Designer, art connoisseur and entrepreneur David Phillips Foulkes-Taylor, was born in Perth, Western Australia on June 23, 1929. His schooling was undertaken in Western Australia until in 1943 when he was sent to board at Geelong Grammar School guided by liberal Fabian headmaster James Darling. His art teacher, the German Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack exposed Foulkes-Taylor to the ideas of the modern movement in arts, crafts, design and architecture. Hirschfeld-Mack had been involved in the Bauhaus with Walter Gropius et al. He had fled to England, coming to Australia after Dunkirk. He continued the Bauhaus style of teaching and in his classes Foulkes-Taylor was exposed to his philosophy of learning through experimentation. Aged fifteen Foulkes-Taylor expressed the desire to travel and to live a bohemian life in Paris, to mix with architects, collect art, antiques and modern furniture. Most of this he was to do.
Foulkes-Taylor enrolled in architecture at Perth Technical School in 1947. However, in this era of post-war reconstruction, when the designer was hero, he decided to go overseas and study at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. His holidays were spent travelling on the continent and broadening his sphere of experience. After graduation he joined the furniture firm of Norman Potter in Wiltshire before moving on to New York. Foulkes-Taylor returned to Australia in 1954 and undertook some furniture design before, in 1957, once again setting off to travel, this time to Japan to marry the American playwright and musician Maryat Lee he had first met in London. The marriage was rather unconventional as they passionately pursued absorbing careers on different continents.
After his return to Perth alone he set up a gallery and business at No. 2 Crawley Avenue, Crawley, his family home. Here he displayed imported furniture by feted European designers and followed a two-fold path, as a designer and as an entrepreneur, catalyst and promoter of modern design. Foulkes-Taylor was a member of the Weld Club, The Art Gallery Board, Royal Freshwater Bay Yacht Club, the Fabian Society and the Labor Party. His Triangle Gallery, opened in 1960, was a gathering spot for the Perth arts fraternity. He had a particular appeal to architects and was in great demand to advise on or furnish projects and soon was able to give a brief for a new purpose-built gallery on Broadway, Nedlands. European architect Julius Elisher created a suitable sculptural setting for Foulkes-Taylor’s imported works and those of local designers such as Geoffrey Allen and Eileen Keys whom he promoted.
Foulkes-Taylor’s own designs, whilst in the modern tradition, were eclectic. Apart from Scandinavian and English work he was interested in the arts of Japan, the Shaker crafts of America and early colonial furniture of Western Australia. His designs relied on a good degree of understanding by the craftsman making the pieces. Those for which he is best remembered were commenced to promote the local wood, jarrah. Much of his work in jarrah was designed to order for individual clients. The source of details may have been found in pieces he had in his private collection of colonial furniture. His enthusiasm for jarrah was shared by Joseph Pietrocola and Charles and Roy Catt who made his later designs.
The Curator of Craft at the Art Gallery of Western Australia wrote of Foulkes-Taylor:
Commissioned by local architects to design or supply modern furniture for their projects, Foulkes Taylor had a pervasive influence on the design of the 'new’ Perth of the 1960s. This trend fostered an interest in the work of Western Australian craft artists, particularly those exploring organic form and the use of natural or locally sourced materials.
Foulkes-Taylor died in a car accident in Victoria September 19, 1966, before many of his plans had come to fruition. His death made front-page news in Western Australia. The centre continued as his memorial for some years under Yvonne Allen’s management. In 1982 the Western Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University) staged an exhibition of the design work of the 1960s under the title “The Foulkes Taylor Years”. He is remembered as a catalyst for new ideas and an innovative promoter of other Western Australian artists. After his death the family hyphenated the name.
- Writers:
- Dr Dorothy Erickson
- Date written:
- 2010
- Last updated:
- 2011
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