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)

Wiener Werkstätte (Designers)

Mathilde Flögl for Wiener Werkstätte
Distel
ca. 1910
gouache on paper (design for textile)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Mathilde Flögl for Wiener Werkstätte
Distel
ca. 1910
gouache on paper (design for textile)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Mathilde Flögl for Wiener Werkstätte
Distel
ca. 1910
gouache on paper (design for textile)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Kolomon Moser for Wiener Werkstätte
Baummarder
ca. 1910-11
block-printed silk
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Josef Hoffmann for Wiener Werkstätte
Adler
ca. 1910-12
block-printed silk
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anny Schröder for Wiener Werkstätte
Doily with Bird
1922
linen (bobbin lace)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anny Schröder for Wiener Werkstätte
Doily with Tree
1922
linen (bobbin lace)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Valerie Wieselthier for Wiener Werkstätte
Vase
ca. 1920
glazed earthenware
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Hilda Jeser for Wiener Werkstätte
Vase
ca. 1921
glazed earthenware
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Dagobert Peche for Wiener Werkstätte
Vase
ca. 1917
painted zinc with glass liner
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Dagobert Peche for Wiener Werkstätte
Vase
1923
silver
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Dina Kuhn for Wiener Werkstätte
Allegorical Head: Das Wasser
1929
glazed earthenware
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Mathilde Flögl for Wiener Werkstätte
Drawstring Bag
ca. 1925
beaded kidskin with silk cord
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Felice Rix-Ueno for Wiener Werkstätte
Archibald
ca. 1913-17
gouache on paper (design for textile)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Felice Rix-Ueno for Wiener Werkstätte
Archibald
ca. 1913-17
gouache on paper (design for textile)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Dagobert Peche for Wiener Werkstätte
Viola
1922
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Dagobert Peche for Wiener Werkstätte
Das Wasser
1922
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

As I gird on for fighting

    My sword upon my thigh,

I think on old ill fortunes

    Of better men than I.

Think I, the round world over,

    What golden lads are low

With hurts not mine to mourn for

    And shames I shall not know.

What evil luck soever

    For me remains in store,

'Tis sure much finer fellows

    Have fared much worse before. 

So here are things to think on

    That ought to make me brave,

As I strap on for fighting

    My sword that will not save.

– A.E. Housman (1922)

Deco

Anonymous American Designer
Olympiad of the Air Medal
1930
copper alloy
National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC

Anonymous American Designer
Western Union
ca. 1930
offset-lithograph (pamphlet cover)
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Anonymous Argentine Designer
Hoteles Nogaró, Buenos Aires
ca. 1925
lithograph (poster)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Table Mat
ca. 1925
stencil-printed cotton velveteen
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Table Runner
ca. 1925
stencil-printed cotton velveteen
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Otto Teegen
Design for Dust Jacket
ca. 1930
gouache on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Flowers and Beads
ca. 1925
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Lattice
ca. 1928-29
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Stripes
ca. 1928-29
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Geometric Pattern
ca. 1930
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Geometric Repeat
ca. 1930
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Art Deco Border
ca. 1930
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Blossoms in Compartments
ca. 1925-35
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Deer and Foliage
ca. 1936
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Floral Border
ca. 1930
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Evening Bag
ca. 1920-30
metal mesh with synthetic lining
Anacostia Community Museum,
Washington DC

Anonymous French Designer
Matchbox
1926
enameled gold, diamonds
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

20 December 1945

    My eye was weeping all on its own, apart from me, the water coursing down my cheek, and my heart was frightened.  I felt abandoned.  The watering of my eye seemed as gruesome as the dripping walls of the lavatory in an Industrial Revolution slum.

18 January 1946

    At home when I drank lemon tea and ate three good chocolates, I read more of Haydon's life, and I thought of his writing in 1823, my writing in 1946 – private thoughts, like toy mice dancing in each century, then lying silent, squashed flat between the pages of a book, piled over and topped for ever with later layers of dancing mice. 

12 May 1946

    The quiet content came bubbling up, was with me every day then; and I remember how reluctant I was to go back to London and be with my father in Adam Street and Ryder Street, to have to go to Quaglino's and the Monseigneur Grill with him and to his club.  Everywhere irked by the bodies and minds jostling one's own.  Oh the dirtiness of herding together.

    Yet it is most important to have people near one that one need hardly see.  Without this consciousness of other human beings I think almost all of us are liable to be swamped by the power of matter.  One's strength is not enough to bear this with no other help near. 

– from The Journals of Denton Welch (who was born in 1915, gravely injured in 1935, then wrote the journals between 1942 and his early death in 1948), edited by Michael De-la-Noy (1984)