SPECIAL POST: The History of Corde Handbags and The Machines That Made Them
With input from the children of a corde handbag maker
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| Most 1930s-1950s corde bags were black, navy or brown, made on an 1860s Cornely-Bonnaz machine. These are an unusual coral color and multicolored brown, tan and ivory, from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
When The Vintage Purse Museum embarked on a quest to research the creation of 1930s-1950s highly collectible corde handbags, we had no idea the number of rabbit holes we’d be climbing in and out of. After many months of gathering information, we're excited to share this article with you. For simplicity, we refer to this embroidery as "corde" throughout, even though it is known by different spellings. Be sure to scroll all the way down for photos, newspaper ads, documents and bonus fun facts.
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| Corde clutch with silver floral embroidered embellishment on the flap. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
Let’s start with how the embroidery known as “corde” (French for “rope”) came to be. The machine that would later be modified to become the source of corde was credited to inventor Antoine Bonnaz, born in 1836 (d. 1915) in a small village in France. Bonnaz showed a talent for repairing tools and early machines at a very young age. Mesmerized by machinery, he eventually became a mechanic in a silk factory. After seeing how difficult the work was for hand-embroiderers, he developed the first embroidery machine by improving upon the first sewing machine, which was invented by Barthélemy Thimonnier (1793-1857) in order to replicate hand-sewing. Patented in 1830, Thimonnier’s machines initially caused such a stir that many were destroyed by tailors who were afraid the machines would ruin their businesses.
Example of a type of embroidery made on a Cornely-Bonnaz machine, still in use today. Video used with permission of New York Embroidery Studio.
Bonnaz patented his “couso-brodeur” (embroidery) machine approximately 1865. (There's some dispute as to the exact year). According to Bonnaz's biography, the company Hurtu et Hautin, which made sewing machines, bicycles and, later, automobiles, purchased the patent. It gave Bonnaz a royalty for each machine it sold. He had enough money to last the rest of his life, putting it to good use by donating much of it to the people of his village, including friends and the poor and needy, as well as a retirement home. There’s a plaque on a wall of the Saint-Chef village square that says “Place Antoine Bonnaz (Antoine Bonnaz Square).”
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| Place Antoine Bonnaz, screenshot from a Google search. |
Bonnaz, who went on to patent other items, including tires, was able to reacquire the sewing machine patent, and in 1868 he named Emile Cornely as patent assignee. And this is where the story gets complicated.
The Vintage Purse Museum will correct some common misinformation you'll see on the Internet about Emile Cornely. Many websites incorrectly give his name as “Ercole Cornely.” We’re not sure when this started, but we believe we know why. “Ercole” translates to “Hercules” in Italian, but most websites say Cornely was French. “Ecole” in French means “school.” We found a number of resources linking the word “ecole” to “Cornely” in France, including a school of journalism founded by a different man with the surname Cornely. Coincidentally, there are also schools on a Paris street where Cornely the sewing machine inventor had his business in the late 1800s. We believe someone simply made a mistake, thinking “Ecole” (“school”), with the addition of an "r," was Cornely’s first name, which was then copied, pasted and perpetuated. In the course of our research for other historical articles for The Vintage Purse Museum’s website, we’ve often found something similar to the old game of telephone, where mistakes are made, exaggerated and repeated. For the most part, this is unintentional.
We found old documents that showed Mr. Cornely resided in Washington, D.C., so we contacted Civil War historian and Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer to find out why a Frenchman would be living in Washington D.C. during this era. Mr. Holzer explained that there were several French visitors to Civil War America and that French officers had been attached to both the Union and the Confederate armies.
We thought we were on to something.
However, we researched further and learned that Emile (originally spelled “Emil") Cornely was not French. Nor was Cornely his birth name. We told you this would get complicated!
After going through dozens of documents, here’s a timeline we pieced together, which we felt was the best way to share inventor Emile Cornely’s story. It begins with a man named Emil Cohen.
1824 – Emil Cohen is born in Dusseldorf, Germany (known at that time as Prussia). His parents were Aaron and Recha (Mayer) Cohen. Their names were eventually changed, possibly posthumously, to Aaron and Regine Cornely. Emil had five siblings. It is not known when Emil and his wife Rosalie (Rosalia) Levy got married.
1850s? – Emil Cohen emigrates to the US, and becomes a resident of Washington, DC.
