Women in Print: 150 years of Liberty Textiles
We recently visited William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow to see the exhibition Women in Print: 150 years of Liberty Textiles (on until 21st June 2026).
The exhibition is roughly chronological starting with Art Nouveau wood block prints and the whimsical style of Jessie M. King. In the 1930s, the mysterious Mrs Stoneley designed some of the most iconic ditsy prints still in production today on Tana Lawn cotton. No one knows who she was, she just signed her designs 'DS'. Below is an image of her design Wiltshire Berry.
In the 1950s Mitzi Cunliffe came to the UK from America, her style evoking the post-war Modernist taste for strong lines and shapes. This is her Phoebus design from 1959.
Althea McNish came to the UK from Trinidad in the early 1950s to study print. On graduation she was immediately recognised as a talent and commissioned by Liberty to design a range of colourful prints. Her joyful designs influenced both fashion and surface pattern design throughout the 1960s.
In the 1970s sisters Susan Collier and Sarah Campbell defined the Liberty style with their painterly prints. As design consultant on Liberty of London Prints, Susan oversaw the transformation of the production from small scale to major wholesale supplier. This meant the prints became widely disseminated across the fashion and interiors markets. Below is a guache painting by Collier and Campbell for the design Bauhaus, 1968-9.
There are so many other talented female designers covered in our blogs! You can learn about: