Tragedy and Assimilation: Occupying the Patterned Surface

Abstract

The Woods Bagot 2007 refurbishment of the Qantas and British Airways Bangkok Business lounge in Survarnabhumi Airport features wall nishes designed by wallpaper designer Florence Broadhurst (1899-1977) and Thai silk trader Jim Thompson (1906-1967). This particularly distinctive selection of works by the two designers is highlighted on the airport’s website (Suvarnabhumi Airport 2006), where our attention is drawn to the striking similarities and dening dierences of these patterned wall surfaces, positioned, as they are, side by side. Thompson and Broadhurst would appear to be worlds apart, but here in the airport their work brings them together. Thompson, the son of a wealthy cotton family in America, worked as an architect before joining the army. He moved to Bangkok to start the Thai Silk Company in 1948. Broadhurst was born on a farm in Mt Perry, Queensland. She began her career as a performance artist in an Australian troupe in Shanghai, moving on to pursue a career in fashion design, catering to the middle and upper classes in London. Upon her return to Australia in 1959, Broadhurst started a print design company. Both Broadhurst and Thompson pursued multiple careers and died under mysterious circumstances. Broadhurst was murdered in 1977 at her Sydney print warehouse, which remains an unsolved crime. Thompson disappeared in the Malaysian highlands in 1967 and his body has never been found.