1858 – Emil Cohen applies for a US passport. That same year he patents a “corn husking and shelling glove.” The patent application is witnessed by *M.C. Gritzner. (This name is important and will be addressed below.) Emil and Rosalie’s daughter Anna is born in Washington, DC.
1860 – Census records show that Emil, whose occupation is “clerk,” his wife “Rosalia” (both born in “Bavaria”) and their daughter Anna were “Free Inhabitants in 4th Ward District Columbia.”
1861 – Emil and Rosalie’s son Robert is born in Washington, DC.
1865 – At age 40, Emil Cohen becomes a naturalized US citizen in Washington, DC.
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| Emil Cohen's naturalization document, screenshot from a Google search. |
1866 – Emil legally changes his name from Cohen to Cornely, as does the rest of his family. He eventually takes on an additional “e” to become Emile, which is more French-sounding.
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| Emil Cohen changed his name to Emil Cornely while he was a resident of Washington, DC, prior to moving to France. Screenshot from a Google search. |
1868 – In January, Emil Cornely, of the city of Washington, DC, “for the time residing in Paris, Empire of France,” patents an “Improvement in Sewing Machines.” This United States patent is number 73,696. The document is five pages, including sketches. This modification was made on a Willcox and Gibbs sewing machine. In November, Antoine Bonnaz files a declaration on his US patent number 83,909 making Emile Cornely an assignee. It is called “Improvement In Sewing-Machines for Embroidering.”
1874 – Emil Cornely of Paris, France, invented a “new and useful in Overseaming and Embroidering Machines” using the Bonnaz machine. The patent number is 148,182.
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| Cornely's 1874 patent, screenshot from a Google search. |
1877 – Emil Cornely files a patent infringement case against Norbert J. Henderickx (this is the correct spelling!) and his “Petit Machines.” Cornely wins an injunction.
1880 – An announcement appears in the June 10, 1880 Washington, DC Evening Star newspaper showing that a patent has been issued to Emil Cornely for an embroidering machine. (The next line in the announcement reads: “A.G. Bell {assignor of National Bell Telephone Company}.” Alexander Graham Bell received his first patent in 1876. These everyday life-changing inventions and patents illustrate how the Industrial Revolution of 1760-1840 influenced subsequent decades.)
1886 – Emil Cornely sues Freeman D. Marckwald for patent infringement. In this case, it was noted that Cornely had sued 10 other infringers and received $50 for each infringing machine sold.
1891 – Emile and his son Robert were in business together and joint patent owners on another embroidery patent; they had several with both of their names. At that time, they were residents of Paris, but this was a US patent.
1894 – Emile’s wife Rosalie dies.
1896 – According to a French document (using Google translation), E. Cornely et Fils (societe) (E. Cornely and Son Company) files a French patent that makes improvements to the straw hat sewing machine.
1902 – In a directory that shows the income and expenses of businesses in France, there is a listing for Society Cornely et Fils (Cornely and Son Company), located at 20 Rue de Nantes and 5 Rue Barbanegre.
1911 – Robert, still a resident of Paris, files another US patent for sewing and embroidery machines.
1913 – Emile Cornely dies.
1922 – Robert dies at Austerlitz Station in Paris, about four miles from his home on 80 Rue Taitbout.
Most of the Cornely family is interred at Montmartre cemetery in Paris. We reached out to the cemetery for information, but did not hear back. (We will update this post if we do.) The family has a fascinating lineage. Emil and Rosalie’s daughter Anna was married to Paul Ollendorf (sometimes written as “Ollendorff”), a famous French bookseller and printer. (Guy de Maupassant was one of his authors.) Their daughter Jeanne was married to Edmond Hirsch, who came from another French bookselling family. Jeanne and Edmond’s son Yves Gilbert Ollendorf-Hirsch, better known as Gilbert Grandval (1904-1981), was a French resistance fighter and politician.
We contacted The International Sewing Machine Collectors Society to learn more about the process of patents and history of Mr. Cornely. Their membership chair connected us with ISMACS News editor Martin Gregory, who shared the following via email.
“Engineers with an important patent registered it with patent agents in all the countries they could, so Bonnaz would have registered his in the USA. The best-known patent agents were Munn & Co. who had started Scientific American (to) push new ideas and patents. Many important early US sewing machine companies, including Singer and Grover & Baker, distrusted the foreign agents they used in the 1850s and so sent out trusted US employees/agents to run their overseas business. The attached article...suggests that *Gritzner and Cornely were sent out to organise Willcox & Gibbs in France. After the Franco-Prussian war of 1871 and the collapse of the second Empire in France, being of German origin in Paris was not popular. Gritzner returned to Durlach in Germany and set up his own sewing machine manufactory which had made a million machines by 1902. Cornely, being a US citizen and having frenchified his name stuck it out in Paris making specialised embroidery machines for many years.”
