Florence Broadhurst: Her Secret & Extraordinary Lives by Helen O’Neill, Hardie Grant, $69.95.
Helen O’Neill’s sumptuous coffee table book on Australia’s home design queen Florence Broadhurst first came out in 2006 and this new deluxe edition is bigger with much more of a design focus.
Aficionados will notice more of Broadhurst’s signature prints and patterns in new colourways, plus there are photographs of interiors from around the world decorated in Broadhurst’s prints.
She was dedicated to bringing colour to Australia and every bit as colourful as her designs is Broadhurst’s life story told here in vivid detail.
She was something of a fantasist, as the biographer discovers, and constantly recreated her life story as she lived it.
One thing she couldn’t reinvent was her tragic and shocking end, murdered in 1977 in her studio in a ferocious attack, the assailant still unknown.
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
