Handbag designer Judith Leiber Dies
Judith Leiber, beloved handbag designer of many, died Saturday at her home in Springs, N.Y., few hours after the death of her husband, abstract painter Gerson Leiber.
Both Leibers were age 97, according to Ken Yardley of the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton, N.Y. They died of natural causes, he said.
In recent years the couple had mounted joint exhibition of the work on Long Island and in Manhattan.
Judith and Gerson Leiber in Mr. Leiber’s studio in East Hampton, N.Y. The couple — she’s a handbag designer, he’s an artist — are the subject of several exhibitions. Credit Lindsay Morris
A 1988 evening purse by Ms. Leiber, inspired by a Fabergé egg. CreditLindsay Morris
Stella Blum, the curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until 1983, once said that describing Judith Leiber as an accessory designer was “a little like calling Louis Comfort Tiffany a designer of lighting fixtures.”
Andy Warhol described her bags as works of art.
The Leibers’ wedding engagement portrait from 1946.