The kitchen at Rose Seidler House Photo © Nicholas Watt for Sydney Living Museums
When one thinks of the collection at Rose Seidler House, design icons spring to mind: Charles Eames’ plywood and chrome dining chairs, Eero Saarinen’s Womb chair and Grasshopper chairs and Jorge-Ferrari Hardoy’s butterfly chairs. But one doesn’t automatically think of fake fur bedspreads, Vitrolite shelves, a Kenwood Chief A700 mixmaster or Flint Line kitchen tools, which were also equally part of daily life in the house.
Rose Seidler House was designed by Harry Seidler for his parents Max and Rose and when it was completed in 1950 it was ‘the most talked about house in Sydney’. The house brought modernism to Australia and the furniture and furnishings form one of the most important mid-twentieth century domestic design collections in public ownership.
