Liberty and co

Liberty and Co. in the Fifties and Sixties A Taste for Design

Anna Buruma

many years by this time. For the timbers they used the remains of two obsolete navy training ships, HMS Impregnable and HMS Hindustan. The design, by the architects Edwin and Stanley Hall, was inspired by the Rows of Chester. The idea was to keep intact Liberty’s original character as a series of shops rather than one grand department store. The interiors provided an example of the kind of work Liberty’s craftsmen were capable of for clients. Much of the woodcarving, as well as the plasterwork was done at Liberty’s workshops.

With the proliferation of the historic styles in the Home Counties and the new suburbs of the larger cities, there was still a great demand for such traditional skills. The furniture sold in the shop was in historic English styles, from Tudor through Elizabethan and Jacobean to Georgian. Wallpapers, rugs and fabrics were covered in Jacobean style flowers, or traditional chintz designs. In dress fabrics, Liberty and Co. sold a larger range of silks than ever. Though many of the wood-block designs from the 19th century were still going strong, the colourings were changed to suit modern tastes: the grounds became darker and the colours more vivid, especially during the 1920s.

Other strong sellers during this period were the cotton ranges.

Liberty’s cotton buyer William Dorell marketed a very fine cotton lawn, made from a long staple type of cotton, which could be spun much finer; he called it tana after Lake Tana in Ethiopia. In the 1930s, the Silver Studio, which had supplied so many of the Liberty Art Nouveau style designs, provided a great number of the patterns for the well-known tana lawn florals. All in all, the twenties and thirties were a profitable period for Liberty and Co., but one of consolidation rather than innovation.

Most of the fabrics and scarves were printed at the company’s print works in Merton. Liberty and Co. had acquired this manufactory in 1904 when it was realised that the firm was taking up most of the production there. The printing was done with wood blocks until the 1930s, when screen-printing was introduced, at the time a very new technique and still done by hand. From this point on, the traditional wood-block designs were slowly transferred to screen, though the wood-block printers continued their craft alongside the screen printers. During the Second World War, most of the print works were taken over for war production by Parnal Aircraft Components Ltd, but a small amount of printing continued, both for Liberty’s fabrics, and for other companies.

The well-known propaganda textiles by Jacqmar, for example, were printed at Merton.

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Architect’s drawing of proposed Tudor building for Liberty and Co. Ltd, Cyril A Farey, 1922.

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Liberty’s beginnings are well-known and most historians of the decorative arts will agree that the company had a significant impact on design in the early twentieth century. However, through the years Liberty and Co. took many forms.

History, far from being irrelevant nostalgia, offers us a chance to learn from our mistakes and, indeed, successes. Perhaps now, as, emerging from a difficult recent period, this grand company looks confidently to the future, it is a good time to look back to the Liberty of the fifties and sixties: a less well-recognised moment in Liberty’s history, but perhaps no less significant.

‘What a relief it is in these days to find individuality – and that of the highest order – guiding the plenteous elements of beauty which modern skill at home and the now accessible foreign markets place within easy reach…”

Mrs Haweis in Beautiful Houses, 1882

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Design in the Festival, products include ‘Flower Pot’ scarf.

Design Archives, University of Brighton Opposite page ‘Flower Pot’, print impression, Liberty and Co. Ltd, 1948.

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Between 1946 and 1952 the Liberty’s board went through various changes. Harold Blackmore, Arthur Lasenby Liberty’s nephew, retired as chairman in 1950; he had been a director of the company for 45 years. Another nephew, Ivor Stewart Liberty took over as chairman, but died soon after in 1952. He was succeeded by his son Arthur Stewart Liberty, still in his thirties, with Harold’s son Hilary Blackmore and William Dorell as his co-directors.

William Dorell was much more experienced than the other two, he had been with the firm since 1908, first as a buyer and then, from 1935, as a director. Through his position he had close connections with Liberty’s agencies abroad, such as the firm of Metz & Co. in Holland. Liberty’s first major agent, Metz & Co., was well known for selling European avant-garde design: Liberty products from the 1900s, Wiener Werkstätte pieces in the 1910s, Sonia Delauney’s from the 1920s, and by the 1930s Metz & Co. was selling furniture by le Corbusier, Aalvar Aalto and Marcel Breuer.

