Arthur Lasenby Liberty
Encyclopedia
Liberty (department store)
Liberty is a long-established department store in Regent Street in Central London, England, in the West End shopping district.-Early years:...
.
Born in Chesham
Chesham
Chesham is a market town in the Chiltern Hills, Buckinghamshire, England. It is located 11 miles south-east of the county town of Aylesbury. Chesham is also a civil parish designated a town council within Chiltern district. It is situated in the Chess Valley and surrounded by farmland, as well as...
, Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....
, England, the son of a draper, he began work at sixteen with his uncle who sold lace, and later, another uncle who sold wine. By 1859 he was apprenticed to a draper, but he instead took a job at Farmer and Rogers which specialized in women's fashions. He quickly rose to manager of the warehouse.
After Farmer and Rogers refused to make him a partner in their business, so in 1875, he opened his own shop, Liberty & Co
Liberty (department store)
Liberty is a long-established department store in Regent Street in Central London, England, in the West End shopping district.-Early years:...
in Regent Street
Regent Street
Regent Street is one of the major shopping streets in London's West End, well known to tourists and Londoners alike, and famous for its Christmas illuminations...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. There, he sold ornaments, fabrics and miscellaneous art objects from the Far East
Far East
The Far East is an English term mostly describing East Asia and Southeast Asia, with South Asia sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.The term came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 19th century,...
.
Liberty & Co first catered for an eclectic mixture of popular styles, but then went on to develop a fundamentally different style closely linked to the aesthetic movement of the 1890s, Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
(the "new art"). The company became synonymous with this new style to the extent that in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Art Nouveau became known as Stile Liberty after the London shop. The company's selection of printed and dyed fabrics, particularly silk
Silk
Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...
s and satin
Satin
Satin is a weave that typically has a glossy surface and a dull back. It is a warp-dominated weaving technique that forms a minimum number of interlacings in a fabric. If a fabric is formed with a satin weave using filament fibres such as silk, nylon, or polyester, the corresponding fabric is...
s, was noted for its range of subtle and "artistic" colours and was highly esteemed for dress fabrics, especially during the decades from 1890 to 1920.
Arthur Liberty married Emma Louise Blackmore in 1875. They had no children. Before he died, Liberty had amassed a small fortune as a majority shareholder in Liberty & Co. (It had become a public limited liability company in 1890). He left a manor house, several cottages and a large area of farmland near his birthplace in Buckinghamshire. He was knighted in 1913.
His gravestone was designed by Archibald Knox
Archibald Knox (designer)
Archibald Knox , was a Manx art nouveau designer of Scottish descent....
, one of Liberty & Co
Liberty (department store)
Liberty is a long-established department store in Regent Street in Central London, England, in the West End shopping district.-Early years:...
's long-standing designers.