Como's Liberty Printing Mill
Liberty is a quintessentially British brand, but its famous fabrics are made at their printing mill near the banks of Italy’s Lake Como. This family-owned mill was founded in 1969 under the name Olonia and soon became a benchmark for printing high width bedding and home textiles. Today, these decades of skill combine with cutting-edge technologies to produce millions of metres of beautiful printed fabrics every year, including Liberty’s signature Tana Lawn cotton.
The plain white cotton bases are prepared for print at a separate textile mill nearby. Once they arrive at the Liberty Printing Mill, a long and complex process begins, starting in the ‘Colour Kitchen’, with its rainbow of unlidded paint pots, for the technically trickly print strike-off tests.
The next stage is rotary screen printing. This is done methodically by colour, using rollers to dye each section individually for a pristine, graphic effect. The rollers themselves are works of art, each engraved by hand by skilled local craftspeople who ensure that each line and shape is perfectly defined. When Liberty interviewed the mill’s Production Director, Giovanni Marziano, he said that this was his favourite part of the process: “Without any doubt, I’ve always loved the printing phase the most,” he said. “To see a white fabric becoming a marvellous design in a snap, at 40 metres per minute, is almost a magical experience.”
Image courtesy Liberty Printing Mill
Swathes of newly printed fabric then move smoothly through a series of stages including steaming, washing and finishing, before being rolled up and shipped to customers around the world.
Our three-night Creattiva Bergamo & Italian Textile Heritage holiday includes a guided tour of this fascinating mill. It is not generally open to the public, so this is a rare chance to see Liberty’s iconic fabrics being made. “The most exciting aspect is seeing all the complicated processes and realising how the magic happens,” says Marziano. “Seeing white fabric become an amazing Liberty fabric is a wonderful experience... one that occurs every day.”
Image courtesy Liberty Printing Mill