Sir Arthur Lasenby Liberty (13 August 1843 – 11 May 1917) was a London-based merchant, and the founder of

Liberty & Co Liberty, commonly known as Liberty's, is a luxury department store in London, England. It is located on Great Marlborough Street in the West End of London. The building spans from Carnaby Street on the East to Kingly Street on the West, where ...

Early life

Arthur Liberty was born on 13 August 1843 in

Chesham Chesham (, , or ) is a market town and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England, south-east of the county town of Aylesbury, north-west of central London, and part of the London commuter belt. It is in the Chess Valley, surrounded by farmla ...

, Buckinghamshire, England, the son of a draper. He began work at sixteen with an 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 specialised in women's fashions. He quickly rose to the post of manager of the warehouse.

Liberty & Co.

After Farmer and Rogers refused to make him a partner in their business, Liberty, in 1875, opened his own shop, Liberty & Co., in Regent Street,

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. There he sold ornaments, fabrics and miscellaneous

objets d'art In art history, the French term Objet d’art describes an ornamental work of art, and the term Objets d’art describes a range of works of art, usually small and three-dimensional, made of high-quality materials, and a finely-rendered finish th ...

from the

Far East The ''Far East'' was a European term to refer to the geographical regions that includes East and Southeast Asia as well as the Russian Far East to a lesser extent. South Asia is sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons. The ter ...

. Liberty & Co. initially provided an eclectic mix of popular styles, but went on to develop a fundamentally different style closely linked to the Aesthetic Movement of the 1890s, Art Nouveau (the "new art"). The company became synonymous with this new style to the extent that in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

, Art Nouveau became known as ''Stile Liberty'' after the London shop. The company's printed and dyed fabrics, particularly

silk Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The protein fiber of silk is composed mainly of fibroin and is produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoons. The best-known silk is obtained from the ...

s and

satin A satin weave is a type of fabric weave that produces a characteristically glossy, smooth or lustrous material, typically with a glossy top surface and a dull back. It is one of three fundamental types of textile weaves alongside plain weave ...

s, were notable for their subtle and "artistic" colours and highly esteemed as dress material, especially during the decades from 1890 to 1920. Arthur Liberty married first Martha Cottam in 1865, from whom he obtained a divorce in 1869 on the grounds of her adultery and second, Emma Louise Blackmore in 1875. They had no children. He was knighted in 1913.

Death and legacy

Liberty died on 11 May 1917. 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.http://jrose.dynip.com/family/archives/documents/correspondence/email/00-04-12_Liberty_et_al_Part_I.HTM His gravestone was designed by Archibald Knox, one of Liberty & Co.'s long-standing designers.

References and sources

;References ;Sources *Levy, Mervyn (1986) ''Liberty Style, The Classic Years, 1898–1910''. New York: Rizzoli.

External links

Arthur Liberty and the Evolution of the Liberty StyleHistory of Liberty & Co.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Liberty, Arthur Lasenby 1843 births 1917 deaths British businesspeople High Sheriffs of Buckinghamshire People from Chesham Knights Bachelor 19th-century British businesspeople