vol. 27, no.1, 2001, pp. 1-11.
White, A.C. & Dickson, A.W., ‘Practitioner’s Perceptions of Interior Design, Graduate Education and Implications for the Future’, Journal of Interior Design, Interior Design Education Council, vol. 20, no. 1, 1994, pp. 27-35.
Wilensky, Harold, ‘The Professionalization of Everyone?’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 70, no. 2, 1964, pp. 137-58.
Newspaper Articles
Advertisement, ‘Ure Smith Books on sale this month’, Australia, Dec 1944, p. 79.
‘Artists' Choices - Color Harmonies - Fords Redressed’, Sun [Sydney], 13 Dec 1929, p. 21.
420 Sources
‘Art Notes’, Australasian, 15 Oct 1921, p. 747.
‘Art Show Attracts Notables’, The Sunday Sun, Pages for Women, c. 1945, newspaper clipping, no pagination, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 93/1304-5, 1945.
‘Decorator says Pacific Our Mode’, Melbourne Sun News Pictorial, 1 July 1952, no pagination; taped on sheet with other clippings dated Jun-Jul 1952 referring to Miss Lord’s trip abroad, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-4/1:2.
‘Decorator Urges Women To Use Their Own Ideas’, newspaper clipping, no date, no pagination, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-5, 1951.
Dwyer, Nan, ‘Aunt Thea shook the artistic world’—‘A crusader for new ideas in art and lifestyle’, The Sunday Mail, [Queensland], no date, no pagination, Thea Bryant private collection.
‘Fans and Fashion-Portrait Problems- That Troublesome Nose-Art and Thea Proctor’, Sun, [Sydney], 24 May 1923, p. 13.
Gellert, Leon, ‘A gracious lady has left us…’, Sunday Telegraph, 7 Aug 1966.
Gilruth, Margaret, ‘Victorian Girl Who Decorates London’s Big Homes’, 1 Jul 1940, no pagination, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-4 Scrapbooks, 1940-41, 1952.
Gleeson, James, ‘The death of a taste maker, World of Art with James Gleeson’, newspaper clipping, Aug 1966, no pagination, Thea Bryant private collection.
‘Guide to Home Furnishing’, Sydney Morning Herald, Mar 1945, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 93/1304-5, 1945.
‘Interior Decorating is a Fascinating Study’, newspaper clipping, no date, no pagination, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS, 92/1304-5 1953.
‘International Design For Modern Homes …’, probably the Sydney Morning Herald, newspaper clipping, no date, no pagination, taped on sheet with other clippings dated Jun-Jul 1952 referencing Miss Lord’s trip abroad, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-4/1:2.
‘Making New Artists for Australia’, Daily Telegraph, Magazine Section, Apr 1950.
421 Sources
“Minette”, ‘Miss Lord’s New Appointment Interior Decorators Must Be Versatile’, Warrnambool Standard, 2 Jun 1948, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-5, 1948.
Missingham, Hal, Director, National Art Gallery (now Art Gallery of New South Wales), ‘Art at the Show, Designers Praised’, Letter to the Editor, Sydney Morning Herald, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-5, 1946.
‘Modern Art - Miss Thea Proctor's Work’, Advertiser, 14 May 1925, p. 10.
Morris, Bruce B., ‘The Art of Home Making, Valuable Guide Book by Warrnambool Writer’, newspaper clipping, no date, no pagination, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-5, 1944.
Pepis, Betty, ‘Home Design Seen Widening in Scope, Australian Decorator Here Says Décor Is Developing International Spirit’, The New York Times, Tuesday, 10 Jun 1952.
Proctor, Thea, ‘Thea Proctor’s Artistic Indignation’, Bulletin, no.10 Aug 1922, p. 34.
‘Rehearsal for a discussion’, no date, no pagination, newspaper clipping, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92-1304-5, 1963.
‘She Can Remember When a Chop Cost Twopence’, newspaper clipping, no date, no pagination, Thea Bryant private collection.
‘She Likes her Pupils Cheeky’, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 Mar 1960, p. 7.
‘Studied Home Decoration While Abroad’, Newspaper clipping with ‘Herald 22.6.52’ handwritten on article; taped on sheet with other clippings dated Jun-Jul 1952, refers to Miss Lord’s trip abroad. Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-4/1:2.
