1950's American Hand Decorated Evening Bag

This bag is a riot!  It comes from the USA where during the 1950s and 1960s ladies worked from home for handbag manufacturers doing the finishing.  Well, basically, they received plain bags and lots of lovely jewels, gems, beads, sequins etc.  They then made patterns over the bags; sometimes adding a bit of stitching or embroidery here, a little petit point or felt applique there, whatever took their fancy really!  Thus we now have bags that are virtually unique, each one the creation of those homeworkers.  This is one such bag.  Plain black fabric on one side and anything but plain on the other!  This bag has woolwork tapestry panels in the form of flowers and leaves, it has a generous dotting of early plastic gilded feathers and heaps and heaps of glass seed beads, bugles, rocailles and sequins which appear to have just been glued on. Around the edge of the design is a braided finish.  The bag is a good size  9 inches by 9 inches at its widest points, but remember it is not square more a kind of hexagon.  The frame is goldtone, it fastens with a 'kissing' clasp and has a stretchy  gold plated snake chain handle which is quite long - approximately 26 inches in total so this would work as a shoulder bag . The lining is plain black.  The condition is good, there are a few glue marks where some of the little decorations have dropped off - there really are so many left that you won't notice! There is one bigger glue mark that notices in some lights - it is on the bottom of the braiding and I suspect that one of the gold feathery decorations was once stuck there - it would be very simple to stick a few random beads over the glue mark if it bothered you, but I doubt that it will!  The decorative nature of this special bag would make it great for interior design too.  When not in use it could hang on your wall like a lovely tapestry!

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