Bags

Anonymous Spanish Maker
Purse
ca. 1675
embroidered silk and linen
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Maker
Reticule
ca. 1810
crocheted silk netting with steel beads
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Tibetan Maker
Money Pouch
19th century
leather, trimmed with gold and silver repoussé
National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC

Anonymous French Maker
Pocketbook with Lock
ca. 1850
morocco leather with silver fittings
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Maker
Reticule
ca. 1917-18
beaded silk on metal frame
National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC

Jacques Majorelle and Andrée Longueville
Folding Purse
1920
leather embroidered in silk
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Maker
Evening Bag
ca. 1920-30
beaded silk satin on celluloid frame
National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC

Anonymous Philippine Maker
Handbag
ca. 1949-50
raffia on wooden frame with leather and brass
National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC

Anonymous American Maker
Clutch Bag from Saks Fifth Avenue, New York
1964
leather on metal frame
National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC

Michaele Vollbracht
Bloomingdale's Shopping Bag, New York
ca. 1978
screenprint on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Michaele Vollbracht
Bloomingdale's Shopping Bag, New York
ca. 1978
screenprint on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Michaele Vollbracht
Bloomingdale's Shopping Bag, New York
ca. 1978
screenprint on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Clarence House Shopping Bag, New York
1978
offset-print on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Bloomingdale's Shopping Bag, New York
1982
offset-print on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Bloomingdale's Shopping Bag, New York
1984
offset-print on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Bloomingdale's Shopping Bag, New York
1987
offset-print on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Bloomingdale's Shopping Bag, New York
1989
offset-print on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

The End of Summer

I'm from St. Louis and Budweiser.

I'm from the Seidel Coal and Coke Company and the Mississippi.

I'm from the old streets near Forest Park,

And T.S. Eliot and the B-movie actress Virginia Mayo. 

My mother thought she was the daughter of Helen Traubel,

The vast Wagnerian soprano born in St. Louis,

And thought J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, was probably her father.

I'm from Stan Musial and the Brown Shoe Company.

I remember the brick alleys behind the massive houses.

Palaces and their stables (turned into garages) lined the outside of a long oval.

At each end was a turreted guardhouse above the iron gates.

These were the famous St. Louis private streets.

Imagine freestanding Florentine palazzi on little American plots,

Complete with rusticated masonry and brutal grandeur.

H.H. Richardson, the designer of Harvard's Sever Hall,

Designed one of them, forty-seven rooms in all, hardly small.

Vandeventer Place and Portland Place and Westmoreland.

The Congress Hotel and the Senate Apartments.

Lindbergh's medals were on display nearby on Lindell Boulevard.

I could climb down an embankment and play on the train tracks.

Where demolished Vandeventer Place once stood,

Some magnificence where Teddy Roosevelt once stayed,

Was not that far from the demolished Opera House, where

Mother took me to hear Traubel with the visiting Metropolitan Opera.

My father had a season box at the outdoor Muny Opera.

My father had a cop he paid who parked our car there.

The 1904 World's Fair was in the magical Forest Park night air.

I hear crickets singing in the dark sweet Missouri heat their insolent despair.

– Frederick Seidel (2016)