‘“Tasmanian Store Sponsors Lectures”, Hobart, Tasmania, July 20’, New York, NY Retailing (Home Furnishings Edition), 21 Jul 1948.
‘The Craze For Steel Furniture Has Gone’, Sydney Morning Herald Women’s Supplement, 2 Jul 1940, no pagination, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304 Scrapbooks, 1940-41, 1952.
‘Thea Proctor on Interior Decoration’, Register, 11 Oct 1929, p. 28.
Thomas, Daniel, ‘The Week in Art-The Place of Women-Thea Proctor’, Sunday Telegraph, 21 Jul 1963, Thea Bryant private collection.
______‘The Tastemaker’, references ‘three years ago she died’, newspaper clipping, no date, no pagination, Thea Bryant private collection.
422 Sources
‘Topics for Women - Modern - Thea Proctor's Room’, Sun [Sydney], 20 Sept 1929, p. 11.
Untitled newspaper clipping with ‘Sun’ handwritten and an illegible date taped in scrapbook with other clippings dated Jun-Jul 1952, references Miss Lord’s trip abroad, Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-4/1:2.
‘Where Our Art Fails’, Evening News [Sydney], 16 Sept 1924, p. 10.
‘Women Artists, Miss Thea Proctor’s Views’, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 May 1937.
‘Women Express Approval of “Suburban Culture Nights”’, newspaper clipping with other clippings dated Jun-Jul 1952, references Miss Lord’s trip abroad. Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304-4/1:2.
Popular Magazine Articles
Advertisement, The Home, Jul 1928, p. 4.
‘Art and Decoration’, The Home, 1 Aug 1929, p. 28.
‘Art in Industry’, Pix, 11 Sept 1948.
‘Australian Decorator comes Home Again from London’, The Australian Home Beautiful, 1 Jul 1940, p. 5. ‘Australians must Develop Taste says Miss Thea Proctor’, Home, Jun 1922, pp. 37-38.
Birks, Edith Napier, ‘Careers for Women, No. 13-Domestic Architecture’, The Woman’s Record, vol. 3, no. 3, 6 Sept 1922, Adelaide, p. 9.
Brodie, I.M. ‘Interior Decoration, Advisory Work as a Career for Women, The Australian Woman’s Mirror, vol. 6, no. 49, 28 Oct 1930, p. 12.
‘Club Room [Sydney University Union] Designer: Margaret Lord’, The Home, 1 Aug 1941, p. 12.
Cooper, Nora, ‘Handbook for Amateur Decorators’, The Australian Home Beautiful, Feb 1945, p. 18.
______‘The Progress of Modernism’, The Australian Home Beautiful, Jun 1941, pp. 12-14.
Cover of The ABC Weekly, vol. 3, no. 15, 12 Apr 1941.
423 Sources
Cover of The Australian Women’s Weekly, 7 Sept 1946.
‘Designing the Future’, Womans Day & Home, 21 Dec 1953, pp. 18-19.
‘Distinguished Woman Artist’, Woman's World, 1 Dec 1921, p. 25.
Dixon, Megan, ‘Scoring for Art’, Australian Country Style, Aug 1997, pp. 84-7.
Fry, Roger, ‘The Artist as Decorator’, Colour, Apr 1917, pp. 92-3.
‘How the World is Wagging, A Painter of Beautiful Fans, Thea Proctor’s Fantasies’, The Woman’s Budget, 18 Aug 1926, p. 3.
Kay, Margaret, ‘Interior designer wears clothes in harmony with her career, Woman, 2 Jan 1950, pp. 12-13.
‘London Showrooms: Reens-Arta’, Decoration, no. 25 Jun 1937, pp. 41-42, cover.
‘Lord Knows How’, People, 8 Apr 1953, pp. 19-21.
Lord, Margaret, ‘Architecture and Decoration in Wartime’, The Australian Home Beautiful, 1 Jul 1940, pp. 10-11.
