Leslie Walford Archive

For nearly 50 years Leslie Walford AM (1927–2012) was one of Sydney’s most successful interior designers, the decorator of choice for the city’s social elite and a leading figure in the Society of Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA).

Walford decided to become an interior designer soon after taking his degree at the University of Oxford in 1951. From 1954 to 1955 he lived in Paris and studied at the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs, where he was enrolled in a Cours de Perfectionnement pour les Artistes Décorateurs (an advanced training course for interior designers). During this time he prepared for his return to Australia in June 1956, organising import licences for antique furniture bought as stock in France and England, and setting up his company, L Walford Pty Ltd. He opened his first showroom at 7 Knox Street, Double Bay, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, in October 1957.

Walford operated his Double Bay shop until 1977, then worked as an interior designer mostly from his own apartment before joining with business partner Cornelius Horgan to open and operate another showroom, Walford & Horgan, from 1995 to 2006.

Walford was also known for his weekly series of newspaper articles about life in Sydney called ‘Our Town’, published in The Sun-Herald for 15 years between 1967 and 1982. He was a socialite with a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, and he decorated several of their houses and businesses. He was also a strong advocate for the arts, being on the fundraising boards of several cultural institutions, including the Art Gallery of NSW and the Australian Opera. With his cousins Dr Rodney Seaborn and Dr Peter Broughton he established the Seaborn, Broughton & Walford Foundation to support the performing arts in Sydney.

The archive was donated to the Caroline Simpson Library Collection by Walford’s life partner, Colin Davis.

Dora Walford (1895–1972)

Parts of the archive relate to Leslie Walford’s mother, Dora Walford (nee Alexander), who was a strong influence on her son’s life and helped support his early career as an interior designer. Dora was a fashionable figure in Sydney society in the 1920s. According to one newspaper columnist, she was one of Sydney’s best-dressed women and ‘the most dashing woman on horseback’, who ‘sits her horse like a professional’. She was an active fundraiser for charity, taking an executive role on committees to organise gala balls and dinners, or theatrical matinees in aid of the Children’s Hospital, the Crown Street Women’s Hospital or the Sydney Industrial Blind Institution.

Dora married four times. Her first husband was Leslie Walford senior, who died in December 1928. She next became Mrs Eric Sheller, then Mrs Ben Knowles Davies and, finally, Mrs Lawrence Byrne. But Dora was never anything less than her own woman, ambitious, energetic and resilient.

Society of Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA)

Leslie Walford was an active committee member of SIDA for many years, and a strong advocate for the interior design profession. He encouraged good formal education and high standards in the industry, arranged educational lectures, engaged expert speakers and panels, and organised site visits to important buildings under construction in Sydney. The Caroline Simpson Library Collection holds official documents, minutes of meetings, correspondence, membership lists, financial information and exhibition booklets relating to the operation of SIDA, as well as 28 oral histories with former SIDA members, including Walford.

Leslie Walford homes recorded for the future

Leslie Walford’s holiday house at Palm Beach on Sydney’s Northern Beaches was documented in 2002, and his Double Bay penthouse in 2012. Both homes were decorated by Walford largely using items from his own collection of furniture and antiques. In 2007, Museums of History NSW documented the home of Margot Keep (the sister of Leslie’s long-term partner, Dick Keep), which was decorated by Walford in 1993 and refreshed (also by Walford) in 2005. The photographs of these homes form part of the Caroline Simpson Library Collection.

Leslie Walford’s yellow curtains

In the mid-1970s, Leslie Walford was engaged to design furnishings in the style of the 1830s for the ground-floor rooms of Elizabeth Bay House.