*Max Carl Gritzner (1825-1892) was an inventor, patent-holder and mapmaker. The Vintage Purse Museum found an 1863 address directory that showed Emil Cohen—later Cornely—was employed at Gritzner’s patent office in Washington, DC. Thus began what appears to be Cohen/Cornely's start in the sewing machine business.
The article Mr. Gregory was referring to was written by ISMACS News contributor Rijnko Fekkes, who wrote that Gritzner and Cornely purchased patent rights from Hurtu et Hautin for the Willcox and Gibbs machine.
28 Jun 1879, Sat Manchester Weekly Times and Examiner (Manchester, Greater Manchester, England) Newspapers.comThis invaluable information explains several things about the mysterious Mr. Cornely. First, that he likely changed his name before his move to France due to anti-German sentiment. It’s unknown if anti-Semitism was also a factor. According to “French Jewish History, 1650-1914” (from the website myjewishlearning.com), “Beginning in 1881, a new force in French-Jewish life began: immigration, primarily from Russia but also from the entire Mediterranean basin. America was always most Jews’ destination of choice, but the Yiddish phrase Leben vi got in Frankraych (to live like God in France) makes it clear that few were disappointed to immigrate to France. Thousands ended up in Paris, where large numbers packed into the Marais Saint-Paul neighborhood, which became known as the ‘Pletzl’ (little square).”
The information from Mr. Gregory and Mr. Fekkes also offers an explanation as to how Bonnaz was able to assign the patent to Cornely (their existing connection to Hurtu et Hautin), as well as the remarkable global reach of patents during a time when filing paperwork was not as easy as a few clicks of a keyboard.
Another small detail, but relevant. Some online sources indicate a St. Gallen, Switzerland connection to Cornely. We contacted the curator of the Textilmuseum St. Gallen and she informed us that neither they nor the state archives have a record of the Cornelys having a business there, but she did email us a photo of a sample of embroidery made on the Cornely-Bonnaz.
We know this was a lot for our readers—and us!—to get through, but our next step is to explore how the usage of these machines evolved to purse manufacturing.
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| 1940s photo of woman carrying a corde handbag. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
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| Closeup of handbag in the photo above. |
From the time the machine was invented, this embroidery was used in various applications. In the early 1900s through at least the 1940s, corde (also occasionally referred to as “Bonnaz”) was used to trim curtains. While similar techniques such as soutache (a narrow, flat ornamental braid; often used interchangeably with the word “corde”) have long been in use as well, corde may have gone out of fashion for a while. According to a glossary entry in the 1920 book “Dictionary of Textiles” by Louis Harmuth, corde was “now obsolete.”
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| Screenshot from the 1920 book "Dictionary of Textiles" by Louis Harmuth. From a Google search. |
We’re not sure if this alleged obsolescence refers to the technique or its usage**, but in the 1920s there was a US-based Bonnaz, Singer and Hand Embroiderers’ Union, which went on strike several times over fair wages and hours. We also found numerous classified advertisements in US newspapers for Bonnaz operators spanning decades. (**UPDATE: Per the very knowledgable @housemuseum on Instagram, this entry more than likely refers to corde dress fabric, a "finely ribbed silk of medium weight" also known as "corded silk," in yet another use of the word "corde.")
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Soutache was a type of embroidery similar to corde and is often used as an interchangeable term. 1920s cloche with soutache and corde-type embroidery, from the collection of Wendy Dager.
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Like soutache, corde was a trim on ladies’ garments in the 1920s and earlier. The earliest newspaper advertisement we could find for corde handbags was 1928. These purses were available in many colors, with some advertised as “ombre.”
By 1929, they were sold in “unusual shapes.” 1935 was about when the style began gaining in popularity. In the 1940s, the trend had grown so much that you could purchase corde shoes, belts and hats to complement your bag.
21 Feb 1941, Fri The Evening Sun (Baltimore, Maryland) Newspapers.comAccording to the article, Mr. Kempner, who also sold fine leather bags and costume jewelry, said, "The original corde bag was created by a Parisian designer and was made by the peasants in France, of an ordinary cord woven by hand and sometimes taking a full week to complete a purse. In view of this fact it was an expensive luxury and could be possessed only by the wealthier class. We are inspiring the American equivalent of the first creation of the Parisian design. Now instead of the hand-weaving of the cord, a specially designed embroidery machine (the French Cornelly {sic} Corde Machine) is used to twist the cord and stitch it at the same time.”
