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12the first to have his%u00a0furniture design sold widely throughout department stores, Fred Lowen (from Fler and, later, Tessa), Grant Featherston, Gordon Andrews, Clement Meadmore and Steven Kalmar were using Australian timbers and wool and designing innovative pieces with modern lines %u2013 perfect for the new style of housing developments being built. As our suburbs sprawled, every family needed a car. During the 1950s, Holden dominated the Australian industry, with the FJ and the locally designed workhorse, the ute, selling well. By 1959, Holden employed 19,000 workers countrywide.Come the Melbourne Olympics in 1956, the binoculars of the world were upon us. While Australians were gearing up to cheer on our Dawn, industrial designer Shirley de Vocht (nee Martin) was working at Dri-Glo Towels in Sydney%u2019s Five Dock, designing a towel for the Games. The brief stipulated that the design was to include the Olympic Torch. Shirley added the Olympic Rings and a map of Australia. The towel was produced in green and yellow, colours that had come to be associated with Australia. Shirley felt her towel helped secure these colours as an Australian icon.In the 1960s, the demands of fashion stimulated new designs for old forms. This decade brought sweeping cultural changes across literature, art and music, with Frank Ifield and The Seekers giving way to The Rolling Stones and The Easybeats, and design was no di%u00a0 erent. Robin Boyd%u2019s 1960 book The Australian Ugliness caused a stir. In it, Boyd argued that Australians were all visually illiterate, a nation of%u00a0 featurists adorning our houses with superfluous decorations and who at any opportunity would cut down a gum tree only to place a sandblasted koala or a tyre swan in its place. The cultural cringe, evidenced by the number of Australian artists fleeing to Europe, as well as books such as Donald Horne%u2019s The Lucky Country and Patrick White%u2019s The Prodigal Son, had well and truly arrived.1960sTOP LEFT AND BOTTOM RIGHT Fashion models pose with Holden cars at the Motor%u00a0Show, Sydney ShowgroundTOP%u00a0RIGHT Valiants in the car compactus parking systemBOTTOM RIGHT A family take their boat for a spin, towed by their trusty Holden, in 1966