Florence Broadhurst / NZ POP-UP STORE

POP-UP stores continue to sprout here, there and everywhere. We’re surprised and delighted to learn that legendary Australian businesswoman, artist and designer Florence Broadhurst, will hold a POP-UP store in Auckland in December. Florence Broadhurst was a one-woman force of nature; she performed in Shanghai music halls in the 1920s, owned a dress salon on London’s Bond Street in the 1930s and established the world’s most dynamic wallpaper studio in the 1960s. Complex, eccentric and always ambitious, Florence turned her formidable artistic talents into a hand-printed wallpaper business. Broadhurst abandoned conventional production methods, pioneering new innovations that allowed hand printing onto metallic surfaces. Her brightly coloured geometric and nature-inspired designs featured across hundreds of uniquely luxurious patterns. All in a screaming colour palette of fuscia pinks, lemon yellows, lime greens, vivid oranges, turquoise, blacks, metallic silvers and gold – an boldly confident expression of Broadhurst’s unique personality and style. Sadly Broadhurst was murdered in her Paddington studio in 1977. The murder has never been solved; some speculate that she was a victim of the serial killer John Wayne Glover. Following her death, Broadhurst’s library of wooden silk-printing screens languished throughout the 1980s as wallpaper declined in popularity. In the early 2000s, Signature Prints acquired the rights to Broadhurst’s wallpaper designs. This, alongside a resurgence of interest in wallpaper, saw Broadhurst’s timeless designs burst outwards from Sydney’s design scene, and go worldwide. 530 Broadhurst designs are in the archive collection but only a small number are printed as wallpaper at any one time. Signature Prints, home of the Florence Broadhurst design library, hosts the Signature Prints NZ POP-UP STORE 2009, December 7 to 13, venue to be advised.

More info: NZ distributors / designsource.co.nz

Images by body-paint artist Emma Hack. In her 2008 Wallpaper collection, models holding native birds appear to float within the iconic Broadhurst wallpaper designs. Emma is the only artist with permission to use Broadhurst’s designs in her art.