While the “made by the peasants” and "possessed only by the wealthier class" lines seem a bit dramatic, it's possible that the first incarnations of corde as a handbag may have been imported to the US from France, although the “Parisian designer” remains a mystery—unless Mr. Kempner was referring to the very French names of the machine’s inventors. It should be noted that 1920s newspaper ads found by The Vintage Purse Museum show no indication of them being imports, and “made in France” would have been a desirable selling point if that were the case. (We did find a few 1940s-1950s handbag advertisements calling them "French corde," but this may be more of a marketing term and doesn't mean they were imported.) Also, we discovered that Mr. Kempner was not the only seller of corde handbags in Paterson, New Jersey, although we do admire his bravado.
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| Unusual corde bag in yellow-gold and black. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
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This clutch was made in the 1940s when the gold garments' and accessories' trend was popular among film stars for extra sparkle and glamour at parties and events. The gold cord handle is likely not original to the bag and was added later. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. 05 Nov 1947, Wed Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas) Newspapers.com |
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| A plethora of black and navy blue corde bags, from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
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| Brown corde bags in various styles, from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
Navy, brown and black were the most popular corde colors of the 1940s-1950s. This is also when the spelling of corde changed. Capitalized, not capitalized, with or without an accent over the “e,” with a “k” instead of a “c,” an “ay” instead of the “e”—the variations were limitless, and the makers were numerous. The Vintage Purse Museum has over 40 corde bags in its collection, some unlabeled and some labeled, with manufacturers including Ador, Cordelly Yours, Lafaye, Silvertone and more. In fact, several companies whose histories we've documented for our archives made corde handbags at some point, including Magid, Garay and Soure.
There was so much competition that, naturally, litigation occurred. We learned of the Annette handbag company’s failed lawsuit through the vintage blog Antique Aesthetic, which led us to reading the online transcripts of the case. In 1940, Annette Handbag Company’s owners, Milan Thierfeld (1886-1956) and Anna De Martino decided to sue former employee Edward Cerreta (b. 1897-1974; listed in the 1940 US Census as an “embroiderer”) for unfair competition. The partners wanted an injunction against Cerreta, who began making corde bags at his company Mercury Handbags under the name “Kor Day,” which sounded much like Annette’s “Corday” line. (Ironically, Annette eventually changed the spelling of this line in the 1930s to avoid confusion with a perfume called “Corday,” although we found a 1954 Annette handbag ad that used this spelling. Other companies used it as well.) Court documents say that the handbags were first made in France in 1926 under the French word “corde’,” which “described a corded or twisted fabric.” One of the problems for Thierfeld and De Martino was that their 1936 patent application for “Corde” was denied due to it being merely a descriptive word, even though Thierfeld and De Martino claimed to have “common law rights.” This, among other factors, led the court to determine Annette Handbag Company failed to establish a secondary meaning for the word “corde,” and the “commercial piracy” case against Cerreta was dismissed in 1941. Cerreta’s counterclaim against his former employers was also dismissed.
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| An example of a corde label, from a bag in the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
It was a complex case with multiple witnesses and conflicting testimony. During the trial, Thierfeld refuted the idea that this type of work was called “corde embroidery”—he called them “cording bags” or “cording embroidery”—and repeatedly said “Corde” was the Annette Handbag Company’s mark. There was also some discussion of the use of the words “Genuine” and “Original” to preface “Corde,” which they felt gave them evidence of ownership of the name. Additionally, Thierfeld said, “solely through their own efforts” had he and De Martino changed this type of bag from a seasonal style to a standard line.
There was another, heavily redacted 1941 case file, in which Thierfeld and De Martino sued Plymouth Handbags and Postman’s Fifth Avenue Corporation for infringement, once again claiming they had steady use of the word “Corde” for handbags starting in 1931.
We’re not sure exactly what happened in that case, but Annette Handbag Company’s owners found some consideration as the redactions (which were in the form of thick blackouts of numerous lines of text) were granted at their request. While patent infringement cases were common in the mid-century handbag industry, the case against Cerreta may have had a personal element as he was a former employee.
The upshot is that even though Thierfeld and De Martino felt righteous in their litigation, it didn’t matter in the end because so many purse manufacturers were making and selling corde bags. It was simply an economical and practical use of a machine that was already owned by the embroidery makers whose trims had evolved into a long-lasting handbag fashion.
