“Good Design is not just a matter of personal opinion, like taste. It is a standard arrived at through research by architects, designers and industrialists.” Marion Hall Best

Over the last few months the Museum of Sydney has had on exhibition the most delightful, colourful interior design exhibition of Australia’s most influential interior designer, Marion Hall Best (1905-1988). Her career spanned from the 1930s to the 1970s.

The exhibition called Marion Hall Best: Interiors, has now finished but I was lucky enough to attend the week it opened so thought I would do a brief overview of this fascinating creative woman.

Best had a very original style, that was defined by the use of vibrant colour. While others of the time were using a subdued colour palette she was quoted as saying, that ‘Gentle, soft colours are not restful, but dreary, sapping the energy and the mind…. By contrast, bright, clear challenge the mind.’

Best was influenced throughout her career by Modernism and its ideas on colour, form, volume and movement, and adding to it her own personal style. She introduced Australians to these ideals through her importing of international furniture and textiles, such as, ‘Furniture by Gordon Andrews, Clement Meadmore, Roger McLay, Herman Miller; Flos lighting from Italy, Marimekko cottons from Finland, Scandinavian glassware and ceramics, Danish wool textiles, Jim Thompson silks from Thailand and cottons from India.’ Open Journal by Lisa Cugnetto.

Click here to visit the Sydney Living Museums website to read learn more.

•  Article: Teresa Serrao
• Image 1: One of the displays in the Marion Hall Best exhibition at the Museum of Sydney (MoS) (Photographer: Teresa Serrao)
• Image 2: Marion Best sitting on lawn with 9 chairs, 1970 (Photograph sourced from the Sydney Living Museums website)
• Image 3: Marion Best design methodology – study and sleep room for a bachelor or student (Photograph sourced from the Sydney Living Museums website)
• Image 4: A sample board for a study (Photograph sourced from the Sydney Living Museums website)
• Image 5: Room for Mary Quant competition (Rooms On View, 1967) (Photograph sourced from the Sydney Living Museums website)