Special Post: Tyrolean Handbags – With input from the granddaughter of the company’s founder
(BE SURE TO SCROLL ALL THE WAY DOWN FOR MORE PHOTOS.)
Until now, very little was known about the history of the handbag company Tyrolean. The Vintage Purse Museum was extremely lucky to have connected with the vivacious Laura Slutsky, granddaughter of company founder Louis Kaufman. Laura, with whom we spoke over the phone and exchanged emails, kindly helped us fill in some of the blanks. Her father, Herman Slutsky, was Tyrolean’s general sales manager (job title per a 1954 document found online). Herman was married to Louis’s daughter Mildred, who was chief designer of many of Tyrolean’s beautiful handbags. During the course of the company’s existence, Louis employed a number of relatives, including his three children and son-in-law.
Tyrolean is known for its plastic (often referred to by the Dupont company trade name "Lucite") and metal filigree bags, as well as those made of leather and tapestry fabric. The hardware and fittings were 24-karat gold-plated (over copper), which added shine to the bags and was an excellent retail marketing strategy. These elegant, romantic purses are highly popular collectibles today. Some are very large and heavy, in boxy or barrel shapes. Another commonality is the company’s use of Limoges-style porcelain medallions (often with "courting couple" motifs) in a number of their designs, and a distinctive coral-colored silk moire’ fabric lining. (Tyrolean also utilized black lining.) Moire is a slick material, so the Tyrolean name, which was a gold-stamped imprint, sometimes wore off over time, leaving many of these treasures unmarked. The Lucite Tyroleans had labels that were clear stickers—a labeling technique used by several other Lucite handbag makers of the 1950s. Some of those labels came off or were removed, but this type of Tyrolean can usually be identified by the plastics (sometimes referred to as “shell”), such as a striped “tortoise” and a marbleized white. They also had Tyrolean’s characteristic filigree trim and specific types of closures. (Other handbag companies used plastic tortoise and filigree ornamentation, but Tyroleans are distinctive.)
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White "shell" (plastic) Tyrolean handbag featuring the company's distinctive filigree embellishments. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. 14 Nov 1954, Sun The Cincinnati Enquirer (Cincinnati, Ohio) Newspapers.com
 | Example of Tyrolean's gold-stamped logo on coral-colored silk moire lining. These gold stamps often wore off over the years, making identification of these handbags more difficult.
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14 Jun 1944, Wed The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) Newspapers.com
The earliest record we could find for Tyrolean handbags was the 1945 serial number 489,191 in the April 16, 1946 Official Gazette of The United States Patent Office. The Vintage Purse Museum also uncovered some mid-1940s newspaper advertisements for Tyrolean handbags made of rayon faille, a popular material of the time.
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| Earliest reference to Tyrolean patents found by The Vintage Purse Museum, screenshot from The Official Gazette of The United States Patent Office. |
In 1949, the company created an innovative three-sided, fold-down pyramid-shaped leather bag, with three compartments marked (per The Bag Lady website) "W' for wallet, "P" for purse and "C" for cigarettes. (High-end maker Bottega Veneta has a modern version of this bag. We emailed Bottega Veneta, asking if Tyrolean was its inspiration. We will update this post if they answer.)
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| Side view of a double-sided Tyrolean bag with gold-plated hardware. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
In the book “Carry Me – 1950s Lucite Handbags – An American Fashion,” author Janice Berkson writes: “By 1951, the men behind Tyrolean, Hy Slutsky and father and son ‘Pop’ and George Kaufman began to notice a new trend: that something different that everyone was looking for was called ‘shell.’"
Berkson also wrote that in 1951 Tyrolean won The Handbag of the Year Award in the “cocktail” category of *Maggie Johnson’s TV Show “Your Television Shopper.” Per additional research, The Vintage Purse Museum learned that “Your Television Shopper,” aka “TV Shopper,” originally hosted by Kathi Norris, was an early product-advertisement program geared toward women, and was featured on WABD-New York, the DuMont TV Network, from about 1949-1951. (*Maggie Johnson is the name of actor/director Clint Eastwood's first wife, but the show host was a different Maggie Johnson.)
Laura Slutsky confirmed that her grandfather’s nickname was “Pop.” Her father’s birth name was Hyman, but he later changed it to Herman, and his nickname was “Hi,” with an “i,” although it is often spelled with a “y.”
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Early photo of Hi Slutsky, clipped from genealogy website MyHeritage.com, to which The Vintage Purse Museum subscribes. Photo verified as Hi by his daughter Laura.
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Louis Kaufman (b. about 1896, Russia) was married to Fannie Kaplan Kaufman (b. about 1900, Russia.) They had three children, all born in New York: Lillian (b. 1920), Mildred “Millie” (b. 1922) and George (b. 1927). The 1940 Census says that Louis (misspelled “Louise” in the record) was a manufacturer of "ladies (sic) trimmings." Laura confirmed that her grandfather was in the lace business prior to starting the handbag company. This may explain the intricate lacy filigree flourishes on many Tyrolean handbags. It is unknown how or why he came up with the name Tyrolean.
