The Miser's Purse. Laura Camerlengo
women’s fashions from the first two decades of the early nineteenth century, in particular the unadorned columnar gowns that are associated with the era. Single-element constructions were ideal for miser’s purses because they could easily collapse to slip through a purse’s rings, but were flexible and strong enough to secure coins without breaking or tearing. Although the constructions and designs of miser’s purses were ultimately determined by their makers, a survey of patterns found in the American woman’s magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book, as well as in contemporary fancywork guides, shows that there were chronological shifts in the preference for netting, knitting, and crocheting throughout the nineteenth century. Netting was most frequently recommended in the 1840s and 1850s, while knitting was favored from the 1860s through the 1880s. Crocheting, however, was the dominant technique throughout; fancywork writers recommended this construction method recurrently from the mid-1840s through the early twentieth century. The continued popularity of crochet likely resulted from its perception as being especially sturdy; as Mrs. Jane Weaver asserted in the July 1862 issue of Peterson’s Magazine, crochet was “the most durable style of work for purses.”
Contemporary needlework guides also noted, with varying degrees of specificity, what types of silks should be used to create a miser’s purse. A writer in the June 1854 issue of Peterson’s stated that the “beauty of a purse depends on the extreme fineness of the silk employed for it,” but did not elaborate on what exactly constituted fine silk. In The Handbook of Needlework Decorative and Ornamental, Inc. Crochet, Knitting and Netting from 1846, Lydia Lambert noted that both coarse and fine silks of various sizes were not only well adapted for embroidery, but for netting and knitting purses. By the late nineteenth century, coinciding with the rise of product advertising and marketing, writers endorsed specific brands of silk threads and purse twists (multi-cord threads). In 1887, the anonymous author of Needles and Brushes and How to Use Them: A Manual of Fancy Work recommended “one-half ounce E.E. Corticelli Purse Twist or one-half ounce No. 300 Florence Knitting Silk” to crochet and knit purses. The silk companies themselves issued promotional pamphlets that marketed specific products for purses. Massachusetts-based Nonotuck Silk Company published the series How to Use Florence Knitting Silk in 1883, in which the firm suggested using a half-ounce of Florence silk for crocheted or knit purses.
Occasionally other materials substituted for silk threads, such as supple cloths like velvet and wool, leather, chain-link metal mesh, and hair. Some pattern makers recommended woven fabrics for miser’s purses since “the consequence of a dropped loop in knitting…rendered [a purse] utterly useless,” as Godey’s Lady Book stated in May 1852. Beadwork was also used for Victorian miser’s purses, but as embellishment rather than for structural integrity, and lightweight silks were recommended to line heavily beaded purses. In 1921, Arthur D. Little, an industrialist from Cambridge, Massachusetts, constructed two miser’s purses with threads made from animal byproducts after hearing someone quote Jonathan Swift’s adage, “You can’t make a silk purse of a sow’s ear.” Little made the threads from a mixture of sows’ ears, formaldehyde, and acetone. The mixture was forced through a silk-spinning mechanical spinneret from which emerged a brittle thread, which was then soaked in a glycerin solution to become flexible. Although these purses were a technological achievement, they were more useful as promotional products than for daily wear. “We admit frankly that it is not very strong or very good silk, and that there is no present industrial value in making it from [the] glue,” the company stated in On the Making of Silk Purses from Sows’ Ears: A Contribution to Philosophy, published the same year.
Victorian miser’s purses were often adorned with glass, metal or marcasite beads as well as rings and tassels. Celluloid, an early plastic, was sometimes used in lieu of metal to make the rings and tassels. Steel was most commonly used for miser’s purse beads, tassels, and rings after the late 1850s, and remained in use well into the early twentieth century. In 1919, the Los Angeles department store Hamburger's advertised “cut steel beads [for]‘miser’s’ purses that look anything but miserly” in the Los Angeles Times, and—perhaps speaking to the deterioration of handicraft skills in the early twentieth century—offered the help of an on-site expert instructor to teach shoppers “the art of making purses.”
Indeed, miser’s purse patterns became more detailed as the nineteenth century progressed. Those found in early nineteenth-century fancywork guides and women’s magazines provided very brief explanations, if any at all, on purse construction. It was assumed that their readers already knew how to make most fancywork items—a point emphasized when the well-to-do Charles Bingley remarks in Jane Austen’s 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice, “I scarcely know any [woman]… who cannot… paint tables, cover screens, and net purses.” Even the Russian dramatist Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol sarcastically remarked in his 1842 political satire Dead Souls that all good housewives knew how to knit purses. But as the nineteenth century progressed, purse patterns became increasingly detailed and specific. Women needed more instruction to make purses as the emphasis shifted from fancywork skills to liberal arts educations.
The creation of handcrafted items was particularly important in the nineteenth century. With the rise of industrialization and the onslaught of mass production, it became the accepted rule that men would work outside the home, while women would remain in the domestic sphere. Coinciding with this change, a new ideology developed—the so-called cult of domesticity—which held that women were society’s moral authorities and that they should create nurturing households for their husbands and children that would serve as sanctuaries from the rapidly changing world. Women not only learned to sew practical items, such as clothing and household linens, but how to make more fanciful objects to beautify their homes and families.
Nineteenth-century miser’s purses feature myriad designs; however, color and pattern trends are evident in both surviving guides and purses. Blue, red, and green were the colors most frequently suggested and used for miser’s purses. Green was an especially popular color for men; not only were shades of the hue recommended in many guides and magazines, but green purses appear in nineteenth-century literature. In both William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1847 novel Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero, and Caroline Lee Hentz’s 1853 novel Helen and Arthur, or, Miss Thusa’s Spinning Wheel, a young woman constructs a green silk miser’s purse for her potential suitor and brother, respectively. After the chemist William Henry Perkins discovered the first aniline dye in 1856, a pink-purple color known as mauvine, purses in this and similar synthetic shades, such as fuchsia and magenta, were popular through the 1860s (fig. 8).
Certain color combinations were recommended by guide authors to make these purses more functional. Crafters were instructed to use different colored threads for each sac to help the user distinguish between each end’s contents. Red with green and blue with brown were cited by many fancywork guide authors as ideal pairings, and these are frequently seen in surviving purses (fig. 9). Silver and gold color beads were suggested to mark off the respective ends that held silver and gold coins when both types of coins were in circulation, though Godey’s writers warned in October 1859 that gold-tone beads would tarnish with use—or “suffer from that ill-usage which all useful purses are preordained to undergo.” Other writers suggested that purse makers give their purses one square and one round end, or add fringe to one end and a tassel to the other to further distinguish between the two. Godey’s Lady’s Book noted in 1859 that “[it] is now the general plan to gather one end in, and leave the other square for the sake of distinguishing the gold [coins] from the silver, by any light, however dim…. If the two ends are different…then there must be fringe at one end and the tassel at the other.” Other authors recommended alternative fasteners, such as clasps, to create “two distinct purses in one.” Few of these purses have survived, suggesting that this fastener was not commonly used (fig. 10).
Patterns found in Godey’s Lady’s Book and other women’s magazines reveal that purses with bands of flowers and leaves were preferred in the late 1850s (fig. 11). In the 1860s, Godey’s featured purses with cone-shaped beaded accents, such as this knitted blue-and-white purse from the magazine’s October 1863 issue (fig. 12). Crocheted purses with ombré roll stitches were fashionable in the late 1870s (fig. 13). Godey’s August 1877 issue offered comprehensive instructions on how to crochet a purse