-
Handbag
unknown - Enlarge image
Handbag
- Place of origin:
England, Great Britain (made)
- Date:
1890s (made)
- Artist/Maker:
unknown (production)
- Materials and Techniques:
Machine-stitched kid leather with metal, and lined with ribbed silk
- Credit Line:
Given by Miss M. Tame
- Museum number:
T.216-1983
- Gallery location:
In store
The term 'handbag' first referred to the hand-held luggage bags usually carried by men, but in the latter part of the nineteenth century practical and stylistic elements of the leather travelling bag, such as its metal fastenings and compartmentalised interior, ticket pockets and sturdy handle, inspired the new handbag for women, the precursor of the twentieth-century handbag. Framed handbags, made in plush with plush handles, or in sealskin in the 1860s and 1870s and in morocco in the late 1870s, followed. By the 1880s, coloured leathers were popular, in morocco and kidskin.
