- 2004 edition, 246 pages
- Published by Allen & Unwin
- Softcover with fold in flaps; Format B
- Very good condition, minor cover wear. Light tanning.
Illustrated and index included.
Late on the afternoon of 15 October 1977, seventy-eight-year old Florence Broadhurst was brutally murdered. Her killer has never been found.
But who really died that day?
Was it Bobby Broadhurst, the chanteuse of Shanghai? Or Madame Pellier, London's Bond Street-salon owner and friend to Churchill and royalty? Perhaps Mrs Kann, married to English gentry. Or was it the world-renown wallpaper designer and socialite?
By the time Florence Broadhurst sailed into Sydney Harbour with her second husband and young son in 1949 she had long ago put aside her humble beginnings in rural Australia, instead presenting herself as an English woman escaping post-war Britain for the sunshine of the 'promised land.' And she found it.
Dismissing the designs of the day as drab and lacking in colour, Florence, set about creating original, bold, bright wallpapers, unlike anything that had been seen before. With clientele ranging from Lady McMahon to Qantas, and far-eastern hoteliers to Estee Lauder Cosmetics, Florence was soon a popular face on the Sydney social scene - and a very wealthy woman.
Today Broadhurst designs are once again gracing the walls and furnishings of hip bars and fashionable homes and bontiques from Sydney to New York, as well as the runways of Isogawa, Karen Walker and Zimmerman. Yet the mystery still reamins.
Who was this at times generous, at others ferociously autocratic, and always elusive woman? And why did she die such a violent death? A Life by Design provides a glimpse into the many lives of the woman behind the hand-printed brocades.
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