Liberty of London is a luxury department store in London dating from 1875. The store's interior was made from the timbers from two ancient battle ships. The decks were used for the flooring. In all, there was 24,000 cubic feet of ship timbers.
My thoughts of Liberty are around its fabric print design and production. Liberty used the finest silks and cottons in the making of its beautiful floral designs. Liberty prints were readily available in Toronto in the 1970s into the 1980s. But those stores are now gone - Eaton's, Simpsons, and the Hudson's Bay. standalone fabric stores are gone from regular shopping places. There is a single Fabricland in St. Catharines on Welland Avenue, and that is unusual.
I went online to see if they still make the prints that I had worn. Yes, there is one of my favourites - poppy and daisy still available. It is part of Liberty Fabrics’ Classics collection which started in 1979, created to champion the most well-known and iconic designs from the Liberty archive all year around.
And the price? It is $62.00 a metre at 1.36m width. Ouch if you wanted to make anything to actually wear.
Here's are the Editor's Notes:
Poppy and Daisy is a fine-lined and meadowy layout, which has been part of the Liberty archive since the 1910s. An archetypal Liberty floral, it would have originally been a wood block print.
Our Tana Lawn™ cotton is a fabric built by obsession, perfected into a modern masterpiece of production through a bespoke process that has evolved over a century. Printed in our very own Liberty Printing Mill, located between Milan and Lake Como in northern Italy, Tana realises unmatchable fluidity with a silk-like touch, unique print quality and striking colour vibrancy. Machine washable and durable enough for daily wear, it can be used to create everything from simple separates to spectacular statement pieces.
Here's the screen print of the lovely design.
And this picture? A print from Liberty Village in Toronto.
