Helen O'Neill (1)

This Australian woman born in 1899 seems to have been imbued, at birth, with a drive to create, unlike anyone I have ever read about. Beginning as a young girl, she created multiple, imaginative lives seemingly from nothing. With her family background rooted in the Australian cattle “wilderness called Mungy Station,” she became known across Europe and America as a stage presence singing and dancing with drag queens in the early 1920s to a Bond Street couturier known as Madame Pellier, along with a British accent.

It is the wallpaper designs interspersed throughout this handsomely produced book, that move the story forward. Her last reinvention as a high-end wallpaper designer gives her life the gravitas and accolades deserved as their intricacies are explained with care and detail by O’Neill. The patterns are stunning. For an artist, this is where the story lies – her creativity, her formidable personality to promote and believe in her art form. Yet, her ending is as tragic as any mythological figure diminish does not diminish her contribution.

https://tinahudak.wordpress.com/2020/03/15/wallpaper/… (altro)

A biography of Florence Broadhurst, an Australian woman who had a career as a singer in various places, then ran a a dress shop, and finally, back in Australia, reinvented herself in the 70s as a high end wallpaper designer. She was a crazy, flamboyant personality whose designs are now being reproduced and have appeared in museums where she's regarded as a pioneer of Australian design. She was murdered in her studio and the crime remains unsolved (though she was known to carry large sums of money at all times and it seems likely that was the motive.)

It reminds me of the biography of P.L. Travers that I read earlier this year, another Australian who used the theater as a way to get away from her roots, and who lied about her origins and presented herself as more English than the English.

People like this make me think about the line between "reinvented herself" and "fraud". Her designs were drawn by people who worked for her, but she knew what she wanted them to do and she was was skilled at bringing design elements together. Reading the zeitgeist and producing what people wanted to buy is a skill, too.

It was mildly interesting as a story of one woman's strange life, but not great.… (altro)