The young artist, Cecil Beaton, met and sketched interior decorator Elsie de Wolfe in New York in 1929. He was much younger than her but he liked her at once calling de Wolfe “the sort of wildly grotesque artificial creature I adore”.

Elsie de Wolfe had middling success as a stage actor.

Her real success came after she changed direction and became an important American tastemaker. A lady decorator.

One of her most famous interiors was for the first female only club in New York, the Colony Club.

This is the Trellis Room.

And the Strangers’ Room

In 1915 she published The House in Good Taste. A natty book on all things refined in the home. But also a treatise on the idea of women’s spaces. A space made by women after the men have played their architectural part.

“It is the personality of the mistress that the home expresses. Men are forever guests in our homes, no matter how much happiness they may find there.”

De Wolf also had some particular ideas on colour.

“If you are inclined to a hasty temper, for instance, you should not live in a room in which the prevailing note is red. On the other hand, a timid, delicate nature could often gain courage and poise by living in surroundings of rich red tones.”

In 1938 Janet Flanner wrote a story about de Wolf in The New Yorker.

“She was a wizard saleswoman. She made money because she likes money and is vulnerable to it, because she has a true, talented eye for color, because she loved the job, and above all because the time was ripe for the work. Women clients liked her because she planned plenty of closets and was practically the mother of modern lampshades; also, she had an inventive efficiency unafraid to mix the practical and lovely.

“She is today a lively little figure with artfully coiffed pale green hair, squirrel-brown eyes, an alert, inquiring, small chic face, and neat tiny feet in low-heeled shoes. She has an air of being an eccentric, entertaining, highly compact, energetic personality. She has been called one of the world’s best-dressed women and probably is, since she sensibly gets beautiful Parisian clothes which are simple, fit perfectly, aren’t ephemeral or startling in style, and which she generally wears two or three years. She wears chiefly blue or black, and used to adore beige. When she first looked at the Parthenon in Athens, she cried, ‘It’s beige—just my color!’”

This elegant sitting room from the thirties represents the work of de Wolfe’s glamourous lady rooms. Gleaming mirrors, pale walls and painted furniture with soft blue fabrics.

And by the way she was a fitness freak.

And, this is the best bit, at her home in France, the Villa Trianon, she had a dog cemetery in which each tombstone read, “The one I loved the best.”

A swanky creature.

Julia Ritson is a Melbourne artist. Her paintings investigate colour, abstraction and a long-standing fascination with the grid. Julia has enriched and extended her studio practice with a series of limited edition art scarves. She also produces an online journal dedicated to art and scarves and architecture.

Marion Hall Best (nee Burkitt) attended Thea Proctor’s art and design classes in Sydney. Another country girl. Along with her painter sister Dora Sweetapple.

Marion studied architecture for a year and became intrigued with the ideas of Harry Seidler and Buckminster Fuller. This was a time when women were seen merely as decorators. Marion always thought of herself as a designer.

She became very good at bouncing walls apart. She set up shop in Queen Street Woollahra as Sydney’s first interior designer and became an expert in all things modern.

From 1951, Best worked as a founding member of the Society of Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA) to encourage public recognition of designers and to improve professional standards.

Best became known for her exhibition rooms, or ‘personality’ rooms. In these room she was able to express her new ideas untroubled by pesky clients or market demands.

In this case, a ‘Room for Peter Sculthorpe.’ The vivid green glazes showcase a Jack Meyer’s musical sculpture, Magistretti table, Tobia Scarpa leather seats, and Architectural Fibreglass indoor/outdoor furniture.

Glazes became her forte. Layers of transparent paint thoughtfully applied to walls.

This stunning guest cottage in Castlecrag was designed for clients who were very open to Best’s High Style.

She admitted “I just did to architectural finishes what friends who were artists were doing to their paintings”. Friends like Justin O’Brien. The undercoat was an equal mixture of flat and enamel house paint, and the contrasting glaze a coat of Dulux gloss stained with translucent artists’ oils.

