Re-evaluating Post-war Interior Design Practices through Client Histories: Loti Smorgon and Her Architect/Decorator Noel Coulson

ABSTRACT

In 1947 in Victorian Modern, Robin Boyd named a group of leading modern architects, including many who had trained at Geelong’s Gordon Institute. Yet Boyd omitted successful graduates whose work did not fit his narrowly defined parameters of modern design. Significant amongst these was Noel Coulson, RAIA, whose architecture and interior design practice made him highly desirable to Jewish immigrant clients. Like many whose work traversed both aesthetic and professional boundaries, Coulson has been overlooked by an Australian historical field profoundly shaped by Boyd’s preferences. Via a detailed study of Loti and Victor Smorgon’s Toorak house designed by Coulson in 1953, this paper argues that previously under-researched client histories have value in contesting such historiographical limitations. Client-centred methodologies reveal interior designers’ roles as hybrid practitioners — both cultural producers and mediators — supporting an understanding of modernity determined by the home as the locale of modern life rather than prescriptive aesthetic values. This paper proposes a re-assessment of post-war interior design historically marginalised within hierarchies of cultural production; and the role of the client as integral to a more inclusive understanding of the modern interior in post-war Australia.

Acknowledgments

This paper is drawn from the author’s PhD thesis at UNSW Sydney, which was funded by a Commonwealth Research Training Scholarship. My thanks to my supervisors, Dr Paul Hogben and Dr Judith O’Callaghan, the WIPS Group at UNSW Art and Design, and to the clients and families who generously shared their histories. The oral histories were conducted according to the governance and requirements of the UNSW Human Research Ethics Advisory Committee, approval number HC171055.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Robin Boyd, Victorian Modern: One Hundred and Eleven Years of Modern Architecture in Victoria, Australia (Melbourne: Architectural Students’ Society of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects, 1947), 2; Gordon Long, The Gordon: A Century of Influence (Geelong, Vic.: Gordon Technical College, 1987), 13.

2. Anne Massey, “Ephemeral,” in Interior Wor(l)ds, ed. Chiara Rubessi et al. (Torino: U. Allemandi, 2010),161; Peter McNeil, “Designing Women: Gender, Sexuality and the Interior Decorator, c 1890–1940,” Art History 17, no. 4 (December 1994): 631–659.

3. For example, Rebecca Hawcroft, ed., The Other Moderns. Sydney’s Forgotten European Design Legacy (Sydney: NewSouth, 2017).

4. Michaela Richards, The Best Style (Sydney: Craftsman House, 1993); Catriona Quinn, Sydney Style: Marion Hall Best, Interior Designer (Sydney: Historic Houses Trust, 1993).

5. Judith O’Callaghan, “Interiors,” in Australia Modern: Architecture, Landscape & Design, eds. Hannah Lewi and Philip Goad (Port Melbourne, Vic.: Thames & Hudson, 2019), 122.

6. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the judgment of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice (London: Routledge, 2010), 141.

7. Bourdieu, Distinction, 325–6.

8. Bourdieu, Distinction, 323–325.

9. Bourdieu, Distinction, 141.

10. Bourdieu, Distinction, 141.

11. Bourdieu, Distinction, 141.

12. Paula Lupkin and Penny Sparke, eds., Shaping the American Interior: Structures, Contexts and Practices (Abingdon, Oxon, New York, NY: Routledge, 2018), 1.

13. Sean Nixon and Paul Du Gay, “Who Needs Cultural Intermediaries?” Cultural Studies, 16, no. 4 (2002): 498.

14. For example, Penny Sparke, “The Modern Interior: A Space, a Place or a matter of Taste?” Interiors 1, no. 1 (2010): 7–17; Penny Sparke and Anne Massey, eds., Biography, Identity and the Modern Interior (Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2013); Penny Sparke and Mitchell Owens, Elsie de Wolfe: The Birth of Modern Interior Decoration (New York: Acanthus Press, 2005).

15. Penny Sparke, The Modern Interior (London: Reaktion, 2008), 9.

16. Penny Sparke, “The Modern Interior Revisited,” Journal of Interior Design, 34, no. 1 (2008): vi.

17. Penny Sparke, As Long as It’s Pink: The Sexual Politics of Taste (London: Pandora, 1995), 2–3.

18. Sparke, The Modern Interior, 204.

19. Paula Baxter, “Thirty Years of Growth in the Literature of Interior Design,” Journal of Design History 4, no. 4 (1991): 248.

20. Ashley Hicks, David Hicks: Designer (London: Scriptum Editions, 2003); Wendy Goodman, Dominick Dunne and Hutton Wilkinson, Tony Duquette (New York: Abrams, 2007).