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| Another of Louis Kaufman's patents. Screenshot from Google Patents. This shape and clasp match the beaded bag at the top of this post. |
Herman Slutsky (b. Hyman Slutsky, 1917), enlisted in WWII in 1941, married Mildred Ida Kaufman in 1946, and joined the family handbag business established by Mildred’s father Louis Kaufman.
Laura shared some remembrances of her grandfather Louis with The Vintage Purse Museum. “He was one-of-a-kind,” she said. “He looked like (Russian politician Nikita) Khrushchev, but was a great dancer and a character. He was kind, generous and old-school. He was elegant, always dressed to the nines. He was a man of quality, and I was proud to be his granddaughter.”
Laura told us that Louis was once seriously injured in a motorcycle accident and was saved by nuns. He was so grateful for their care that, after this experience, he gave routinely and generously to the Catholic church.
Louis, like many of the other handbag makers about whom we’ve written, was friendly with Judith Leiber, a Holocaust survivor who became known for her crystal-studded, celebrity-worn minaudieres. He was also a friend of actor Martin Landau’s family, as they all were part-owners of an Eighth Avenue building in New York. According to The Bag Lady University, Tyrolean Handbags was located at 555 Eighth Ave., New York City, as early as 1954. We also found several references to a Tyrolean location in the Bronx. Many handbag companies had offices and showrooms in Manhattan, with factory locations elsewhere. We believe the Bronx was likely where Tyrolean had its factory.
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| Black satin Tyrolean handbag with Limoges-style medallion decorated with rhinestones. This bag came with a coin purse and mirror. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
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| Tyrolean handbag similar to the one in the previous picture, but in gold satin fabric. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
Laura told us that her father Hi was the head salesman for the company and was handsome, educated, smart, and great with people. Her grandmother Fannie, Louis’s wife, wasn’t involved in the business. Laura remembers her as a remarkable woman and “the ultimate Jewish grandma.”
Although The Vintage Purse Museum only saw the men’s names—Louis, his son George and his son-in-law Herman—attached to the Tyrolean company in online documents, Laura told us that her mother, Mildred (“Millie”) was the company’s lead designer. Her aunt Lillian, Millie's sister, also worked for Tyrolean as a handbag designer.
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| This Tyrolean bag has what appears to be a Russian eagle motif. It is likely this design was created circa 1953-1955 as part of the "heraldic" handbag, shoe and jewelry trend, in which items were embellished with coats of arms and similar emblems. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
As with many companies of the era, there was litigation involving a patent dispute. In 1954, Tyrolean sued Empress Handbags, Inc. for violating its 1952 patent number 2,606,588 by making and selling cheaper versions of the Tyrolean bag. The motion was denied by the judge, who recommended it go to trial, but we could find no further action on this case. The Vintage Purse Museum found a 1953 newspaper advertisement that blatantly offered $2.95 copies of $35 Tyrolean handbags. No maker name for these knockoffs was given in the ad.
The latest mention of Tyrolean in the newspaper archives was a 1964 wedding announcement for a woman who was employed as a secretary for “the Tyrolean Handbag Company Inc. in the Bronx.” Laura Slutsky remembered her grandfather having to close the business in the 1960s. If Tyrolean was still operating in 1964 and didn’t last much longer than that, it’s possible it was one of the casualties of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT-1948), a set of multilateral trade agreements originally ratified in 1947, strongly affecting businesses during its 1964-1967 “Kennedy Round” (named for President Kennedy, who predeceased the negotiations). This deal worsened the market as the US was importing more bags than it sold, causing American companies to close rather than be forced to lower employee wages and benefits.
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| This clear vinyl-covered handbag is likely one of the later designs made by Tyrolean, as the "under glass" style began in the late 1950s and carried through to the 1960s. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
Louis was left heartbroken after the closure of Tyrolean, said Laura, and was never quite the same. He passed away in 1967. We hope it brings comfort to her that so many collectors and handbag aficionados know how exquisite and important Tyrolean handbags were and still are to this day.
POST UPDATE, MAY 2023: We are able to definitively connect the acrylic (Lucite) handbag line Toro to Tyrolean. We'd always suspected a connection because some Toro handbags use similar closures as well as the distinctive Tyrolean gold-plated filigree. Thanks to a September 1957 ad in trade publication Handbags & Accessories, we now have proof that Toro was a secondary line for Tyrolean. (Read about handbag representative Herb Teres here.)
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| Toro acrylic clutch and Handbags & Accessories magazine from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
Special thanks to Laura Slutsky. Other references used were The Bag Lady, author Janice Berkson (her store, Deco Jewels, is in New York City), Newspapers.com and MyHeritage.com. This article c2021 by Wendy Dager/The Vintage Purse Museum. Please do not use photos or information without requesting permission, info@vintagepursemuseum.com.
26 Mar 1961, Sun Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, Tennessee) Newspapers.com
30 Oct 1953, Fri The Plain Speaker (Hazleton, Pennsylvania) Newspapers.com
02 Dec 1953, Wed The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn, New York) Newspapers.com
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