“It was the glazing technique that made the colours sing with such freedom and varying depth only possible with this new found technique. I was interested in Justin O’Brien’s technique in oil painting of overlaying a heavy colour over a singing light one such as olive over a brilliant yellow, then scraping it off to a varying scale of transparency. The same with the reds overlaid over pink or greens or rich yellow, whichever he had in mind, and scraped away to such varying transparency of colour, tone and movement. It was this subtlety that made me realise the importance in glazing technique of the choice in undercoat colour for maximum subtlety or brilliance. There was no end to this beautiful discovery, and the variety and contrast of scale from light to dark is thrilling.”

Makes for a thrilling apartment.

“Colours were never thoughtlessly used.  If one wants to be spun into orbit on fabulous vibrant colour, with an emerald room off a vermilion room, the effects can be magical if other colours in the right scale and tone appear in paintings or through open doors, or mirrors; but is must be planned, and it must look free and not contrived. Whether high or low tone, the same applies. So too the pattern – they can mix, as Matisse has shown us but it is for the highly trained to do and not a salesman of wallpapers. Never for novelty and only a very high plane of intellectual artistry.”

Thoroughly modern Marion.

Julia Ritson is a Melbourne artist. Her paintings investigate colour, abstraction and a long-standing fascination with the grid. Julia has enriched and extended her studio practice with a series of limited edition art scarves. She also produces an online journal dedicated to art and scarves and architecture.

By Julia Ritson

Magaret Preston was a formidable artist and an inspiring teacher who was interested in everything.

I’m drawn to her domestic scenes from the 1910s. Scenes played out in a modern world within a landscape of war.

A device she used in many of her flower paintings was the table cloth. The cloth enabled the artist to emphasise the shallow space, pushing all to the front of the picture plane. An abstraction.

Red, white, blue and black plaid in this painting. Preston is starting to experiment with the flattening of space. When you see these paintings in the flesh, you get a better idea of her use of empty areas to provide light to the overall design.

Margaret Preston, Holiday still life, 1913

In this painting she uses an indoor/outdoor concept with the cloth playing a large part.

Preston said “why there are so many tables of still life in modern paintings is because they are really laboratory tables on which aesthetic problems can be isolated.”

Margaret Preston, Still life sunshine indoors, 1914

The red and white gingham in this painting adds an unpretentious element to the complexity of the picture plane.

A wonderful use of black in the lacquer tray alongside the black border pushes the composition into edgy territory.

Margaret Preston, Still life, 1915

In this painting you get to experience Preston’s love of white paint in all its chalkiness.

The pink and white striped cloth is reflected charmingly in the shiny tea pot.

Margaret Preson, Still life with teapot and daisies, 1915

Preston was also a prolific writer. One of her quirkier works was a piece she wrote for The Home in 1926 with instructions for furnishing a bedroom.

Mrs Margaret Preston makes some practical suggestions for arranging a bedroom, keeping in mind that it is the most intimate room in the house.

WALLS
Painted in a pale colour, preferably cream or pink.

WOODWORK
Light in colour, matt in surface work.

CEILING
Plain white, small decorated line separating walls from ceiling.

FLOOR
Seagrass mat, not too big, so that it can be taken up each week. Outside borders of boards stained or painted. Grey soft mats for the bedside etc.

MANTEL
If made of wood, stained a bright colour to match mats and curtains.

ON THE MANTEL
No draperies; a few intimate possessions and a few pet books; coloured line mats. Needlework (samples) framed, or a water colour painting – a gaily coloured print would do. No oil paintings in a bedroom.

CURTAINS
Washing material, something with a bright stripe. Keep rather short.

FURNITURE
Single beds of wood and cane; two or three chairs, one an easy chair with a slip-on cretonne cover, one with a straight back for the dressing table; a low, wide dressing table – all straight lines except the oval mirror. The woodwork to be of a very highly polished and the dressing table effects glittering silver or glass.

PICTURE
Water colours or prints.

ORNAMENTS, LAMPS, ETC
No ornaments. No top lights; they make shadows in the mirror.

The world according to Mrs Preston.

Julia Ritson is a Melbourne artist. Her paintings investigate colour, abstraction and a long-standing fascination with the grid. Julia has enriched and extended her studio practice with a series of limited edition art scarves. She also produces an online journal dedicated to art and scarves and architecture.