Florence Broadhurst
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Florence Maud Broadhurst (July 28, 1899 - October 15, 1977) was an Australian designer and businesswoman whose murder in 1977 remains a mystery.
Broadhurst was born in rural Queensland, at Mungy Station, near Mount Perry. She became a singer, winning local eisteddfods, and joined a group known as the Diggers who performed in Toowoomba. In 1922 she joined a comedy sextet known as the 'Globe Trotters' and later the 'Broadcasters', who toured South East Asia and China. In 1926 she established the Broadhurst Academy in Shanghai, offering tuition in violin, pianoforte, voice production, banjolele playing, modern ballroom dancing, classical dancing, musical culture and journalism.[1]
She returned to Queensland in 1927, after her voice was damaged in a car accident. She went to England and married Percy Walter Gladstone Kann, an English stockbroker; they co-directed Pellier Ltd, Robes & Modes. Kann and Broadhurst separated, and she remarried diesel engineer Leonard Lloyd Lewis and they lived in Banstead from 1939. During World War II she joined the Australian Women's Voluntary Services, and offered hospitality to Australian soldiers.
In 1949, the couple and their son moved to Australia. She travelled widely and produced 114 landscape paintings, which were first shown as 'Paintings of Australia' in 1954 at David Jones's art gallery, Sydney. Then later in Brisbane and Canberra. She was a foundation member of the Art Gallery Society of New South Wales and a member of the Society of Interior Designers of Australia, was a teacher of printmaking and sculpture at the National Art School and was also involved in variety of charitable activities. Her husband left her and their son in 1961.
She travelled to England in 1973 to receive treatment for her failing eyesight and hearing. She returned to Sydney and was murdered in her Paddington home in 1977. The murder remains unsolved, but because of apparent lack of motive, it has been widely speculated that she was a victim of serial killer John Wayne Glover who was convicted of murdering six elderly women between 1989-90 and is thought by police to have perhaps been responsible for four other deaths.[2]
In 1959 Broadhurst established Australian (Hand Printed) Wallpapers Pty Ltd., which later became Florence Broadhurst Wallpapers Pty Ltd, advertised as 'the only studio of its kind in the world'.[1] Her brightly-coloured geometric and nature-inspired oversized designs were all hand printed. Advances made in her studio included printing onto metallic surfaces, the development of a washable, vinyl-coating finish and a drying rack system that allowed her wallpapers to be produced in large quantities.[1] By 1972, her wallpapers reportedly contained around 800 designs in eighty different colours[1] while by the mid-1970s, she monopolised the quality end of the Australian market and was exported worldwide. [3]
The Broadhurst collection was acquired by Signature Prints Pty Ltd, 530 Broadhurst are in their collection and some are produced by the company as wallpaper. The company licences the designs for other uses, some have been in high-end fashion including pieces by designers Akira Isogawa, Nicole Zimmermann and Karen Walker; carpets and other homewares have also been produced using her designs.[4]
The 2005 Gillian Armstrong documentary Unfolding Florence - The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst, details her life and murder. Several books have also been written about her life and designs including the 2006 book Florence Broadhurst: Her Secret and Extraordinary Lives by Helen O'Neill.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d Anne-Marie Van de Ven, Broadhurst, Florence Maud (1899 - 1977), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Supplementary Volume, Melbourne University Press, 2005, pp 46-47.
- ^ [1]
- ^ Signature Prints. Florence Broadhurst's Amazing Adventure
- ^ Go with the Flo November 11, 2004. Sydney Morning Herald
