SPECIAL POST! 1950s Aluminum "Treasure Chest" Bag - With Info From Expert Dr. Bonita Campbell

Aluminum handbag from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. Scroll down for some aluminum giftware history plus more photos and 1950s newspaper advertisements.

SPECIAL POST! Aluminum Treasure Chest Handbag and A History Lesson

The Vintage Purse Museum’s mission to educate, entertain and inform our many social media followers and fellow vintage handbag aficionados sometimes takes unusual turns.

We’d long been a fan of the floral-motif aluminum lunchbox-style handbag, so when we acquired one for the collection, we set about documenting its history. Little did we know that it would not be easy, and there’d still be some blanks, but we did get a fantastic history lesson!

Our purse is unmarked and unlabeled, so our first step was to find a newspaper ad via the resource to which we subscribe, Newspapers.com. We found two ads from 1953 with drawings that somewhat resemble our bag, but gave no maker name. *We also weren't quite sure what type of flowers were on our bag.

We contacted an aluminum giftware book author who said it was likely made by Everlast, one of the companies that sold decorative aluminum products (such as servingware; see ad below for examples) from the 1930s until the 1960s. She said that it was not hand-hammered like most of their products, but machine made. We did some digging into Everlast and reached out to a relative of one of the company’s founders, but did not hear back.

We purchased an out of print book about aluminum giftware by a different author, but there was only one photograph (and no history) of a handbag—which the author said he had to borrow as he didn’t have one in his extensive collection.

We then turned to trade organization The Aluminum Association, which kindly responded to our email and even put our purse and inquiry in its newsletter for its members.

Another angle of The Vintage Purse Museum's mysterious handbag.

Next, we contacted The Henry Ford museum, which had an article on its website about Everlast. The archivist there was very helpful in sending us documentation for two handbags in their collection, which came with a large donation of Everlast products. Their bags also have no maker name.

We then emailed the person who compiled the 2007 research which was the basis for The Henry Ford online article. They sent us an email recommending we contact another aluminum expert. Amazingly, she taught at a university in The Vintage Purse Museum curator’s childhood hometown!  Dr. Bonita "Bonnie" Campbell is professor emeritus at California State University Northridge. Here is her (lightly) excerpted response to our inquiry about our aluminum handbag.

“Building on the info about Everlast that I had collected in the 1990s, I've concluded that the likelihood that the handbag was made by Everlast is vanishingly small...as close to zero as one can get. Most of my evidence for that conclusion stems from (1) interviews and correspondence with people associated with Everlast and its aluminum products and (2) seeing and examining three marked handbags. In interviews and correspondence, I did ask questions specifically about jewelry and handbags out of sheer curiosity, because such items seemed to be so elusive and some were not marked.  Of the three bona fide Everlast handbags I examined, each had a motif (i.e., Poppy, Malay Rose, Bali Bamboo) that had appeared on other Everlast items, the motifs were hammered and not stamped, and the marks on the underside of the cover/lid were consistent with a roughly 1946-1949 production timeframe. I also noted from one of your photos that the faux-hammering style appearing at the bottom of the handbag differs from that used by Everlast.

Among the many people associated with Everlast who I interviewed and corresponded with were four who shared particular information about Everlast handbags.

Interior view of The Vintage Purse Museum's aluminum handbag.

Rae (Schnitzer) Bernstein, was the daughter of Louis Schnitzer, who was a founding partner and the President of Everlast.  (BTW, Rae and her first husband, Saul Berman, who established and owned Crown Industries, produced some decorative aluminum pieces marked Crown.) In Rae's case, in addition to correspondence and telephone conversations, my late husband and I actually met with her when she was visiting in San Francisco in January 1997, and she brought with her a few of her more unusual Everlast items, one of which was a small marked handbag. When questioned about Everlast and handbags, she said that few were made, and that she thought they were only made in 1947-1948. The handbag that she brought with her was rectangular in shape with a single hinged lid, a single bail handle, and a single Poppy motif on the lid. That motif was not stamped and it was the same as the Poppy motif that had appeared on more mundane Everlast items.

I also had phone conversations and correspondence with David Gelfman and Bernard Heller, who were managers and foremen in manufacturing for many years. (David's uncle, Nathan Gelfman, was an original Everlast partner and Vice President, and was responsible for Everlast manufacturing.) Regarding handbags, my notes indicate that David told me that they didn't make many because the cost of doing so made them too expensive and that they used dies that were already on hand from use with other items. Bernard was able to provide much more extended info about Everlast production, including some of the details of manufacturing techniques that had been used and how those changed over the years. My notes indicate that he told me that they produced a few handbags on a trial basis during 1947-1949, used motif dies that were on hand, had two shapes (rectangular and oval), had motifs hammered into the lids only, and were labor-intensive and costly to make.  He mentioned that the idea was to have handbags to coordinate with the jewelry, and recalled the use of Rose, Grape and Bamboo motifs.  He also said that marking pieces became somewhat haphazard during the 1945-1949 time period because the production demand was so high that the workers didn't always get all of the pieces marked.

