Woman's Embroidered Bead Purse

Accessories

Woman's Embroidered Bead Purse

ca. 1860 - 1900

This velvet purse represents bead embroidered bags worked in blue floral motifs. The dark velvet, shades of blue beads, and the pattern occur on other bags of the mid-to-late century. Some comparable bags have fringe on the bottom like this smaller velvet purse, which has a metal frame, as did the knitted beaded purse, suitable for coins.

The Perrin women who owned or created many of these purses cherished and saved them. Although apparently not significant enough to list in wills, family members continued to preserve them and pass them on to further generations, who may have appreciated the time and patience required to make them and the history and family connections they represented. Perhaps they chose to save the fancier bags, as opposed to the more mundane, utilitarian, or well-worn ones. Some of the saved bags originally could have held personal sentiment, as nineteenth-century women often made and received purses as gifts. If family members kept any of these bags as mementoes of special occasions such as weddings, that information no longer survives.

The two Perrin sisters who donated the bags and purses to the HTCC enjoyed artistic endeavors themselves, as Maude Ide Crabbs and Mabel Etta Perrin both pursued the arts. They attended the prestigious Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn, New York. Maude became an art instructor and later a spinning and weaving demonstrator at Slater Mill Museum in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. She amassed a very extensive button collection, which she carefully organized, mounted on cards, and labeled. This collection is in the HTCC. Mabel crafted quilts, collected family dolls, and created her own dolls, which she exhibited and sold in shows.

With a middle-class upbringing, these twentieth-century Perrin women had a strong work ethic and a firm belief in saving family belongings. They treasured their ancestors’ legacy and heirlooms, safeguarding a wide array of objects, including clothing, textiles, looms, furniture, dolls, pewter, daguerreotypes, photographs, and genealogical records. Before moving to Pawtucket, Mabel and her husband Irving lived on the family farm in Seekonk, the fourth Perrin generation to do so. This continuity contributed to the preservation of family heirlooms over a number of generations. Unfortunately, neither Maude Ide nor Mabel Etta had any children to whom they could pass on many of these articles. With the generous donation of more than eight hundred family heirlooms to the HTCC for the purpose of education and research, however, the Perrin women’s appreciation for family heritage, history, fashion, and art endures.

Mabel Etta Streeter Perrin donated Perrin family historical books, deeds, and papers to the now defunct Seekonk Historical Society in 1968. Some of these have survived in the Old Colony Historical Society in Taunton, MA.

Donor: Mabel Etta Streeter Perrin (Mrs. Irving Perrin)
Maude Ide Streeter Crabbs (Mrs. Frank Crabbs)

URI 1964.15.99

Joann Bussian Steere, MS '11
Susan J. Jerome, MS '06