Florence Broadhurst's colourful life and legacy

FLORENCE Broadhurst's designs have never been more popular.

FLORENCE Broadhurst lived many lives, as a singer, comedian, painter, businesswoman and designer, before her violent death at age 76. But what endures is her design and print work on wallpapers, drapery, fabrics and screens. Indeed, her work has never been more in demand.

Her legacy seems secure, with responsibility shared between Sydney commercial outfit Signature Prints and the Powerhouse Museum. Signature Prints is headed by husband and wife team David and Helen Lennie, who manufacture the designs and licence them to others. Among their many designers, Broadhurst is the company's main game.

"In that cupboard, there are 16,000 designs," says David Lennie. "Yet the 530 designs by Florence Broadhurst have consumed us."

Anne-Marie Van de Ven, a curator at Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, is staggered by the enduring popularity of the designs.

"Fashion designs have a lifespan of one season," she says.

"But [fashion designer] Akira Isogawa, who has reproduced five or six of Florence's designs, has found that she endures from season to season.

"There is definitely a timeless quality to her work."

The Powerhouse has a permanent exhibition of Broadhurst designs.

"We acquired a substantial part of our collection from them in 1997, when David Lennie decided to revive the collection," Van de Ven says.

"We have screens, wallpaper sample books, and photo-positive designs on display."

At Signature Prints, workers move tirelessly up and down benches so long that they seem to converge in the distance. The 30m benches support lengths of fabric, plastic or paper.

The print-workers lock screens precisely into place before pouring colour into the frames and pressing evenly with a kind of paddle down the length of the bench, leaving a trademark Broadhurst print spanking new on the medium.

"Everything is held on film, and in some cases on screens, so there are friezes and borders just waiting for their time," Lennie says.

We stare for a moment at a striking black-and-white cloth printed with a classic Broadhurst design that seems to stretch from here to eternity. "That's off to Italy on Monday," says Lennie.

The fabric has been commissioned to decorate the office of Italian furniture designers Belloni. "They are actually tipping out Versace to put Florence Broadhurst in," he says with a touch of pride.

Broadhurst had enough careers for several lifetimes, including on the stage. After winning a few Queensland eisteddfods, she joined a group called the Smart Set Diggers who performed around Toowoomba.

She also performed as part of a comedy sextet known first as the Globe Trotters and later as the Broadcasters. While on tour with the Broadcasters in China she established, in 1926, the Broadhurst Academy in Shanghai.

This remarkable institution offered professional tuition in violin and piano, as well as various forms of dance and, would you believe, journalism.

During World War II, Broadhurst joined the Australian Women's Army Service; later she became a painter, exhibiting her landscapes in galleries across the country. There was a trucking business, a wallpaper design business, a stint as a sculpture teacher, several marriages and one surviving son, Robert, who to this day collects negotiated royalties from Signature Prints.

Broadhurst has been the subject of a film, Gillian Armstrong's docudrama Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst and a book, Florence Broadhurst: Her Secret and Extraordinary Lives by journalist Helen O'Neill.

The book looks into the possibility that John Wayne Glover, Australia's notorious granny killer, may have been responsible for Broadhurst's violent death. (She was found in her Paddington studio in 1977, having been bashed).

However, since Glover took his own life in jail in September 2005, any evidence of involvement in Broadhurst's death is likely to have gone with him.

Another mystery plagues Broadhurst. "Some critics have said that because she didn't physically draw everything herself she can only be regarded as a saleswoman," Lennie says.

"In fact, she did use artists, and students. But in the research for the O'Neill book and the Armstrong movie, a lot of now middle-aged women who worked for Florence were unearthed, and every single person said she looked over their shoulder, and that she was responsible for the level of excellence. When you are running a design studio, that's your job."

Lennie's job is to protect Broadhurst's legacy while also running a business. Is he fearful of copyright theft?

"You go through various stages of paranoia," he says.

"In the first year we spent $40,000 protecting [our] copyright. Our single redress from that was the recall of 800 bags out of David Jones, which had imported them from an English company. Now if you face costs like that every year, you're not going to be here in five years.

"These days a carefully worded letter seems to do the trick. If it is serious enough we will continue with legal action, but sense most often prevails.

"As well, copyright law has changed. People used to be able to vary the design by 10 or 20 per cent and get away with copying it. The law is now about thought and intention as much as execution.

"We're not scared any more. It's a brand, and if you want the real Broadhurst you have to buy the real thing."

Broadhurst designs are licensed to rug manufacturer Cadry's and they can also be seen on women's fashion, journals, luggage and handbags. "It's a matter of finding people who will respect the integrity of the designs. As well, we have gone with Australian companies wherever possible, so that Florence's designs are marketed all over the world as an Australian product," Lennie says.

Lennie spends much of his time working with Broadhurst's designs and her legacy. He is in regular contact with her son Robert, and biographer O'Neill. When Lennie and his wife were getting Signature Prints off the ground, he got them all into a restaurant in Sydney's Paddington so that things could be worked out "while they were all still friends".

With the continuing interest in Broadhurst, has Lennie developed an idea of who she really was?

"I've got about about four ideas of who she was," he says, laughing, "because she was at least four people. She was a naughty minx and she had a helluva good time. One minute she was sitting on a camel with a cigarette in a half-metre-long cigarette holder, and the next she was sitting in the back of a Rolls-Royce convertible.

"She had a wonderful life. Would she be rapt with what we're doing? Absolutely."