The death of Roger Putnam FDIA in May 2023 marked the passing of an important presence in Australian mid-twentieth-century design.
Born Roger Guy Brett Putnam in Harrow, London in 1940, Putnam migrated to Australia with his family in 1953 and grew up on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. His father, Ernest George Putnam, was a furniture maker and restorer with a successful business. His early advice to his son was, “Don’t get involved in furniture.” However, as Putnam later explained, “The genes prevailed.”
Putnam trained in interior design at RMIT in the early 1960s before undertaking postgraduate studies at the London College of Furniture. He worked in London as assistant to the renowned English furniture designer Robin Day before accepting a job to accompany migrant children on the long voyage back to Melbourne. On this voyage he met Jenny, to whom he would be married for 30-plus years.
In re-establishing himself in Melbourne, Putnam lectured in industrial design at Prahran Technical College under the leadership of Lenton Parr. While there, he established lifelong friendships with designers Chris Palmer and Val Austin.
An example of Putnam’s work at an exhibition in Melbourne.
Image: Supplied
Putnam transitioned from academia to the workforce with the design and manufacturer of furniture for the hospitality sector in Melbourne. He worked with Alan Kerr of Kerby Furniture, manufacturers of high-end retail domestic furniture, before establishing his own company, Sumna Furniture. His work included fitouts of the Savoy-Plaza and Adelphi hotels and, with the establishment of Design Ecru (founded by Sue Carr, Putnam was a director), freelance work for the top design practices of the day. Putnam spent a productive period with Expo Solutions in Melbourne, where he joined his younger brother Geoff, an industrial designer who had also trained at RMIT. Together, they produced wonderful exhibition displays for major corporate entities. In 1977, Geoff won the Guild Furniture Best Stand Award for the design of the Sumna Furniture stand in Melbourne.
Putnam built prototypes for some major design figures, including Kjell Grant, designer of the famous Montreal chair. He worked closely with commercial furniture suppliers such as Innerspace to provide bespoke manufactured boardroom pieces. He reflected often on the early skills he was taught by the renowned Don Chapman, lecturer in furniture design at RMIT–including the production of full-size drawings for furniture pieces, a skill that now seems lost.
Together with Maudie Palmer AO, Putnam helped to set up the Tarrawarra Museum of Art. This highly successful gallery in the Yarra Valley, designed by Allan Powell, has amazing flexibility in its internal spaces, as Putnam devised portable walls that store neatly away. Putnam continued to work for Palmer, the inaugural gallery director, as the gallery’s facilities manager for several years. In the years that followed, his work for many galleries, including Heide Museum of Modern Art and McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery, set a new direction for his design practice.
In the early 2000s, Putnam was awarded a fellowship by the Design Institute of Australia, of which he had been a member since 1972. A quiet achiever who continued to engage in the design sphere throughout his life, Putnam will be sorely missed by his family and friends.
— Geoff Fitzpatrick has been with the Design Institute of Australia for 48 years and is the founding editor of Artichoke. A DIA Hall of Fame inductee (2005) and a Design Ambassador, he was awarded an OAM in 2017 for services to industrial and interior design.
