Time Warp

The Cooper Hewitt museum revisits a maestro of midcentury American textiles

- LIVIA CALIGOR

Heralded in her day as the "mother of modern weaving" and "America's first lady of the loom," designer Dorothy Liebes (1897-1972) ushered in a new era of American textiles. Sensuous and structurally complex, her fabrics subverted the status quo-injecting warmth, texture, and luster into the fashion and design industries while capturing the attention of the architecture elite. Frank Lloyd Wright, Donald Deskey, and Frances Elkins were all fans, though history hasn't always given her proper due. "There's a gap between what she did and what the industry remembers her for," reflects Susan Brown, the head of the textiles department at New York City's Cooper He