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| Woven nylon bag by Jo Hagewood, one of five featured weavers in this post. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
The Weavers: Spinning a Yarn
Five Handbag Companies and The Extraordinary Women Behind The Scenes
The Vintage Purse Museum has a number of loom-woven handbags, each produced by a talented craftsperson. We chose to research four loom-woven bags, and one yarn bag that's not woven, but has a significant connection to a famous weaver, and share them in a single post. It’s a rich and colorful history, with many differences between weavers, but also some fascinating commonalities. Be sure to scroll all the way down for photos, old newspaper articles and more.
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Peggy Ives, Ogunquit, Maine
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Peggy Ives wool and Lurex small bag with finger strap. The bag is black, but the photo has been lightened to show Lurex detail. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.
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Florence “Peggy” Ives was born in 1906 in Machias, Washington County, Maine to Charles and Mary Ives. In 1929, she married jewelry maker Vincent Gookin (1875-1949; they may have been divorced as Peggy is not named as one of his survivors in his obituary). They had a son, Vincent, Jr. (1930-unk.) and a daughter, Angela (1932-2014). Peggy Ives’ second husband was building contractor Linwood Thomas (1891-1984), whom she married in 1954.
Per a June 8, 1947 Richmond Times Dispatch article, her first studio in Ogunquit was a home that had been converted to a bus depot. The article said she initially worked her antique looms while also selling bus tickets. According to a September 29, 1952 article in the Bangor Daily News, Ms. Ives traveled all over New England as a child because her father’s job took the family to various locations. She eventually settled in New York City, where she worked for the Federal Reserve Bank. One day, on her lunch hour, she observed a weaver in Greenwich Village. Enamored of the craft, she started taking classes, then became so proficient that she opened her own shop in New York. By 1925, she’d moved back to Maine, and started a business on the heavily traveled Route 1 in Ogunquit. Her business thrived, and within 20 years, she had a staff of six weavers. She made a number of wearables (handbags were not her primary product) and used different types of yarn, including Lurex. The Vintage Purse Museum’s Peggy Ives handbag is made of wool and Lurex.
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| Peggy Ives at her loom. Photo from the Spring 1948 edition of The Pine Cone: A Panorama of Maine, screenshot from Maine Digital. |
Lurex is brand name for a metallic yarn created by the Dobeckmun Company, and trademarked in 1945. Dow Chemical acquired Dobeckmun in 1957. The website AskArt says that Ms. Ives was hired by Reynolds Metals as a consultant for Lurex. Reynolds Metals Co. was an aluminum products manufacturer (est. 1919, acquired by Alcoa in 2000). We believe it is possible that Reynolds was confused for Dobeckmun/Dow Chemical in the AskArt attribution. The Vintage Purse Museum found a newspaper article in which Peggy Ives participated in a fashion show presented by Dobeckmun. Renowned weaver Dorothy Liebes, whom we also feature in this post (see Sailor Made, below), was also a consultant for Dobeckmun, per the Beaker & Bulb article about Lurex and Peggy Ives (shown directly below).
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| Article that refers to Peggy Ives' use of Lurex in her woven products. Screenshot from The Bobbin & Beaker magazine, Vol. 12, No. 4, Summer Issue, 1954. From the website of Clemson University. |
According to the Facebook page Wish You Were Here – An Album of Messages and Memories From Old Ogunquit, Peggy Ives purchased a historical property known as the Walnut Grove Inn in 1951, where she had her weaving business. The Facebook page reports that the property was sold to two gentlemen in 1959 to convert to a tavern; however, we found a newspaper article that said Peggy Ives sold her business to Mr. and Mrs. J. Hugh Dennett in 1958. It could very well be that Ms. Ives only sold the Dennets the weaving business, and leased the property to them prior to selling it to the tavern owners just a year later. (Research indicates the Dennetts had other business interests.)
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| Fantastic 1959 photo of Peggy Ives with the new owners of her former property. We screenshot this some time ago and can't find the original source to credit. If you know, please email us so that we can add a proper credit to this photo. Thank you! |
Per newspaper social columns after 1960, it appears that Peggy Ives had retired, and was more commonly referred to by her married name, Mrs. Linwood Thomas, rather than her professional name.
Florence “Peggy” Ives Gookin Thomas passed away in 2001 in Biddeford, York County, Maine.
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Tenafly Weavers, Tenafly, New Jersey
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Front view of Tenafly Weavers bag, from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.
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Tenafly Weavers was established in 1916 in Tenafly, New Jersey by Winifred Mitchell, born Margaret Winifred Mitchell in 1870 in Scotland to David Thompson Mitchell and Mary Ferguson Mitchell, who had 13 other children. Ms. Mitchell became a naturalized American citizen in 1914. She started her weaving business in the garden of her New Jersey home. (We’ve investigated various addresses given for the Tenafly Weavers, but are omitting those that are currently private residences.)
