Wealth and style ... inside Leslie Walford's Double Bay house.

Leslie Walford, 1927-2012

For 50 years Leslie Walford lit up the interiors of Sydney, and from the 1960s to the early 1980s he shone a light on the life of the city's beau monde in the pages of The Sun-Herald.

His death marks another end of an era in the history of old Sydney. Today, many might be bemused by a life that celebrated the wealthy and well-born and enhanced their exalted environments, but there was more to Walford than that.

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''Go and decorate Sydney'' ... Leslie Walford, a highly civilised, cultivated, liberal humanitarian, at his 85th birthday party. He had a particular genius for lighting and his favourite watermelon pink became a trademark.

Leslie Nicholl Walford was the only son of Leslie Walford and his wife, Dora Nicholl (nee Alexander), and a fifth generation Australian, the first Walford having been transported to Norfolk Island for stealing a bolt of fabric. On release, Walford's great-great-grandfather acquired land in Tasmania and prospered. By his grandfather's time, the Walfords were gentlemen.

Leslie snr, a cricketer, ladies man and chairman of the Australian Jockey Club, died before his son was two. He had wanted to call him Napoleon.

As an adult, Leslie jnr had in his office a huge copy, by a Chinese artist, of Jacques Louis David's portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte crossing the Alps. He told the Herald's Susan Wyndham: ''He is looking down at me and saying, 'Leslie, go and decorate Sydney'."

Walford in 1987.

Original post:
Fortune shone on decorator

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March 5, 2012 at 2:27 pm by Mr HomeBuilder
Category: Interior Decorator