______‘What is Wrong with Modern Design?’, The Australian Home Beautiful, 1 Aug 1940, pp. 12-13.
______‘Programmes of the Australian Broadcasting Commission’, The ABC Weekly, vol. 3, no. 15, 12 Apr 1941, cover & p.17.
______‘An Englishmen’s Home, Exhibiting a Succession of Furniture Periods’, The Australian Home Beautiful, June 1941, pp. 7-11.
______‘Must We Have Bad Furniture? Appeal for a Better Standard’, Australia, Jul 1946, pp.
______‘If you have a job as well as a home’, The Australian Women’s Weekly, 29 May 1957.
‘Margaret’s Lord’s Book On Home Decorating’, ABC Weekly, Mar 1945.
McDougall, Nora S, ‘Farmhouse Comfort’, The Australian Woman’s Weekly, 28 Sept 1946, p. 37.
______‘Drab house now haven of charm’, The Australian Woman’s Weekly, 5 Oct 1946, pp. 48-9.
424 Sources
‘Men’s Union Extensions On The Way To New Horizons’, Honi Soit, n.d., Margaret Lord Archive, MAAS 92/1304 Scrapbooks, 1940-41, 1952.
Murray, Sally, Exhibition Review, ‘The Talented Thea Proctor’, Look magazine, Jul 1987, Sydney: Art Gallery Society of New South Wales, p. 20.
Proctor, Thea, ‘Household Weeds’, Home, Mar 1923, pp. 14-15.
______& Preston, Margaret, ‘The Gentle Art of Arranging Flowers’, Home, Jun 1924, pp. 38-39.
______Illustration, Home, 1 Mar 1923, p. 41.
______Cover designs, Home, vol.5, no. 2 June 1924; vol. 6, no. 4 Aug 1925; vol.6, no. Dec 1925; vol.7, no. 7, 1926; vol. 8, no. 6 Jun 1927; vol.9, no. 12 Dec 1928.
______‘Grace Brothers introduce painted furniture by Thea Proctor and Roi de Mestre’, Home, Apr 1927, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 50-51.
Rosenfeldt, Ron, ‘Historical notes on the establishment of the Society of Designers for Industry and its development into the Industrial Design Institute of Australia 1947-1969’, Mar 1999, Design Institute of Australia Federal Secretariat, Hawthorn Victoria.
Ross, F. Kay, ‘Fortune Favours Expert Woman, Interior Decoration as a Career for Girls, in Herself, Australian Town and Country, vol. 2, no. 3, 5 Jul 1930, p.13.
Smith, Sydney Ure, ‘The Story of the Home’, The Home, Mar 1930, p. 8.
‘The Case for Modernity’, The Home, 1 Nov 1929, p. 58.
‘The Editor’s notes’, The Woman’s Record, vol. 3, no. 3, 6 Sept 1922, [Adelaide], front page.
‘The Signpost – Australian Decorator Comes Home Again From London’ The Australian Home Beautiful, 1 Jul 1940, p. 5.
‘Thea Proctor’s Studio’, The Home, Mar 1923, vol. 4, no. 1, p. 14.
‘Thea Proctor’s Art Classes’, advertisement, The Home, 1 Mar 1924, p. 8a.
‘Thea Proctor – Two Exhibitions’, National Trust Magazine, Jun 1987, p. 19.
425 Sources
Wheeler, Candace, ‘Interior Decoration as a Profession for Women, Part 1.’ New Outlook N.Y., 6 Apr 1895, pp. 559-649.
Exhibition Catalogues and Brochures
Beau Arts [Gallery], Shillito Exhibition Catalogue, 24 Apr 1930-10 May 1930.
‘Catalogue of an exhibition of rooms’, Society of Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA), Woollahra Arts Centre, 1 Sept –12 Sept 1953.
‘Colour Harmony, an Entirely New Note in Ford Cars, Dictated by Well Known Australian Artists, Meeting the Demands for Brighter Cars, The Value of the Artist in Industry’, Brochure, Ford Motor Company of Australia Pty Ltd., 1929. Thea Bryant Private Collection.
Exhibition of an Englishman’s Home from 1700 to 1941. Loan collection of Furniture, Pictures, China, Glass, Silver and Early Chinese Art, David Jones Art Gallery, Sydney, 6-31 May 1941.