The fourth relevant Everlast person I was in touch with for an extended period was William 'Bill' Orenstein, who was a Sales Representative for many years. (He was the son of Jack Orenstein, who was an Everlast partner and National Sales Manager between 1935/36 and 1952, and a major force in popularizing the Everlast aluminum wares.)  We corresponded, had many phone conversations, and a couple of in-person meetings (we were both located in the LA area).  He gave me five handbag motif names (Bali Bamboo, Grape, Malay Rose, Poppy and Rose), and said that there might have been a sixth, called Water Lily, that matched the jewelry. (Unfortunately, with respect to your handbag, its motif does not have Water Lily leaves/pads and does not resemble the Everlast Water Lily.) Among many other comments, he indicated that one of the key reasons the Everlast aluminum jewelry and handbags weren't very successful was because the wax would wear off of the pieces rather quickly, leaving the relatively soft aluminum that Everlast used to oxidize, and the oxidation would rub off on clothing, so his father Jack) had recommended that the jewelry and handbags be discontinued.

Regarding your theory, I believe that you are correct that your handbag was produced as a novelty in the 1950s. The arc of what became known as hammered aluminum was heavily impacted by two major events...World War II and the Korean War. As you are probably aware, the use of aluminum for hand-crafted hammered art and gift wares for the high-end market was popularized by Wendell August Forge in the mid-1930s. It gained quite a bit of popularity, plus competition, by the late 1930s, in large part because European and other imports were not available due to the emergence of what became World War II. Then, come the time of Pearl Harbor in late 1941, the US had need of every ounce of aluminum it could lay its hands on for production of war materiel, and use for consumer goods was forbidden. Thus, during the period from late 1941 to early/mid 1945, there was little if anything for US consumers to purchase, be it aluminum, glass, fabric, or anything else (even food and gasoline were strictly rationed). That led to an enormous consumer demand at the end of WWII, not only domestically, but also internationally, because so much of Europe in particular, had been destroyed and needed goods but had little means of producing them. Also, between 1941 and 1945, many US manufacturers such as Everlast had contracts for production of war materiel and so their manufacturing facilities were revamped and considerably more mechanization was introduced.  Thus, the US marketplace became readily swamped with hammered-style aluminum items between 1945 and 1950, and several producers turned to truly mass-produced novelty items as well as expanding into markets with other metals. Then came the Korean War from mid-1950 to mid-1953, and with it some tightening of US domestic aluminum supplies for consumer goods (in fact, many small producers simply went out of business). Unsurprisingly, the market for highly-mechanized mass-produced items began exploding again in 1953, including many aluminum novelties. I remember seeing multiple tiny ads for such items in magazines such as House Beautiful. Almost all of the production of so-called hammered aluminum had left the scene by the mid/late 1950s, but the production of inexpensive aluminum novelties seemed to have continued until at least 1960.”

The Vintage Purse Museum is extremely grateful to Dr. Campbell and the others who responded to our inquiries, including the researcher who referred us to Dr. Campbell, the giftware book author, the staff and members of The Aluminum Association and the archivist at The Henry Ford. We’ve omitted their names for privacy reasons, but we did tell Dr. Campbell that we would be crediting her in this post. If you use information and/or photos from here, please credit Dr. Bonita Campbell for her knowledge and The Vintage Purse Museum for photos.

 

*The flowers on the handbags we’ve seen online have alternately been referred to as chrysanthemums, peonies and lotuses, but we are unsure about the ones on The Vintage Purse Museum's example. Dr. Campbell said while the leaves look like chrysanthemum leaves, she believes the flowers could represent water lilies, but could not find definitive proof after going through her extensive notes. She also says this purse may have been an import and likely was not design-patented. If we find more information, we will update this post.

03 Sep 1953, Thu The Palm Beach Post (West Palm Beach, Florida) Newspapers.com

From the book "Collectible Aluminum" by Everett Grist (1997),

Hammered aluminum was also an early 1950s trend in cookware and other kitchen and dining items.

13 Sep 1950, Wed The Birmingham News (Birmingham, Alabama) Newspapers.com
08 Dec 1953, Tue The Indianapolis News (Indianapolis, Indiana) Newspapers.com 08 Dec 1953, Tue The Indianapolis News (Indianapolis, Indiana) Newspapers.com