By Jennifer Landes
The East Hampton Star
March 30, 2017
Judith Leiber’s 65-year career has spanned not only generations, but a number of presidential administrations. It has become a tradition for first ladies to carry her handbags on Inauguration Day.
Her designs are like diminutive artworks, products of her training as a pattern-maker and her innate sense of craftsmanship and style. Her work will be celebrated at the Museum of Arts and Design, on Columbus Circle in Manhattan, beginning Tuesday through Aug. 6.
Before 1947, when Ms. Leiber, who lived in Springs with her husband, the artist Gerson Leiber, came to New York, she was the first woman in Budapest to earn the title of master craftsman. In later years her artisan technique with handbags, constructing them from start to finish, stood out from the American assembly-line approach.