tiny fragment of material, Liberty Fabrics’ oldest known furnishing pattern, rests in a bomb-proof bunker. Without a name, border or edges, the traditional Arts and Crafts design is merely marked as a reversible print with a code and the date 1875. It is just one of over 50,000 prints stored in Liberty Fabrics’ confidential archive. Set in a converted aircraft hangar in Oxfordshire, it tells the stories of Liberty designs spanning the major design movements of the last 150 years and is an important record of British textile history. Yet it is far from dormant. This fully digitised, temperature-controlled, working resource inspires in-house collections and designs for Liberty interiors and fashion today. And its oldest fragment of furnishing fabric has been recently rediscovered by
