231027 Collection Digital Cover 1 - Flipbook - Page 105
“My customers come to me because they
know they’re going to get an informed
opinion. They don’t have to like it, but
they’re definitely going to get one.”
The culprit? Knock-off versions made in India and China for a fraction
of the cost and sold in retail behemoths for as little as £100. By contrast,
handmade Oriental carpets (from Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal
and Morocco) typically cost around £5000, hardly surprising as they
can take months or even years to craft. The labour is often performed
by women from nomadic tribes in their own homes. Every stage
is completed without machinery, from dying the wool with natural
pigments like pomegranate peel, to spinning it into yarn fine enough
to eventually form the millions of knots that make up a finished design.
Although there are repeated motifs – tear-drop-shaped boteh,
many-layered rosettes, octagonal guls – no two pieces are ever
the same due to their artisanal nature.
“It isn’t just the world of makers that has changed beyond recognition
either. I’m one of a handful of buyers left in the UK who follows their
intuition and picks every piece by hand,” Bruce shouts above the noise
of Regent’s Street. “My customers come to me because they know
they’re going to get an informed opinion. They don’t have to like
it, but they’re definitely going to get one.”
Liberty of London’s mock Tudor façade, complete with beams from two
warships, rises like a daydream above the neat Georgian buildings of
Great Marlborough Street. Founded in 1875 by Arthur Lasenby Liberty,
the emporium originally existed to bring Londoners luxurious objets
d’art and fabrics from the Orient. The East, as a symbol of both lavishness
and lasciviousness, cropped up throughout literature in the 19th-century,
from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan to the opium dens of Oscar
Wilde’s Dorian Gray. Liberty’s collection quickly won the imaginations –
and purses – of Victorian Londoners intoxicated by the exotic.
When we enter Bruce’s fourth-floor wunderkammer, central London
melts away and it feels as if we’re in a souk. The walls, ceilings and
windows are covered in curious, colourful rugs and objects that whisper
of far-flung places. Every piece is made by hand and as Bruce points
out various treasures – a fluffy Turkish tulu, camel coverings from
Turkmenistan, a net-like spoon holder made by Qashqai nomads –
I imagine I can feel the presence of each artisan there in the shop.
Although the Liberty family still owned the shop when Bruce joined
in 1988, it was bought in 2010 by private equity firm, BlueGem. It’s now
largely owned by another private equity group led by Glendower Capital,
who purchased their controlling stake in 2019 for £300 million. Although
he’d been running it since 2000, Bruce purchased the department in
2007 with a loan from a friend who remains a shareholder. In many ways,
his fiercely independent ethos feels much aligned to Arthur Lasenby
Liberty’s vision.
Bruce’s first job was in the warehouse and it was here he met Ron
Stewart who ran the oriental rugs and textiles department between
1989 and 2000, and whom Bruce describes as a “carpet guru,” saying:
“I got talking to Ron one day as I was giving him a hand with a delivery.
He took a liking to me and suggested I come work for him, so I did.”
This fateful meeting ignited Bruce’s passion and allowed him to form
relationships with tribes and traders from the Atlas Mountains to the
Hindu Kush. The two remained friends until Stewart died in 2022.
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