Sir Arthur Lasenby Liberty (August 13, 1843–May 11, 1917) was a London merchant. Born in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, England, the son of a draper, he began work at sixteen with his uncle who sold lace, and later, another uncle who sold wine. By 1859 he was appprenticed to a draper, but he instead took a job at Farmer and Rogers which specialized in women's fashions. He quickly rose to manager of the warehouse. After Farmer and Rogers refused to make him a partner in their business, in 1875, he opened his own shop, Liberty & Co. in Regent Street, London. There, he sold ornaments, fabrics and miscellaneous art objects from the Far East. 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 called Art Nouveau (the "new art"). The company became synonymous with this new style to the extent that in Italy, Art Nouveau became known as Stile Liberty after the London shop. The company's selection of printed and dyed fabrics, particularly silks and satins, were noted for their range of subtle and "artistic" colors and were highly esteemed as dress fabrics, especially during the decades from 1890 to 1920. Arthur Liberty married Emma Louise Blackmore in 1875. They had no children. 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 acrage of farmland near his birthplace in Buckinghamshire.[1] He was knighted in 1913.
References
Levy, Mervyn (1986) Liberty Style, The Classic Years, 1898-1910; Rizzoli, New York.
