Fashion doyenne Mary Lipshut's 1950s Toorak home furniture sale
An amazing collection of modernist furniture by Melbourne designer O. Noel Coulson goes to auction tomorrow.
The auctioneer describes it as Hollywood neo-classicism - inspired by ancient Greek design but with a space-age Jetsons feel.
The furniture was commissioned in 1958 for the Toorak home of the late fashion doyenne Mary Lipshut.
The furniture was custom-made by S. Andrewartha of Richmond.
The Geelong-born Oswald Noel Coulson was born in 1905 working as an architect, interior designer and landscape designer.
He undertook the gardens for the 1956 Olympic Games village of Heidelberg.
He's been dubbed the Australian version of the designer T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings who did the furniture for Conrad Hilton in the '40s, '50s and '60s, said the auctioneer Andrew Shapiro.
Shapiro says furniture pieces by Coulson rarely appear at auction. In 2009 he sold table lamps for more than $3,000 and a limed oak pedestal table for $5000.
This time there's an eccentric telephone table and chair, made of limed oak with brass sabot feet with an estimate of $1,000 to $1,500.
The most expensive offering is a streamlined low cabinet for $2,000 to $3,000.
The late Mary Lipshut amassed an estimated 6,000 clothing pieces many by Versace, Pucci, Missoni, Courreges and YSL when she was a buyer from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Many of the pieces of the glamorous octogenarian have made their way into museums including The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, New York, the Smithsonian and the National Gallery of Victoria.
Her furniture goes up at the modern Art and Design sale in Sydney on 30 July, having passed away from cancer, aged 89, in February,
The 211 Kooyong Road, Toorak home of the fashionista was sold in 1988 for $875,000. It had been bought in 1949.
Mary Lipshut's owned the Tempo and Sportempo boutiques in the 1970s and was the creator of the Meredith label.