Proctor, Thea, ‘Foreword’, Contemporary Group, Exhibition Catalogue, Sydney, 1933.
Program for play and art exhibition, Not about Still Lives, Margaret Preston & Thea Proctor, Brisbane, Queensland Art Gallery, c. 1985.
The Burdekin House Exhibition. A Loan collection of Good Furnishing, including Old and Modern Furniture and Fittings…, 8 Oct -21 Dec, 1929.
Webb, Virginia, ‘Between the Stores’, The Lacquer Room 1935-36, Australian Collection Focus 1 Aug-24 Oct 1999, Exhibition brochure, AGNSW.
Government Publications
‘A Report: A School of Design in New South Wales’, Art Advisory Committee of the N.S.W. Department of Technical Education, December 1954.
‘Associate Professionals, Major group 3’, ABS Catalogue No. 1220.0, Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1997, p. 293.
‘Professionals, Major Group 2’, ABS Catalogue No. 1220.0, Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1997, p. 211.
426 Sources
Ibbotson, P J, ‘TAFE and Its Origins’, Occasional Papers – Office of ACT Further Education, Department of Education and Youth Affairs, Canberra, ACT, no. 13, Aug 1983.
Review of Current Activities in N.S.W. Technical Education, Jul 1955, vol.7, no. 6, p. 9.
Theses
Franz, Jill, ‘A Phenomenographic Study of Design in the Interior Design Context’, PhD Thesis, Faculty of the Built Environment & Engineering, Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology, 1997.
Hanna, Bronwyn J., ‘Absence and Presence: A Historiography of Early Women Architects in New South Wales’, PhD Thesis, Faculty of the Built Environment, Sydney: University of New South Wales, 1999.
Kent, Christopher John, ‘Phyllis Shillito (1895-1980), A Review’, MA Coursework, School of Design, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, Sydney: University of Technology, 1995.
Koenigsberg, Lisa, ‘Professionalizing Domesticity: A Tradition of American Women Writers on Architecture, 1848-1913’, PhD Thesis, New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1987.
Lommerse, Marina, Career Development of University Educated Interior Designers/Interior Architects: Past Present and Future, MA Thesis, Perth: Curtin University of Technology, 1998.
Marshall, Nancy, ‘Into the Third Millennium: Neocorporatism, the State and the Urban Planning Profession”, PhD Thesis, Faculty of the Built Environment, Sydney: University of New South Wales, 2000.
Martin, Caren Samter, ‘Professionalization: Architecture, Interior Decoration, and Interior Design as Defined by Abbott’, MA Thesis, University of Minnesota, 1998.
McNeil, Peter, ‘Designing Women: Gender, Modernism and Interior Decoration in Sydney, c. 1920-1940’, MA Thesis, Department of Art History, Canberra: Australian National University, 1993.
Mitchell, Avenal, Thea Proctor (1879-1966): Aspects of Elitism 1921 to 1940, unpublished Fine Arts IV Thesis, Sydney: University of Sydney, 1980.
427 Sources
Morgan, Helen, Thea Proctor, Her career before 1921 and the question of her aesthetic reputation, MA (Honours) Thesis, 2 Volumes, Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 1994.
Richards, Michaela, ‘Making the Modern Interior: Marion Hall Best and Australian Interior Design 1945-1965’, MA Thesis, Department of Art History, Canberra: Australian National University, 1993.
Internet Articles and Websites
Armstrong, Aurelia, ‘Foucault and Feminism’, Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, University of Queensland, c. 2003. http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/f/foucfem.htm.
Barber, Theodore, ‘Frank Alvah Parsons’, Kellen Archive Center, Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Archives, Center of Parsons School of Design, New School University, 2004. http://library.newschool.edu/speccoll/Kellen/faparsons.phpparsons
Delprat, Paul, ‘Julian Ashton Art School, an Introduction to Our School…Past Artists - an Historical Background’, c. 2004. http://www.julianashtonartschool.com.au
Guerin, Denise & Martin, Caren, ‘Expand your Knowledge Base: Using Research in Interior Design Solutions’, 2002. http://www.merchandisemart.com/neocon/proceedings/t246.htm
‘Microhistory’, last modified 16:53, 26 May 2004. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microhistory
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