Love Handbags for life...

I have divided this article into two parts to keep you suspended about how we end up here and now. Part II will follow tomorrow, so do not worry, the wait is not too long!

The handbag as we know it did not spring into existence until late in the 19th century when the term “handbag” was first coined, but it was already in the 18th century that the bags
carried by ladies contained items of which many are still indispensable today. Among the things found in a ladies bag were rouge, face powder, fans, scent bottles and visiting cards.

But let us start at the beginning: Handbags went a long way before they took on the shape that we are used to seeing today. From 1500BC to 550BC Assyrians and Babylonians used richly embroidered handbags for religious ceremonies and the ancient Persians pinned small pouches to their golden girdles that contained money. Egyptian hieroglyphs depict pouches carried around the waist. Peasants in rural societies had bags in which they would carry seeds for sowing, African priests had bags with beads on them – and there is a painting from 480BC in the possession of Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, that depicts a boy holding a “purse” filled with knucklebones, which were considered to be a token of seduction.

But the first time Bags were mentioned in written literature was much later before the 14th century. Men would carry little purses containing scented oranges, flint and money. They would carry this bag on the back of their girdle and thives would steal them by cutting the purse off. This is where the term “cutpurse” originates as used by Shakespeare in Hamlet.

In the 14th century these became more ornamental, and were worn by men and women alike. The ornamental decoration was usually gold and embroidery and the finesse of the ornamentation showed the social standing of the bearer of the satchel.
New brides were often given bags that were illustrated with love stories.

In the 15th century women started wearing fashionable, finer dresses and it became popular to wear flat pouches under the skirt attached with a drawstring.
At this point we can summarise that up to the early 16th century, purses were worn on belts by both men and women.

History of the Handbag PartII

If you find out even more on the subject, have a look here:

http://www.fabrics.net/joan105.asp
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050510/STYLE...
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ret3.htm
http://www.accessoryweb.com/archive45.html
http://www.accessoryweb.com/history.html
http://www.accessoryweb.com/history2.html