21. Penny Sparke, “Review: Frances Elkins: Interior Design by Stephen M. Salny,” Journal of Design History, 19, no. 3 (2006): 265.

22. Penny Sparke, “The Domestic Interior and the Construction of Self: the New York Homes of Elsie de Wolfe,” in Interior Design and Identity. Eds. Susie McKellar and Penny Sparke, (Manchester UK, New York: Manchester University Press, 2004), 73; Georgina Downey, ed., Domestic Interiors: Representing Homes from the Victorians to the Moderns (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 3; Daniella Ohad Smith, “The ‘Designed’ Israeli Interior, 1960–1977: shaping identity,” Journal of Interior Design, 38, no. 3 (2013): 34.

23. Alice T. Friedman, American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture (New Haven CT.: Yale University Press, 2010), 1.

24. Friedman, American Glamour, 6.

25. Alice T. Friedman, “Home on the Avocado-Green Range: Notes on Suburban Decor in the 1950s,” Interiors, 1, no. 1 (2010): 48. See also Alice T. Friedman, “Your Place or Mine? The client’s contribution to domestic architecture,” in Women’s Places: Architecture and Design 1860–1960, ed. Brenda Martin (Taylor & Francis Group, 2003), 69–86.

26. Alice T. Friedman, “Merchandising Miami Beach: Morris Lapidus and the Architecture of Abundance.” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, 25 (2005): 216–53.

27. Alice T. Friedman, Women and the Making of the Modern House: A Social and Architectural History (New York: Abrams, 1998).

28. Robin Schuldenfrei, Luxury and Modernism: Architecture and the Object in Germany 1900–1933 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).

29. Simon Reeves, “Gold Plated Doors if You Want Them: Holgar and Holgar and the Architecture of Opulence,” in Gold: SAHANZ Conference Proceedings 33, eds. Annmarie Brennan and Philip Goad (Melbourne: SAHANZ, 2016): 569–577.

30. Massey, “Ephemeral,” 164.

31. Mirjana Lozanovska, “House Behaviour in the Australian Suburb: Consumption, Migrants and their Houses,” in Consuming Architecture: On the Occupation, Appropriation and Interpretation of Buildings, eds. Daniel Maudlin and Marcel Vellinga (Abingdon, Oxon, New York: Routledge, 2014), 41–43; Mirjana Lozanovska, Migrant Housing. Architecture, Dwelling, Migration (London, New York, NY: Routledge, 2019), 74–76; Mirjana Lozanovska, Ethno-Architecture and the Politics of Migration (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2015). http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unsw/detail.action?docID=4219371.

32. Mirjana Lozanovska and Cameron Logan, “Aesthetic Anxiety,” Fabrications, 30, no. 2 (2020): 149.

33. For the author’s previous contributions on client histories, see Catriona Quinn, “Krimper in Context: The Place of Provenance in Design Research,” RMIT Design Archives Journal, 5, no. 2 (2015): 28–43; “The Prism of Provenance: The Landau Collection of Krimper Furniture,” Australiana, 37, no. 4 (2015): 22–38; “Custom-made for European Tastes: The Gerstl Furniture Story,” in Hawcroft, ed., The Other Moderns, 89–120.

34. Peter McNeil, “Rarely Looking In: The Writing of Australian Design History, c. 1900–1990,” Journal of Australian Studies, 19, no. 44 (1995), 48.

35. Julie Willis and Philip Goad, “A Bigger Picture: Reframing Australian Architectural History,” Fabrications, 18, no. 1 (2008): 17.

36. Walter Bunning, Homes in the Sun: The Past, Present and Future of Australian Housing (Sydney: W.J. Nesbit, 1945), 32, 68–69.

37. J. M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia: A History (Ringwood, Vic: Penguin Books Australia, 1972), 285–286.

38. Hawcroft, ed., The Other Moderns, 15.

39. McNeil, “Designing Women: Gender, Sexuality and the Interior Decorator c 1890–1940,” 631; Sparke, As Long as It’s Pink, ix, 2–3.

40. See Catriona Quinn, “S.I.D.A.: Advocate and Caretaker for a New Profession: The Society of Interior Designers of Australia (S.I.D.A.) and its Role as a Professional Body,” Sydney Living Museums, 2020. https://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/stories/S.I.D.A.-advocate-and-caretaker-new-profession.

41. Neil Clerehan, “Victorian Scene,” Architecture, 39, no. 1 (1951): 31. Boyd stated the “peach mirrors” rendered Stanhill “one of the unluckiest post-war buildings.” See Robin Boyd, “Victorian Scene,” Architecture, 39, no. 3 (1951): 89.

42. Robin Boyd, “The Look of Australia,” in Australian Civilisation: A Symposium, ed. Peter Coleman (Melbourne: FW Cheshire, 1962), 76.