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| Brown heart-shaped corde bag, from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
The Vintage Purse Museum was delighted to speak with Edward “Eddie” Awad, born in 1932, who shared with us his memories of his father Kamel Awad’s corde handbag business, located in Pasadena, California in the 1940s-1950s. Kamel, born in Syria circa 1902, emigrated to the US in 1927. According to the 1940 US Census, he and his wife Mathilda and their children Joseph, Rose and Edward lived in Kings County, New York. Son Gary was born five years later. Kamel’s grandson, noted author Gregory Orfalea, who graciously connected us with his uncles, told The Vintage Purse Museum that his grandfather Kamel’s Brooklyn business was called Pyramid Embroidery.
Edward told us the store was on 3rd Avenue, and that, as a young child, he would help his father by winding embroidery cord from large industrial spools onto the machine bobbins.
Kamel Awad initially worked as a contractor, making corde fabric based on the designs of other makers. The embroidery was created on his Cornely-Bonnaz machines and the resulting fabric pieces would be sent back to the makers to finish the handbag.
We also spoke with Edward Awad’s younger brother, Gary Awad, born in 1945 in Brooklyn, just a few years before the family moved to Pasadena. He confirmed what Edward told us about their father’s association with the Roum (pronounced “Rome”) brothers, who also made corde handbags. The Vintage Purse Museum’s curator was on the phone with Gary when he shared the transcript of a 1990s family history recording of patriarch Assad Roum telling his children that Kamel Awad taught the Roum brothers how to use the machines to make embroidery. This was prior to corde handbags, when corde was being used as trim on other types of products. So, per Assad Roum, it was Kamel Awad who gave the Roums their start in the embroidery business.
Because of his severe asthma, Kamel and his family moved from Brooklyn to Pasadena, California, and the Roum brothers moved there around the same time. Gary, who went to school in Pasadena with the Roum children, told us that Kamel and the Roum brothers were originally from the same village in Syria and were probably distant cousins. Before moving to California, they were part of the close-knit Arab community in Brooklyn, New York.
We found handbag and classified advertisements for Roum California handbags in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
06 Apr 1952, Sun The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Washington) Newspapers.com
The Vintage Purse Museum has a Roum California Lucite handbag in its collection, so we asked elder brother Edward if he knew about them making Lucite purses. He said the Roums did make Lucite handbags after corde went out of favor with the public, but it was an expensive venture and they ended up going out of business after a short while. This explains why there are very few Roum California Lucite handbags in existence.
06 Apr 1952, Sun The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Washington) Newspapers.comEdward told us the reason corde became such a popular fabric was because of wartime shortages of conventional handbag materials such as leather. Purse manufacturers turned to unconventional materials including innovative plastics, as well as fabrics such as rayon faille and corde to create their wares. (Leather shoes were rationed to US residents in WWII, but handbags were not and could still be purchased in stores without a ration coupon, but makers themselves were under ration orders. For more about the handbag history of this era, see The Vintage Purse Museum curator Wendy Dager’s book Pain in The Purse: The Tax That Changed Handbag History.)
Edward explained how the handbags were constructed. Each handbag had a specific design laid out on a paper template, which had an outline of punched holes and chalk to show where each line of cording would go. The template was attached to a medium-weight buckram or muslin-type fabric. The cording (a thick thread), which was held by a bobbin at the top of the Cornely-Bonnaz machine, would be laid down by the machine operator on the fabric with a needle that followed the outlining. The operator used a handle to guide the cording like a pen to a drawing. Then a second row would go directly next to the first and so on, all the way around the fabric, until it created a distinctive design composed of tight embroidery. Often these were swirls, but we’ve seen squares, flowers and other designs, all mesmerizingly eye-appealing and inherently tactile.
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| Underside of a corde bag, showing how the cord was sewn to the muslin-type backing. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
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| Corde bag with exposed layers of construction, from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
Kamel eventually decided to finish the bags himself and sell them in his Pasadena store, which had the factory in the back and retail portion in the front. (He moved his factory several times, but stayed in Pasadena.) The bags were formed using the corde fabric over a light cardboard for structure, then purse hardware and the Awad cloth label were attached. Edward said that black and navy were the most popular colors and he rarely saw multicolor corde bags, which explains why they are so hard to find and highly prized by collectors.
(Folksy clipping below from the column "Snoopin' With Countess Rozanska." Elektra Rozanska was a real person!)
