I Am. We Are. Liberty, Ester Coen

In I Am. We Are. Liberty., the story of the iconic Liberty London department store is re-imagined as a woven tapestry of culture, design, collaboration and print. Framed around its 150th-anniversary celebration, the publication unfolds not simply as a book but as a cloth-covered collector’s box that echoes the brand’s famed floral prints, its archive, and its global collaborations. Inside lies an “exhibition in a box” — a journey into the store’s hidden design studio, archives and creative network, composed of catalogues, posters, postcards, tattoos, cut-outs and more.

What makes this volume especially compelling from a textile-and-design viewpoint is how it invites you to slow-see the print, the pattern, the materiality of the box itself. The format pays homage to objects as much as image: the clap of cloth, the fold of the paper, the layering of ephemera. In true Selvedge sensibility, it becomes a celebration of making, archival impulse and design-story: cloth as archive, print as history, store as culture.

About the Author
Ester Coen is an art historian and curator specialising in modern and contemporary design culture. Her research spans avant-garde art to design and textile prints, and she brings to this project a deep engagement with the material histories of print, pattern and cultural collaboration.

Publication date: 2025
Publisher: Trolley Books
Format: Cloth-covered box-set containing multiple publications, postcards, posters etc.
ISBN: 9781907112744

Dimensions: 18 x 4.2 x 24.9 cm