Magic Touch

The Modern Collector celebrates Liberty’s historic love of craftmanship and design, with reworked archival Liberty prints appearing alongside contemporary new artworks from our London design studio. The collection is expertly crafted in Italy, with manufacturing processes carefully selected to bring out the character of each Liberty artwork. Mixing skilful design with artisanal printing and weaving techniques, the process informs the designs, and vice versa – a perfect harmony of art with craft.

With his passion for exquisite textiles and objets d’art acquired on travels around the globe, our founder Arthur Lasenby Liberty was the original collector. He imagined the Liberty store as a great ship, filled with treasures and docked in the streets of London – now, inspired by Arthur, the spirit of the collector lives on. The Modern Collector brings the vibrancy of the Liberty aesthetic indoors, drawn from three pivotal print stories: Floribunda, Art Nouveau and The Tree of Life.

FLORIBUNDA

The Floribunda story is a celebration of English flowers and gardens – from the grounds of great houses like Charleston and Great Dixter, to the humble wild plants found across the British countryside. Our designers drew from Victorian flower-pressing and botanical illustrations, inspired by blueprint cyanotypes pioneered by Anna Atkins in the 1800s.

New Floribunda heroes are balanced with iconic Liberty small-scale florals such as Poppy Meadowfield and Wiltshire Blossom. Initially developed for scarf designs, these perennials have been reworked into new layouts and forms for contemporary furnishing fabrics, complete with soft colour and lustrous surface print effects.

ART NOUVEAU

Botanicals have always been an essential element of Art Nouveau design, appearing in highly stylised and sinuously exaggerated forms. The celebration of single motifs of flower and feather hearken back to the themes of medieval art, with particular favourite Nouveau icons including tulips, poppies, thistles, roses and peacock feathers.

These enduring motifs are given a fresh perspective through the use of bold scale, contemporary colour and careful selection of fabric bases – heirloom designs, reimagined for modern interiors.

TREE OF LIFE

Inspired by hand painted Indian Palampore textiles of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Tree of Life textiles symbolise the personal journey through nature’s life cycle, with versions of this ancient motif found all around the world. Our designers reworked ornate archive artworks into simplified layouts to enhance the striking floral motifs and patternation, complemented by new contemporary coordinate designs.

The team took inspiration from the bold colouration of mordant dyes and natural pigments – printed on linen in flat colour, Palampore Trail shines with rich shades reminiscent of these exquisite plant and insect dyes.