Gary, who was quite young when his father had the handbag store (but later helped out in the factory when his father was making dresses) told us there was a special type of glue used to adhere the cardboard backing to the fabric of each bag. This glue came in tins, and Kamel often used the empty tins to hold the spare change received from customers. He would give Gary the tins and tell him he could keep the change, but he’d have to clean off the glue residue that remained in the tins and stuck to the coins. Gary credits his father for his lifelong interest in coin collecting, as many of the coins received at the shop in the 1950s were from earlier decades.
He told us that his father’s handbag designs were very good and that he was quite talented, and that Gary’s daughter, an artist and tenured university art professor, inherited the family trait of creativity.
By 1955, the corde trend was dying out in the US, so Kamel, who had many acquaintances in the garment business, switched to making skirts. Edward, who served in the US Army after the Korean War, returned to help his father, then later had his own wholesale business making dresses for Young Edwardian, a company owned by a friend.
The US newspaper advertisements for corde handbags greatly declined toward the end of the 1950s, but we did find evidence these bags were still being sold in Canada in the 1960s, with some imported from the UK. Corde handbags are difficult to accurately date as the embroidery technique was the same over the years, although there were a great number of styles. Sometimes one can pinpoint the approximate decade of a bag by its distinctive hardware—zippers, zipper pulls, frames, etc.
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This bag can be dated to the 1940s because of its amber-colored Lucite hardware. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. 17 Oct 1946, Thu Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas) Newspapers.com |
Fun Fact #1: There were imitation corde bags made of plastic! These were likely invented to capitalize on the trend of easily “washable” designs that started during wartime, when more women were joining the workforce.
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| Faux corde bag made of plastic, from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. No maker tag. |
Fun Fact #2: Corde was also the name of cording used by home-crafters to make their own handbags in the 1940s-1950s, but these purses were a different type of weave—a true hand-done crochet, rather than the machine-stitched corde embroidery created on Cornely-Bonnaz machines. (We also found 1940s ads referring to “soutache” cord for making bags.)
Fun Fact #3: Corde was later used to describe plastic beadwork on mid-century Lumured brand handbags. According to Bob Kaphan, the son of plastic fabric inventor and Lumured partner Ludwig Kaphan, "corde bead" was a name invented by another company partner, Murray Getter, who was likely referencing the two-tone beaded pattern. However, it's possible this was also a nod to corde, the embroidered fabric.
Fun Fact #4: We contacted New York Embroidery Studio, a company that still utilizes the Cornely-Bonnaz machines. Manager Rob Feinberg told us that corde embroidery is often used in the decoration of African clothing, and that their in-house Cornely-Bonnaz operator is from Africa. (Rob gave us permission to use the link to the video near the top of this article.) According to their website: "A hand guided multi directional “steering wheel” under the table of the machine guides the needle in any direction, creating a row of chain stitches with a hooked needle. The other hand moves the fabric under the needle in any direction you push it. These machines are European at their core but play a big part in the creation of Americana, having given birth to Western chain stitch embroideries, the Chenille varsity letter and intricate military style cording."
The Vintage Purse Museum took on this project without knowing the depth of its history. Ultimately, vintage corde handbags are plentiful today due to the durability of their fabric and the hard work of the operators who sat for hours at Cornely-Bonnaz machines. We can also credit three inventors, Mr. Thimonnier, Mr. Bonnaz and Mr. Cornely, who likely never imagined the long-lasting impact of their inventions.
The Vintage Purse Museum thanks Gregory Orfalea, grandson of Kamel Awad, for connecting us with his uncles Edward Awad and Gary Awad, to whom we are extremely grateful for the firsthand knowledge and enjoyable conversation. Thank you also to Michelle of Antique Aesthetic (@mishflora on Instagram), Gregory Martin and the members of ISMAC and Rob Feinberg of New York Embroidery Studio. Other information was found at Newspapers.com (source of vintage ads) and MyHeritage.com, to which we have paid subscriptions, and online documents via Google. This article and photos copyright 2022 by Wendy Dager/The Vintage Purse Museum. Please do not use photos or information from this article or any others on our website without requesting permission, vintagepursemuseum@gmail.com.
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| Large-size corde bag with clear Lucite hardware. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
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| Corde wallet, from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
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| Inside of the wallet pictured above. |
16 Sep 1963, Mon The Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Florida) Newspapers.com
18 Nov 1964, Wed The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) Newspapers.com
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