- Liberty (department store)
Liberty is a well known store in
Great Marlborough Street in centralLondon ,England at the heart of the West End shopping district. It was founded byArthur Lasenby Liberty in 1875 to sell ornaments, fabrics and miscellaneous art objects fromJapan and theFar East .History
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 andArt Nouveau . The company became synonymous with this new style to the extent that inItaly , Art Nouveau became known as "Stile Liberty" after the London shop. Liberty still has a distinctive style and produces some of its own fabrics.Architecture
Its building fronts
Great Marlborough Street and is one of the most prominent Tudor revival Arts and Crafts buildings in London. It is a Grade II*listed building . The timbers used in the construction of the building (built in 1924 by architects Edwin T. Hall and his son Edwin S. Hall) were taken from two British naval ships, HMS "Impregnable" and HMS "Hindustan". [ [http://londonarchitecture.co.uk/Building.php?ID=265 Liberty : Regent Street, London, England W1, United Kingdom :: London Architecture .co.uk ] ] Unlike a typical large department store, the shop has resisted the trend for suspended ceilings and corporate display fittings. It retains the original Tudor Revival detailing (with some typical 1930s touches) inside as well as out.The interior is split up into a series of relatively small rooms, arranged around several windowless atria, which are lit by glazed roofs and have wooden balconies at each level. There are stairs and decorative lifts instead of escalators.Retail activity
The shop sells up to date fashions, cosmetics, accessories, gifts etc. in addition to its homewares and furniture.
Liberty has its own team of window dressers and is known for imaginative and often surreal window displays, especially at Christmas.
Since 1988, Liberty has had a subsidiary in Japan which sells Liberty branded products in leading Japanese shops. It also sells Liberty fabrics to international and local fashion brands with bases in Japan.
ee also
*
Regent Street
*Oxford Street References
Alison Adburgham, "Liberty's - A biography of a shop", George Allen and Unwin (1975)
External links
* [http://www.liberty.co.uk/ Official site]
* [http://www.victorianweb.org/art/design/liberty/lstyle.html Arthur Lasenby Liberty and the Evolution of the Liberty Style]
* [http://www.vintagefashionguild.org/component/option,com_alphacontent/section,6/cat,59/task,view/id,419/Itemid,100/ Vintage Fashion Guild]Original Liberty objects in museums
A starter list:
* [http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/search.aspx?advanced=colProProductionMakers%3a%22Liberty+%26+Co%22 Objects in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa]
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