Dorothy Wright Liebes was born in New York City, later becoming one of the most influential American textile designers of the 20th century.
Dorothy Wright Liebes was born on October 14, 1897, in New York City. She would grow up to become the single most influential American textile designer of the twentieth century, transforming handweaving from a craft practice into a driving force in modern American interior design, architecture, and industrial textile manufacturing.
Though she began her professional life as a teacher and studied art history and studio art at institutions including Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, before formal training in weaving, her later career would see her collaborate with the era's most important architects, fashion designers, and manufacturers.
Her birth into a Jewish American family in New York, and subsequent upbringing on the West Coast, positioned her at the intersection of American craft traditions and the modernist design movements sweeping Europe and the United States in the early twentieth century. Her later legacy as the "mother of modern weaving" would help redefine textiles as a serious medium of American modern design, bridging the gap between studio craft and industrial production.
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