Liberty Fabrics – Tana Lawn Cotton is part of the Liberty Fabric collection at Cross & Woods and can be found here
Whist travelling the plains of East Africa in the 1920s, Liberty buyer William Hayes Dorell discovered curious cotton fibers close to Lake Tana that sparked his imagination. Back on home soil, the silk-like threads were spun into lustrous form, screen printed with brilliant ink, and turned into a material that would change the textile industry forevermore. It was, of course, Tana Lawn.
Nearly a hundred years on, Tana Lawn has come to be recognized as a unique part of Liberty heritage. To this day, the bolts of fabric stacked in the Liberty haberdashery department are the product of a bespoke production process: hand-drawn by Liberty London in-house design team, screen printed in the factory a stone’s throw from Lake Como and cared for by skilled technicians who oversee the production of over 150 different designs.