Although the Columbia brand name has a long and distinguished history as a record label, it only reflected the work of an independent commercial organization in the United Kingdom between 1923 and 1931.
Columbia Graphophone Co. Ltd. was one of the earliest gramophone companies in the United Kingdom.
Founded in 1917 as an offshoot of the American Columbia Phonograph Company, it became an independent British-owned company in 1922 in a management buy-out after the parent company went into receivership.
In 1925, it acquired a controlling interest in its American parent company to take advantage of a new electrical recording process. The British firm also controlled the US operations from 1925 until 1931. That year Columbia Graphophone in the UK merged with the Gramophone Company (which sold records under the His Master's Voice label) to form EMI. At the same time, Columbia divested itself of its American branch, which was eventually absorbed by Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in 1938.
As Columbia Records, it became a successful British label in the 1950s and 1960s and was eventually replaced by the newly created EMI Records, as part of a label consolidation. This in turn was absorbed by the Parlophone Records unit of Warner Music Group in 2013.
Liberty style was the Italian variant of Art Nouveau, which flourished between about 1890 and 1914. Liberty style, like other versions of Art Nouveau, had the ambition of turning ordinary objects, such as chairs and windows, into works of art.
Unlike the French and Belgian Art Nouveau, based primarily on nature, the Italian Liberty style was more strongly influenced by the Baroque style, with very lavish ornament and color, both on the interior and exterior.
As in France and other parts of Europe, the poster and other graphic arts were an important genre of the Liberty style, particularly for travel posters.
In its later years, the Liberty Style in graphics and painting moved away from floral and feminine themes to more modernist subjects, under the influence of Futurism.
"Columbia Graphophones" discs and catalogs through the legacy of Italian posters.
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