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Fiber
Art
:
Following the Thread |
Created
on
July 5, 2002 |
Dorothy
Liebes Papers |
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| When
Dorothy Wright Liebes (1899–1972) was still in college, she bought
a loom, set it up in her attic, and started weaving. In 1930 she opened
a studio in San Francisco, specializing in custom-designed, hand-loomed
textiles for architects and decorators. She was known for her bold color
combinations — bright blues and greens, hot orange and sage —
and exotic materials such as jute, plastic threads, ticker tape, grass,
leather, straw, ribbon, and metallic yarns. Her textiles were an integral
part of the architectural settings for which they were designed, from Hollywood
theater curtains to the Persian Room of the Plaza Hotel in New York. She
moved her design studio to New York in 1948 and promoted mass-produced textiles,
serving as a designer and consultant for Goodall Fabrics of Sanford, Maine,
The Dobeckmun Company, and others. Her papers contain her business and personal
correspondence, appointment books, business diaries, photographs of Liebes
and her works of art, scrapbooks, fabric samples, and printed material documenting
her career as a textile and interior designer. |
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| Liebes's
Christmas card on wallpaper that she created for United Wallpaper, ca. 1948. |
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| Letter
to John McPhee from Liebes, promoting the use of nylon in Navajo rugs, December
12, 1959. |
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| Sample
textile with feathers, n.d. One of many textile samples among the papers
of Dorothy Liebes |
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| Citation
of the Institute for the Craftmanship medal to Dorothy Liebes, June 1947 |
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| Letter
from Marianne Strengell to Liebes, Aug. 20, 1957 |
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| Letter
from Karl Laurell to Liebes, April 6, 1955 |
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| Liebes's
recollections of Frank Lloyd Wright from her typescript memoir, ca. 1960. |
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