Selling the Art of
Furnishings
by Bob Brooke
Liberty & Company has been a staple on
London’s Regent Street since 1875 when it opened a small shop in the
city’s emerging West End. Over time, it grew into a showcase for
artistic furnishings with exotic and avante-garde designs. Arthur
Lasenby Liberty, the son of a provincial draper, founded the retail
business in 1862 at Farmer and Rogers’ Oriental Warehouse on Regent
Street, specializing in fashionable Kashmir shawls and oriental goods.
He believed he could change the public’s taste for housewares and
fashion by not following the current trends but creating new ones.
 At
Liberty's, Middle Eastern and Asian goods determined the character of
the store. Sympathetic to Arts and Crafts ideals, Liberty's ambition
became an example of reform of home furnishings along "artistic" lines.
As an entrepreneur, he found ways of supplying an expanding market with
exotic, handmade goods in a retail environment evoking an oriental souk
rather than a conventional department store.
By the 1880s Liberty's name had become a trademark. "Liberty Art
Fabrics" were sensuous and subtly colored, widely admired and imitated.
The store used leading designers anonymously. Edmund Littler did textile
printing at Merton, just upstream from Morris and Company's workshops.
In 1904 Liberty bought the business; which printed fabrics with wood
blocks.
The Liberty Home
 A
furniture department, supported by its own workshops, opened in 1880
under the direction of Leonard F. Wyburd. At first Liberty imported
goods from countries seen as "exotic" and pre-industrial, producing
handmade, but relatively inexpensive, furniture and artifacts. Lasenby
Liberty traveled widely, notably to Japan, to observe their production
firsthand. Shrewd business instincts drove him to innovate however, and
he had no scruples about modifying designs for the home market,
developing hybrid, Anglo-oriental artifacts and other ersatz styles,
incorporating Arts and Crafts, "Celtic," "Tudor," Art Nouveau, and
oriental elements. He also invested substantially in small companies
producing ceramics, metalwork, and jewelry.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Liberty goods changed little, although after
both World Wars, the retailer favored traditional English values. In the
1950s and early 1960s, the company redefined itself as contemporary and
European, commissioning work from world-class designers.
Liberty Furniture
 Liberty
aimed to combine utility and good taste with modest costs to produce
useful and beautiful objects at prices within the reach of all classes.
He began by selling ornaments, fabric, and objets d’art from Japan and
the Far East, but soon discovered he could make a profit from “art
furnishings.” By 1883, he had set up a design studio to supply his store
with affordable furniture in the Arts and Crafts style.
 Wyburd
created some of the company’s most noted designs, including the “Thebes”
stool. He also created a variety of stools, country-style oak chairs,
tables, and cupboards from oak, mahogany, and walnut. Liberty furniture
used simple construction techniques and featured symmetrical shapes with
a minimum of embellishment. The studio also produced a range of
high-backed chairs with pierced patterns, such as squares, rectangles,
hearts, and trefoils. He also designed simple cabinets decorated with
painted or stained glass panels, metal handles, elaborate beaten copper
or brass hinges, and even inset tiles by William De Morgan.
 Liberty
catalogues show that in the 19th century the store had an eclectic
customer base. Furniture might have been inspired by the Renaissance,
Tudor, or Gothic Revival styles, or by progressive designers of the day,
such as William Morris and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Liberty not only
imitated the pieces by these designers but also commissioned them to
make pieces to sell in the store.
By 1900, Liberty had become the leading producer of Arts and Crafts
furniture. Famous clientele included Oscar Wilde who said, “Liberty is
the chosen resort of the artistic shopper.”
By imitating Morris’ technique of applying mottoes to its country
furniture. Liberty provided the solution to those who desired pieces in
the Arts and Crafts style but were content to ignore the Movement’s
ideal that the skills of the craftsman came first. Unfortunately,
Liberty’s success at selling Arts and Crafts to a wider audience helped
bring about the downfall of the guilds it emulated.
Liberty Metalwork
 In
1899, Liberty & Company sought to expand its range of “artistic”
furnishings that it had been offering at its Regent Street store. The
retailer launched what it described as “a new fin-de-siecle school of
art silverwork.” It called this new art metalwork “Cymric” silver,
echoing the Welsh name for Wales, Cymru, in deference to its director
John Llewellyn, who had Welsh roots. By 1902, the company was offering a
second, more affordable, and more widely produced, range of metalwork,
“Tudric” pewter. Both varieties of art metalwork continued to be sold
until the 1920s.
 Although
experts questioned the Arts and Crafts originality and craftsmanship of
Liberty’s metalwares, the retailer’s approach was innovative. The
store’s metalwares had a distinct Liberty style, which became
influential on the European Continent,
For its metalwork designs, Liberty relied on the Silver Stuido which had
previously provided designs for its textiles. Founded by Arthur Silver
in 1880, the Silver Studio provided silver designs by Archibald Knox who
introduced the Celtic decoration that typifies Liberty & Company
metalwork. His designs interlaced Celtic scroll work and stylized plant
motifs with areas of plain silver and pewter. The striking simplicity of
his designs makes the touches of colored enamel, semi-precious stones,
and shell or colored glass liners all the more intense and effective.
Customers had a wide variety of metalware
items from which to choose—silver tea sets, pewter cigarette cases, and
even pewter or enamel clocks.
 Liberty
also collaborated with the Birmingham jewelry firm of W.H. Haseler.
Under the directorship of William Rabone Haseler with the help of
painter Oliver Baker, the firm produced a range of “artistic” silverware
for Liberty. Haseler produced all of Liberty’s Cymric silver. It also
turned to pewter for the launch of the “Tudric” line.
Only the most elaborate pieces were handcrafted. The majority of the
silverware was machine stamped while the pewter was cast from iron
molds. This enabled production on a larger scale than was possible in
the traditional Arts & Crafts workshops
Artisans often polished the metal smooth and inset with it enamel
panels, abalone shell, or stones such as agates. They fitted vases and
butter dishes with colored glass liners produced by James Powell and
Sons of Whitefriars in London.
Liberty felt it important to retail control over the designs produced by
these outside firms. It often adapted the designs it received to make
them more saleable. The retailer rarely gave credit to individual
designers. In effect, the pieces produced by the outside companies
became some of the first store brands.
<
Back to Antique Spotlight Archives Next
Article > |
