Margaret Lord’s account of the founding states, “In 1950 seven interior decorators met at Marion Best’s house in [the Sydney suburb of] Woollahra to discuss the formation of a society or association which would help to raise the standard of interior design in Australia. These seven were Mary White, Don Johnson, Edmund Dykes, Don Shaw, Stuart Low and myself (Margaret Lord) and our hostess Marion Best. As a result of our talk that evening a list of possible members was made out […] and a meeting was held in the ballroom at Meriooola […] in Edgecliff Road [Bellevue Hill].”
There is an alternative narrative to the founding of SIDA. Cecily Adams states that in 1951, she was invited by Don Johnson to join a “small group of interior decorators … to discuss the formation of a Society of Interior Designers”; they held their first meeting in Merioola, a suburban villa in Woollahra. At this time, the house was an active artists’ colony supported by the arts patron Chica Lowe.
In 1964, the SIDA incorporated in NSW and Catriona Quinn reports that the incorporation document was signed on “… 17th July, 1964 by Mary White (President, 1963-64), Leslie Walford, Thomas (Warren) Harding, Merle du Boulay, Malcolm Forbes, Margaret Wardell (Lord), Marion Best and Barbara Campbell (Bridges). The document sets out some of the goals of the organization including ethical issues, education activities and exhibitions. Upon incorporation, the SIDA established professional criteria for active membership requiring completion of a “…four year course of college level in design, and […] not less that two years fulltime practical experience in a recognised establishment…”.
SIDA founded a “Good Design” award in 1952, members contributed to radio and TV broadcasts and developed an annual “Rooms on View” exhibition programme.
SIDA survived until 1998 when they merged into the DIA along with AGDA and ATDA.
The Sydney-based chapter of SIDA formed the core of the Society with 91 members in 1975, including a single member in New Zealand. In 1975, the membership in Victoria was 21, with Queensland’s 16 members, Western Australia’s 4 members, South Australia’s 3 members and the Northern Territory’s single member. This is the only member listing found to date and it is reproduced in Appendix 4.
More recently, further documents associated with SIDA have come to light in a donation of the papers of Leslie Walford and as these documents are catalogued by Catriona Quinn and other scholars at the Caroline Simpson Library and Research Collection, Historic Houses Trust of NSW (HHT), more information of the evolution of the organisation may be available. Quinn has also located important SIDA documents (see above) in the Mary White Papers archive at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.
- Writers:
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- Date written:
- 2017
- Last updated:
- 2023