In 1951 Metz & Co. advised William Dorell that someone from Liberty should visit the Triennale Exhibition in Milan. Metz & Co. was enthusiastic about the new Italian designers, at a time when most modern retailers were looking much more at Scandinavian design. It is possible that it was through their influence that Liberty quickly acquired the best that Italy could offer in glass, leather goods and furniture. Arthur Stewart Liberty did go to Milan for the Triennale in 1951, meeting with one of Metz’s suppliers in Florence during the same visit.

Of course it wasn’t just Metz’s influence that propelled the changes, there was a general mood for change after the war. Liberty was listening to advice from other sources as well, not least the Council of Industrial Design (CoID), which provided training and maintained lists of designers to recommend to enquiring manufacturers. During the Festival of Britain in 1951 several of Liberty’s products were represented in the Stock List exhibited in the Design Review section at South Bank. In the CoID’s book Design in the Festival there is a photograph of Ashley Havinden’s packaging for a Liberty perfume, as well as one of a Liberty scarf with a flowerpot design by Victoria Norrington.

Petra Timmer, Metz & Co., De Creatieve Jaren, Uitgeverij 010, Rotterdam 1995, p.156.

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Window display, Eric Lucking for Liberty and Co. Ltd, c.1949.

Westminster Archives Centre

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Window display, Eric Lucking for Liberty and Co. Ltd, 1946.

Westminster Archives Centre

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‘Fritillary’, print impression, Lucienne Day for Liberty and Co. Ltd, 1952.

Liberty plc Opposite page ‘Coronation Rose’, print impression, Lucienne Day for Liberty and Co. Ltd, 1953.

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Textile designers The textile industry was fairly conservative in its outlook. Only a handful of companies were looking at contemporary design for their products. These same companies were involved with the CoID and their influential exhibitions. It was the designers that these companies used that were written about. Most of the textile manufacturers used the many anonymous textile designers who produced large amounts of both good and bad commercial designs, but which were not usually particularly ground-breaking. Of the designers that one did hear about, a number were painters, such as John Piper, Graham Sutherland and Henry Moore; others had trained on the continent before the war, such as Hans Aufseeser, Jacqueline Groag and Marian Mahler. Young art school-trained designers were also coming to the fore: Lucienne Day, Robert Stewart and Terence Conran, among others. Influences for their work came from diverse sources: Matisse, Klee and Alexander Calder in art, as well as from the newly discovered atomic structures. A look at the latter by manufacturers was encouraged by the CoID for the Festival of Britain in 1951.

Liberty commissioned some of the top designers of the period: the names of Jacqueline Groag, Lucienne Day, Robert Stewart appear in connection with them in magazine articles, as well as those of the painter Martin Bradley and the designers Hilda Durkin, Anthony Levett-Prinsep and John Wright. They were freelance designers who also provided other companies with their work.

Many of the patterns they sold to Liberty were printed first for Young Liberty and then later incorporated into the main furnishing range. A number of these designs were also sold through other outlets such as Woollands, Heal’s and Primavera.

In 1952 Lucienne Day was commissioned to produce a Tudor Rose design for dress fabrics, with the idea that during 1953 – The Coronation Year – this motif could be repeated on other products, such as pottery, glass, souvenirs or fashion jewellery; in practice, it appears to have been produced only as a textile. That same year she produced a design for a furnishing fabric, a stylized pattern of butterflies known as ‘Fritillary’. Although Lucienne Day was an independent designer, her name was associated most closely with Heal’s, whereas Robert Stewart’s designs were mainly for Liberty at this time. The two companies felt that this was potentially confusing for their customers, and so came to an agreement: Liberty’s would no longer commission Lucienne Day, while Heal’s would not work with Robert Stewart.

There are several designs by Jacqueline Groag in the Liberty

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‘Cassata’, CC 602, hand-printed 48” cotton, Betty MiddletonStanford for Liberty and Co. Ltd, 1956.

