Cue from I Start Counting, OST by Basil Kirchin. Forthcoming... 

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Sarah explains how she and her sister Susan first became acquainted with Liberty’s and received their first commission from Mr Weiner.


Sarah Campbell interviewed by Niamh Dillon, Design Lives, British Library, catalogue reference C1842/004. © British Library Board and Sarah Campbell.

With thanks to The Textile Society for funding this oral history interview.

Image credit: Collier Campbell, Design for Liberty scarf, 1975 © Sarah Campbell.

Transcript:

Interviewer: Sarah, tell me again about the first meeting that you had with Mr Weiner? 

Sarah: There's two things about Mr Weiner: the first meeting, thinking about the time he bought the painting, but of course I had met him beforehand because of the relationship with Liberty, which was with Liberty of London Prints. This was the wholesale company whose headquarters were down at Merton Abbey. The one reason why Susan went to them in the first place was that they were very local to Balham, it was only down the road as opposed to going to Manchester, where the traditional manufacturers were, which she did, with her portfolio and got very short shrift. They weren't interested in her designs or her work or her, so she got a bit downhearted and then realised that Liberty was down the road, so she went there. It was a practical matter!  She met Mr Weiner, and he was the producer of fabric. And Mr Weiner had come over in the war, or just after the war, he was a refugee from Europe. He became the producer, which is the person in charge of producing the cloth, getting it printed, getting the ranges done, putting them together, not the designer. When Susan started with Liberty in the early 60s, I was a schoolgirl, so I got involved because Susan was busy with her children, and her marriage, and her household, and her work.  So, she asked me. She famously said you can draw, so I did. And it's true that I could draw, but I didn't think much about that. So, the relationship with Liberty, as with all customers, all the way through Susan's and my working life, the primary relationship was with Susan and the customers. And I was very much at home working at the table or doing whatever I was doing. When she started with Liberty, we were doing scarves mainly, and we did a lot of scarves. So, a lot of the paintings that you see here in the archive are of scarves and scarf panels and quarters and eighths and all that sort of thing. And we moved on to doing more dress fabrics. I haven't answered your question about Mr Weiner. But during that period, I would sometimes go down to the print works. It was a wonderful place. Merton Abbey was a really lovely place. It was an old established print works and William Morris had had his print works there. It was on the River Wandle, and so of course they washed out into the river Wandle.  My memory of it, which probably isn't really what it was like, was several old wooden buildings. And in one of them was the printworks and the print tables, and they'd used to hang the printed scarves up in the ceiling like wonderful, wonderful flags to dry. I just loved it. I loved that fabric up there. I think at the beginning it was Mr Weiner who Susan saw first, when she first went there, she showed him her portfolio. And he bought 6 designs, which was unheard of. And he said to her as she left - this is the story - you could draw you, so can come back.  He loved proper drawing. And I suppose that really is the key to Liberty. They loved drawing. They loved beautiful colours. They loved things to be as beautiful as possible, and they took the greatest care. And I don't think there was any, ever, any question about, 'did you take too much trouble? Have you spent too long on a thing', because they wanted it to be the best.

Sarah on receiving her first commission from Mr Weiner

Early designs for Liberty and reading Vogue magazine.

Sarah Campbell interviewed by Niamh Dillon, Design Lives, British Library, catalogue reference C1842/004. © British Library Board and Sarah Campbell.

With thanks to The Textile Society for funding this oral history interview.

Transcript:

Interviewer: So can we talk about some of your very earliest designs with your sister for Liberty and how they came about?

Sarah: When I found this sketchbook from 1969, I see that I was drawing in a very decorative and decorated way, and that suited me. I think the first things we did that I'm conscious of painting, you know I remember the fact that I've described of things coming back to the house and us looking at them and seeing how they worked. And when I say those words – looking at them – I remember too, that Susan and I, my mother got Vogue every month. Vogue magazine. And Susan and I used to sit on the bed together and go through every page and look at everything. I don't quite know what we were looking at and I can remember an awful lot of laughing and going, ‘No!’ and all that sort of thing. But we looked at it together a lot, we looked at what people were wearing. And, I don't remember discussions at all, I just remember that fact and how important Vogue was, and I really wish I knew where those Vogue magazines went. So I suppose Susan would present me, I could put it like this, with things that had been decided [by Liberty] we should work on. That was one way that we work, but I see also lots, and I have lots of teeny, weeny little, little sketches and little drawings, that would have been going the other way that that Susan would be taking down to show Blair, and Blair would say yes, work that one up. And in the design books it says things like ‘Sarah's little teapots’ or something, and then that would go, that would come back, and yes that would be a thing, and we'd do that we'd put that in repeat. So, there was a lot of two-way traffic. Things we were thinking of, and new ways of painting little flowers let’s say, that weren't an outlined something that had come from their archive [Liberty]. Lots of stuff was done without lines and of course, outlines are very convenient because they cover up a whole lot of printing problems, you know, colour’s contained by an outline. In fact, now I think about outlines, one of Pat Albeck’s signatures in her design was an outline. She often had a very determined outline and the colour would be within the outline. And I think wanted to get rid of all outlines. And a lot of my work is, my work as- early for Liberty, and during Liberty, and since, has been about not outlines. That is much more like a painter's painting, where a painter may be drawing with colour rather than making an outline and filling in. And although there is a world of difference between being a designer and an artist, and I'm not an artist, I'm a designer, the principle of shedding an outline and making the shapes tell the story is, has stayed with me and was a thing that I was interested in, I think from the start actually, now that I do think about it.

Sarah on reading Vogue magazine and inspiration for early designs

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