Penny Baxter

It’s Fun Finding Florence

Florence, jewel of Italy, means art In all its essence to artists and students. Although PENNY BAXTER of British-Swedish parentage is undyingly devoted to London she couldn't turn down the chance of going to Florence for a year. If she looks a little wistful here it was because she hated to leave her cosy London bed-sit, but don’t take it to heart, Ernest, for Penny knows it’s going to be fun finding Florence.

Penny is just twenty-one, has been an art student since her teens and harbours not so much a burning desire to paint like Rembrandt or Sutherland but to try her genius at interior decorating.

She knows, of course, where you can really make the money. And as she loves fast cars, she thinks a successful interior decorator has more chance of acquiring an E type than a painter has.

Anyway, she’ll find out in Florence whether she has the spark that will make her oblivious of things like money and cars, or whether she is indeed destined to make a career amid odd wallpapers and droll curtains and jazzy knick-knacks.

She thought it quite mad but quite fascinating that anyone should consider her to be a pin-up type. She thought pin-up types were those who looked as if they were about to topple slowly over.

Beautiful Britons No 118 - September 1965