43. Peter McNeil, “From Oatmeal Sweaters to Rainbow Blouses: Robin Boyd and Australian Fashion,” in After the Australian Ugliness, eds. Naomi Stead, Tom Lee, Ewan McEoin and Megan Patty (Melbourne: NGV, Thames and Hudson, 2021), 231.

44. Stead et al, After The Australian Ugliness, xiii.

45. On the heterogeneity of 20^th century Melbourne’s Jewish demographics, see Catherine Townsend, “Making Modern Jewish Melbourne,” Remaking Cities. Proceedings of the 14th Australian Urban History Planning Conference (2018), 533–534.

46. The Finks arrived from Poland in 1928; Loti in 1927; the Rockmans in 1924. From the Ukraine, Susie Rockman arrived in the 1920s, the Smorgon family in 1927.

47. For comparison, the mapping of Ernest Fooks’s clients in the 1950s and 1960s plotted clusters concentrated from St Kilda to Caulfield, with a much smaller number in Toorak. See Alan Pert, ed., Ernest Fooks: the House Talks Back (Melbourne: Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne, 2016).

48. Oswald N. Coulson, Collection of drawings, c 1948–1972, RMIT Design Archives; Barbara Dillon, “List of some of Noel Coulson’s clients.” Personal communication with Catriona Quinn, 2014.

49. Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1960), 82.

50. Coulson, Collection of drawings.

51. Alan Lipshut and Peter Lipshut, interview by Catriona Quinn, 19 July 2018, Melbourne, Vic., unpublished data.

52. Bourdieu explains such delegation as characteristic of the “nouveau riche” but also argues that the embodied capital clients hope to acquire from such transactions can only be acquired over time. Bourdieu, Distinction, 274–278, 281.

53. Oswald N. Coulson, Letter to GR King, 27 June 1932, H/16/30, Gordon Institute of TAFE.

54. Joan Sullivan and Kevin Sullivan, interview by Catriona Quinn, 12 April 2018, Launceston, Tas., unpublished data. Coulson gifted Mary Lipshut a copy of John Hadfield, ed., The Saturday Book (London: Hutchinson, 1959).

55. Annabelle Grant and Frederick James Grant, interview by Catriona Quinn, 14 April 2018, Neika, Tas., unpublished data.

56. Carney’s three books published on interiors were underpinned by his knowledge of, and commitment to, American design. Clive Carney, Furnishing Art and Practice (London, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1950); Clive Carney, ed., International Interiors and Design: Outstanding Achievements by Leading Architects, Interior Designers and Decorators of the World (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1959); Clive Carney, Impact of Design (Sydney: Lawson Press, 1959).

57. Mark Steglick, interview by Catriona Quinn, 4 March 2019, Bellevue Hill, N.S.W., unpublished data.

58. Geelong Junior Technical School Reports, 1918, 0001.2016, RMIT Design Archives; Student Registration Card, Oswald Noel Coulson, 1920, 00000160, Gordon Institute of TAFE.

59. “What the Gordon Offered: Wool and Textiles,” Gordon Institute of TAFE; “What the Gordon Offered: Architecture and Manufacturing,” Gordon Institute of TAFE, accessed 25 June 2018, https://www.thegordon.edu.au/about/history/what-the-gordon-offered.; K. Sillcock, “King, George Raymond (1872–1950)” accessed May 29, 2018, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/king-george-raymond-6958/text12085.

60. Barbara Dillon, telephone interview by Catriona Quinn, 21 August 2014, unpublished data.

61. Gordon Long, The Gordon: A Century of Influence (Geelong, Vic.: Gordon Technical College, 1987), 271–273, 275.

62. GR King, Letter to Noel Coulson, 103 Bay Road, Sandringham, 28 July 1932, H/16/30, Gordon Institute of TAFE.

63. For an account of Coulson’s career before 1950, see Catriona Quinn, “Noel Coulson and the Lipshut House, Toorak, 1959,” RMIT Design Archives Journal, 4, no. 2 (2014): 14–23.

64. James Fisher, transcript of telephone interview by Michael Bogle, 9 September 2010, unpublished data. Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection.

65. Sparke, The Modern Interior, 109.

66. Sparke, The Modern Interior, 204.

67. Sparke, The Modern Interior, 8.

68. Since renumbered 743 Orrong Road, Toorak.

69. Phip Murray, Loti Smorgon: A Life with Art (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2014), 7.

70. Beginning with meat wholesalers Vic Smorgon and Co in 1934, the businesses grew to include companies manufacturing and exporting tinned meat and fruit, paper, glass and steel. The Smorgon group embraced seven branches of the family when Smorgon Consolidated Industries was dismantled in 1995.

