Rare, unusual and interesting antique costumes and textiles; for museums and collectors looking for that extra special piece, for new and established collectors and for those with a modest budget who want to adorn their person or home.

SOLD

Liberty's
1880s

This would have been made up to cover a picture or plaque. I have had similar panels of embroidery before. One such piece had the selvage printed with Liberty & Co, Regent Street, London ,W Registered. The cotton was printed with a single colour outline to be followed by the embroideress with specially dyed 'Art Silks'. Thomas Wardle printed the cotton and provided the skeins of silk. In Liberty's 1875-1975 it states that Liberty's greatest triumph in those early days came from a co-operation with Thomas Wardle, the dyers and printers of Leek in Staffordshire, who also worked for William Morris. Between them, Liberty and Wardle introdiced dyes which had until then been supposed to be a closely guarded secret of the East....delicate pastel tints which they called 'Art Colours', and that became described all over the world as 'Liberty colours. Silks in Liberty colours were an influential element in the Aesthetic Movement. Liberty's windows became one of the sites of Regent Street...a revelation to a generation accustomed to the harsh colours of aniline dyes.... The green silk sewn to the sides would also have been imported from India by Thomas Wardle. Wardle's wife Elizabeth set up the Leek Embroidery Society.


Cataloguing

the embroidered centre worked on a cotton printed by Thomas Wardle, with meandering foliage and flowers including daffodils, roses, tulips, carnatrions and peonies in brilliant and pastel shades of red, pink, yellow, green, blue and with many leaves couched with gold wrapped silk thread, all on a natural cotton ground 38 x 36 in; 97 x 92 cm, the sides with fine thin silk dyed olive green and with french knots as decoration down the border with the embroidery,the top has small rings covered with silks through which an olive green cord runs, lined wtih olive green cotton.


Condition

Excellent. This has possibly not be used as the colours show no sign of fading. The quality of the embroidery is very fine.


Comments

Liberty's 1875-1975 1975 Victoria & Albert Museum exhibition catalogue p 37 no C11A .HMSO ISBN 0901486892



Morris, Barbara Liberty Designp 57, 1989 Pyramid. ISBN 1871307716



King, Brenda M Silk and empire