Design and Crime - Stuart Rattle

I'm not usually one to pick a book from the True Crime genre, however when it revolves around the murder of Stuart Rattle, one of Australia's most lauded Interior Decorators then it piques my interest.


For those uninitiated, Stuart Rattle was a highly regarded Australian Interior Decorator in his 50s, murdered by his long-term life and business partner Michael O'Neill two years ago. O'Neill plead guilty to the murder, thus sparing a long, drawn out trial that would no doubt have been filled with salacious detail as their lives were picked apart. He has never divulged exactly what it was that lead to the murder on that night (it appears unplanned), preferring to 'protect' Stuart's legacy. Suffice to say that he is extremely remorseful, is a broken man, and it seems to have been an out of character crime.


The author of this book (who only writes in the True Crime genre) wrote about Rattle and O'Neill's life in a biography of sorts, with the detail provided through interviews with the families, their friends, colleagues and former clients, adding in her own slightly sneering asides (she has no understanding of design/ why people would hire a designer/ how wealthy people live) and distracting personal stories. There is clear sympathy toward the murderer, and she portrays Rattle (whom she had never met in person) in a very unflattering light as a driven, exacting perfectionist and thoroughly nasty person. He seemed to be widely loved by suppliers, clients and his many friends and was charismatic and personable. After reading it all, I felt like having a bath in disinfectant.


At first it was essentially an account of a wholesale makeover of a life - from their respective starts in country Australian towns in the 1960s with working class families, the bullying they each endured due to their sexuality (O'Neill quite severely), their respective wholesale makeovers in Melbourne into urbane upper class men about town, and then it gradually evolved into a tale of when business goes bad. Despite being at the top of the tree in the Australian design world, and despite decorating houses for people worth tens and hundreds of millions of dollars (and more), Rattle's design business was imploding due to complete and utter mismanagement. When Rattle died, there were 56 jobs on the books - all run by just O'Neill, who acted as his assistant. This is an extraordinary number of jobs to have on the go in an office being project managed by just one person.



As part of the so called "A Gay" scene in Melbourne they were certainly looking the part, mostly due to borrowing money from the business accounts, and utilising the business overdraft facility for their own personal expenses. At the time of the murder they were propping up the bank accounts by syphoning off money from their Superannuation (pension) fund (illegally), had a $130,000 overdraft with the bank and $90,000 on credit cards. The money had gone toward living at a level of perfectionism and luxury in their homes and lifestyles similar to the life their clients lead, the difference being their clients had incomes with many more zeroes on the end. The Melbourne Antique dealer Graham Geddes had some interesting observations to make on the business aspects of working in that world and commented specifically on that point.

It's an interesting glimpse into their lives, but ultimately it was the descriptions of what went into his renowned farm that were the only saving grace in this voyeuristic book. I already have a copy of "Stuart Rattle's Musk Farm", a book  written and photographed immediately after his death to memorialise it prior to the house and contents sale. The additional information on the interiors from the "Smoke and Mirrors" book was interesting, especially that almost all the 'antique' furniture in the house was in fact new - made to his exact specification by a specialist furniture maker as Rattle had neither the patience to wait for the right piece to turn up, or wanted very specific sizes and styles which can prove impossible to find in Antiques.

I will be upfront and say that I'm not overly fond of the house and interiors themselves - they are too heavily Anglicised for me, and I personally find the house top heavy and awkwardly proportioned due to the conversion Rattle undertook of the structure from its original single story school- house to two story American style farm house (complete with flag over the front door). However, I am clearly in the minority, as it's been widely lauded as a building and interior of immense beauty and style, and it certainly has a sense of place. The gardens are beautiful, and the overall estate is interesting.

I had a very mixed reaction to the book. As I said upthread, it did leave me feeling like taking a disinfecting bath due to the very voyeuristic information contained within, and the lack of any impartial journalistic- style of the part of the author. I'll be interested to see if there is a biography of Rattle's work and life published by a more sympathetic source in the future, or if the Musk Farm book is the only one we'll see - certainly his family wanted to emphasise to the Author of Smoke and Mirrors (prior to refusing to meet with her again) his natural talent, and the fact that he was completely self taught with no formal education - this was a point of pride to them.

As I have recently read a few books along the theme of Design and Crime recently, I will follow up this post at a later stage with another - next will be the mysterious disappearance of Jim Thompson, and his celebrated house on a Klong in Bangkok, both books of which I enjoyed and perhaps have less of a mixed reaction to than the subject of this blog post.