O N (Noel) Coulson Collection

Full description

Collection of drawings, plans, photographs, and personal records related to the career of architect and interior designer O N (Noel) Coulson (1905-1989). Coulson’s practice encompassed architecture, landscape, interior design, soft furnishings, and hardware design, providing extensive custom-made schemes unique to each commission.

Coulson, known as Noel, was born in Geelong in 1905, where he studied architecture at the Gordon Institute of Technology. Coulson moved to Melbourne in the early 1930s to work with I G Anderson on commercial commissions and during WW2 he worked in the design and drafting division of the US Army Marine Corps. Around 1949, Coulson founded his own practice offering a complete domestic design service. The firm was called O.N. Coulson, RAIA and operated from a studio in Little Collins Street, where his wife May (née Fiddes), who was also trained in architecture, was responsible for plan drafting until 1955. By the early 1960s, the office was based in the family home in East Melbourne. The RMIT Design Archives holds O N Coulson drawings for 80 named clients in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne dating from the 1950s to the 1970s.

The furniture illustrated in his drawings was made to order by S. Andrewartha Pty Ltd, a multi-generational institution in Melbourne furniture making, at their workshop in Richmond.

The collection comprises three separate donations and includes personal family records, as well as business records. Accession lot 0001.2016 holds 2 boxes of family records, including May Coulson’s (nee Fiddes) student works, as well as photographs of interiors designed for the Korman and the Smorgon families. Accession Lot 0049.2014 includes 1 box of drawings for the Lipshut House, Toorak, 1959. Accession lot 0001.2021, includes 80 drawings for named clients dating from 1950 to 1970; these are arranged in alphabetical order. Inventories are available.