Ruth’s legacy

Many of Ruth’s ideas for home furnishing can be seen in Calthorpes’ House, the property in Red Hill managed by ACT Historic Places. Designed by Oakley and Parkes and built for Harry Calthorpe, a successful stock and station agent, and his wife, Della and their daughters, it is a Spanish Mission-Californian Bungalow style house, furnished as it was originally in 1927.

Its interiors reflect the guidance homemakers were given in The Australian Home Beautiful and the furniture and furnishings fashionable at the time. It has similarities with interiors Ruth styled for the official residences such as its entrance hall, where the combination of timber panelling, Jacobean Revival furniture and the Persian-patterned Wilton carpet are consistent with the selections Ruth made for the same spaces in those houses.

The interiors of Calthorpes’ House have remained as they were originally furnished because the Calthorpe family saw no need to change them. These interiors demonstrate the longevity of good quality furnishings and project an atmosphere of intimate homeliness.

Ruth upheld the belief that period furniture in particular contributed to interior harmony, noting that;

‘There can be nothing new in furniture design. All the pieces in use today are copies of older ones – the good work lived and became period furniture; the bad found its way to the fire heap’.

‘A Home for the Governor-General’, The Australian Home Beautiful, 2 May 1927