71. Rod Myer, Living the Dream: The Story of Victor Smorgon (Sydney: New Holland, 2000), 77.

72. Myer, Living the Dream, 115. Coulson decorated Sportscraft executive Bardas’s home at North Balwyn, probably in the early 1950s. Barbara Dillon, interview by Catriona Quinn, 19 February 2018, unpublished data.

73. Myer, Living the Dream, 96, 104. Friends the Finks lived in Kew from 1933 to 1939. See “The Leo and Mina Fink Story,” Monash University, accessed August 19, 2021, https://www.monash.edu/leo-mina-fink/new-beginnings.

74. Bindy Koadlow, Anna Bardas and Vicky Vidor, interview by Catriona Quinn, 1 March 2018, South Yarra, Vic., unpublished data; Ginny Green, interview by Catriona Quinn, 8 March 2018, Potts Point, NSW, unpublished data; Myer, Living the Dream, 116.

75. Naum approved of Loti wanting to move up in the world but instructed her to find a subdivision with room for the whole family to build on. As a result, Naum and Vera also bought a block, as did four other Smorgon families. Myer, Living the Dream, 116.

76. The chairs were retained and redistributed around the Toorak house. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview; Green, interview.

77. Her daughters recounted the family “thought she was nutty to do this.” Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview.

78. Green, interview.

79. Loti was perceived by the family to possess an instinctive artistry, but visitors questioned “why have you used a mouldy old mirror?” even offering tips on how to clean it. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview.

80. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview.

81. Myer, Living the Dream, 120, 137.

82. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview.

83. Myer, Living the Dream, 158–59.

84. Architect and developer Sir Bernard Evans bought Warrawee on the death of Sir Harold Darling and subdivided the garden.

85. Noel Coulson, Set of 7 preliminary drawings Job No. 5202, 1952, Private Collection Smorgon family.

86. Silver gelatin photograph, Steps at Warrawee, Toorak, Victoria, H41990.1/14, State Library of Victoria. The garden has since been demolished, but the house remains.

87. Myer, Living the Dream,158–159.

88. Photographs from Hanimex slides. Private Collection Smorgon family.

89. Green, interview. 1 Towers Road, 1937, reputedly designed by Coulson’s previous employer Bernard Sutton, whose mantle of “society architect” he inherited.

90. Miles Lewis, “Toorak Mansions,” accessed March 28, 2018, http://www.mileslewis.net/lectures/11-local-history/toorak-mansions.pdf.; Coulson’s reference library included William Hardy Wilson, Old Colonial Architecture in New South Wales and Tasmania (Sydney: The Author, Union House, 1924).

91. Conrad Hamann and Chris Hamann, “Anger and the New Order: Some Aspects of Robin Boyd’s Career,” special issue, Transition, no. 38 (1992): 27, 32.

92. Green, interview.

93. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview; Myer, Living the Dream, 133.

94. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor.

95. Green, interview.

96. Carney, International Interiors, 61–62; Carney, Impact of Design, unpaginated.

97. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview.

98. The family considered their Frankston house “modern,” while the Toorak house was “contemporary,” signifying a mix. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview.

99. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview.

100. Clients often referred to him as “the top man.” Grant, interview.

101. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview.

102. Green, interview.

103. Penny Sparke, “The Modern Interior Revisited,” Journal of Interior Design, 34, no. 1 (2008): vi.

104. The reference was to the homes of Bertha Hain, Tzippa Smorgon, Vera Smorgon and Nissa Mahemoff. Myer, Living the Dream, 136.

105. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview.

106. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview; Green, interview.

107. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview.

108. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview.

109. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview.

110. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview.

111. Myer, Living the Dream, 134.

112. Green, interview.

113. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview.

114. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview. For example, “Residence of Miss Edith Small: Beverley Hills, California,” Architectural Digest, 17, no. 1 (1960): 4–14.

115. Koadlow, Bardas and Vidor, interview.

116. Similar examples in the Encore Selection Sample book by F. Schumacher, 1950–51. https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18615587/with-image-224672.

117. Amongst many others, see “Residence of Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm Smith: Beverly Hills, California,” Architectural Digest, 13, no. 1 (1951): 58, 61; “Residence of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hosmer Morse III: La Jolla, California,” Architectural Digest, 13, no. 1 (1951): 28; “Residence of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Naumann: Beverly Hills, California,” Architectural Digest, 13, no. 1 (1951): 9–10.

118. Friedman, “Your Place or Mine,” 75.

119. Friedman, “Merchandising Miami,” 221.

120. Catriona Quinn, “Noel Coulson and Decor Associates (1950–1970): The Role of the Client in an Alternative Framework for Understanding Modernity in Australian Interior Design” (PhD diss. University of New South Wales, 2021), 369. https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/1970 All six client case studies in the thesis document the significance of American business connections and design influences.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Commonwealth Research Training Scholarship.