Liberty plc ‘Euripides’, CC 656, hand-printed 48” cotton, in the style of Piero Fornasetti, Liberty and Co. Ltd, c.1958.

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‘Cockpit’, CC 649, hand-printed 48” cotton, Martin Bradley for Liberty and Co. Ltd, 1957.

Liberty plc Below, left ‘Malindi’, Gwenfred Jarvis for Liberty and Co. Ltd, Design January 1959, p.35.

Design Archives, University of Brighton Below, right ‘Malindi’, CC 661, hand-printed 48” cotton satin, Gwenfred Jarvis for Liberty and Co. Ltd, 1958.

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‘Nimbus’ tables by AM Lewis and K McAvoy for Liberty and Co. Ltd on cover of Design January 1953.

Design Archives, University of Brighton ‘Boomerang’ table, AM Lewis for Liberty and Co. Ltd, Studio Yearbook 1951-52, p.31 Opposite page Geometric design, print impression, Liberty and Co. Ltd, 1950.

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34 Westminster Archive 1166/53, order book for 1951-52.

35 Conversation with Sir Terence Conran, 20 July 2007.

McAvoy’s ‘Nimbus’ table (in the shape of a cloud) on the cover of Design no 49. Eric Lucking devoted a window to the ‘Boomerang’ table and it was singled out in the Studio yearbook of 1951. Between October 1951 and June 1952 the department sold around a hundred of these tables. Liberty’s venture into the contemporary style seems to have paid off. Its merchandise regularly featured in the design publications as well as in magazines such as House and Garden.

Terence Conran thought that Liberty and Co. had a vision, at a time when other shops were rather depressing in their outlook.

He was enamoured of French markets in the 1950s and looking around London stores, he found that Liberty’s had something of those markets about it. The 1950s were a frugal time and any retailer who wholeheartedly promoted modern design was taking a risk. For some, such as Heal’s, that risk paid off: their policy meant that products that we revere today as prime examples of modern design were often bought there. People reminiscing about those days seem only to remember going to Heal’s or Woollands when they wanted to furnish their house in the ‘contemporary style’, but those were certainly not the only places to go. It is quite clear from the order books of the time, that people did shop at Liberty’s and some of them did buy modern furniture, though even more went for the good quality fabrics, the jewellery, the kitchenware and the oriental rugs.

In truth, Liberty and Co. probably played it safer than Heal’s, running its modern products alongside the more traditional ones, so as not to scare away longstanding customers. It is perhaps for this reason that Liberty and Co. is not so prominent in people’s memories as a ‘modern’ store in the 1950s. In a way this was a period that prepared the business for its flowering in the 1960s.

Almost overnight, the emporium of traditional style found itself not just at one of the best spots in London, but at the very epicentre of the world of fashion: Carnaby Street in the sixties.

‘Aubrena’, silk, probably by Harry Napper for Liberty and Co. Ltd, early 1900s, reprinted at Merton print works, 1960.

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‘Constantia’, wool, from a Wardle & Co. print of the 1890s, printed at Liberty and Co. Ltd Merton print works, 1960.

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‘Eustacia’, print impression, printed at Liberty and Co. Ltd Merton print works, 1960.

Liberty plc Opposite page Cocktail dress by American designer Arnold Scaasi, using ‘Eustacia’, 1961.

Fashion Museum, Bath

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‘Whirlygig’, print impression, Colleen Farr for Liberty and Co. Ltd, 1960.

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‘Seiran’, print impression, Martin Battersby for Liberty and Co. Ltd, 1960.

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Page from scrap book – ‘Macedonia’ for Liberty and Co. Ltd, used by Yves Saint Laurent, 1968.

Collection of Bernard Nevill Opposite page ‘Macedonia’, wool, Bernard Nevill for Liberty and Co. Ltd, 1968.

Liberty plc Sketch of Yves Saint Laurent midi-skirt using ‘Macedonia’, 1968.

Westminster Archives Centre

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‘Bengal’, Bernard Nevill for Liberty and Co., on silk, 1969.

Liberty plc Opposite page ‘Lucrezia’, Bernard Nevill for Liberty and Co., paper impression, 1969.

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