Woman's Knitted Bead Purse
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Description
A collection of bags and purses donated to the University of Rhode Island by Mrs. George Streeter and her daughters Maude Ide Crabbs and Mabel Etta Perrin, offers a unique opportunity to study New England fashion and culture through artifacts.[1]The Perrin family collection is one of the largest in the University’s Historic Textile and Costume Collection (HTCC), encompassing objects from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries; however, no one has studied this important and varied group of textiles and related articles. According to Jules Prown, “personal adornment promises to be a particularly rich vein for material culture studies,” but “to date little significant work has been done with it.”
The Perrin bags and purses reflect nineteenth-century American motifs and styles. The bags could have been expensive, particularly the knitted beaded bags, but also could be made at home with the availability of materials, patterns, and fashion magazines.
The Perrin purse collection contains three knitted bags made with carefully organized glass seed beads that produce the patterns. One bag has three sections of design below a 1 ⅛-wide ivory silk taffeta header. The top ½-inch beaded section has a saw tooth-like motif worked in green, yellow, and white on a maroon ground. The mid-section, 3 ¼ inches, has a styled floral motif comprised of tan, cornflower blue, green, yellow, red, and brown beads. The bottom 1 ¾-inch section has a scene with trees and pink, yellow, and blue buildings worked against a brick red sky and green grass. Narrow rows of blue beads separate the sections.
The fringe of clear, tan, and grey beads is fashioned in 1 ¾-inch loops along the lower edge of the bag using. A ⅜-inch wide ivory braided drawstring is threaded through the header. The beaded body is unlined and in good condition, although the header is damaged and some of the beaded fringe is missing.
This bag closely resembles other knitted bags from the early-to-mid 1800s, measuring about 6 inches in length and made with fine seed beads in similar colors. Three sections of motifs, with a narrow geometric top border, a stylized floral mid section, and a bottom section depicting a village scene with trees and buildings were popular.
A bag in the Whitlock Collection of the university’s collection (URI 1962.31.34, Donor: Mary C. Whitlock) also has an identical color scheme for buildings, sky, and grass. As with the Perrin bag, three sections of motifs worked in similar-colored seed beads comprise this example. The top section includes a star-like motif in purple, and green, with white accents on a brick red ground. The mid section, the largest, displays a stylized floral design in shades of rust, green, blue, pink, black, yellow, and navy, with a cream background. Two similar rows of blue stripes separate the three sections. The bag is lined with an unbalanced plain weave. A 1 ⅛-inch wide ivory silk forms the header which, like the Perrin bag, has shattered damage. The drawstring and fringe are missing from this bag.
[1] Jules David Prown, “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method,” Art as Evidence (New Haven: Yale University, 2001), 70.
Source
Maude Ide Streeter Crabbs (Mrs. Frank Crabbs)
Identifier
Contributor
Susan J. Jerome, MS '06