Ms. Mitchell told a newspaper reporter in 1922 that she’d studied at the London School of Weaving (founded 1898, closed 1970), and the “Peasants School of Arts and Crafts at Haslemere” (established 1898, now a museum). We found an advertorial for Tenafly Weavers in the June 1917 edition of House Beautiful magazine. “Miss Winifred Mitchell” is mentioned in a 1918 newspaper article about rehabilitating disabled WWI soldiers by teaching them crafts. In other articles, she was said to have employed “semi-invalids,” presumably meaning those with physical challenges. In 1919, she was reported to have been made a Master Weaver by the Arts and Crafts Society. (We are unsure which society this refers to, as there was one in the UK as well as the US.) Her business rapidly expanded and she went on to employ 20 workers, including two recruited from “Queen Alexandra’s school” in England. (Queen Alexandra’s House, Kensington, built in 1884, was a female students’ hostel on the grounds of the Royal Colleges of Music, Art and Science.) We cannot verify Ms. Mitchell’s education or bestowments.
Another article about Tenafly Weavers, published in 1964 (five years after Ms. Mitchell’s death), says the business came about because Ms. Mitchell was a nurse to “an arthritically crippled” woman, and took a weaving class at Columbia University to help her employer “regain physical skills.” We found no mention of this in articles in which she was directly interviewed, so we don’t know if the 1964 story is entirely or partially accurate. (A different article, also written after her death, says Ms. Mitchell had a "friend confined to a wheelchair.") A genealogy website indicates a Winifred Mitchell, born in 1870, was a “lady’s companion” in London in 1901, so it could be that this was the same Ms. Mitchell, and the “lady” was the employer with arthritis.
A 1921 newspaper article said the Tenafly Weavers “occupy the entire top floor of the largest building in Tenafly” making “baby scarfs, baby blankets, bags, and table covers,” and that they procured their yarn from Philadelphia and custom dyed most of their materials.
In 1924, there was a fire that damaged a number of businesses, including the Tenafly Weavers, whose looms were destroyed. Ms. Mitchell went to Paterson, New Jersey, ordered new looms, relocated the business to the Old Town Hall, and workers resumed their weaving within two weeks. Some time prior to 1931, Winifred Mitchell moved the factory and store to the historic “Old Dutch Homestead” (the Roelof Westervelt House, built in 1745) in the city of Tenafly. She restored the building and added a tearoom, but was asked to leave the premises in 1934, allegedly because of zoning. She was allowed to stay for a while, but nearby residents didn’t want a business in their neighborhood, and Ms. Mitchell eventually lost the battle to keep her business there. She had a showroom and studio in Closter, New Jersey for a brief period, and, in 1935, a boutique called E. Sylvia De Turck (Ethel Sylvia Samson Von Halle De Turck, 1890-unk.) was selling Tenafly Weavers’ scarves and bags. By 1938, Tenafly Weavers had fallen on hard times due to the Depression, and one newspaper article said Ms. Mitchell spoke about her circumstances with Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of then-US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Mrs. Roosevelt could “promise no immediate aid,” but, the article said, she would discuss it with her husband.
Tenafly Weavers was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. U.H. Swett. One article said the Swetts acquired it in 1935, but we believe it was closer to 1938, when Ms. Mitchell’s business was affected by The Depression, and after being kicked out of the Old Dutch Homestead. The Swetts eventually moved the business to Bristol, Maine (more about that below).
Winifred Mitchell at far left, 1953. Mrs. O.W. Hovey, seated, is Winifred Mitchell's niece, Fanny.
A 1953 article about the Winchester Thurston school's alumnae fundraiser said Winifred Mitchell moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsyvania five years earlier to be closer to the school, founded by her late sister Dr. Mary A. Graham Mitchell (1860-1947). It appears that Winifred Mitchell was active in fundraising and other events for Winchester Thurston (established 1887, still operating today, and has a "Miss Mitchell Society" in honor of Dr. Mitchell).
Winifred Mitchell didn’t marry or have children, but she had family members in the US, to whom she left an estate worth $116,559. Her executrix was a niece, Fanny Mitchell Hovey, who was also in charge of Dr. Mary Mitchell's estate and facilitated the Winchester Thurston school's transition to nonprofit status in 1952.
Winifred Mitchell passed away in 1959 at age 89 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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Singing Cove Products, Successor to Tenafly Weavers
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Houndstooth-design woven bag by Singing Cove Products. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.
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In or around 1938, Tenafly Weavers was sold to Ubert Harold Swett (1892-1958) and his wife Sadie Helen Hyman Swett (1894-1957). Mr. Swett was employed in the automobile business in New Jersey. One article says that Mrs. Swett had worked for the Tenafly Weavers’ original owner Winifred Mitchell. The Swetts wanted to return to Mr. Swett's home state of Maine, so, in the early 1940s, they moved Tenafly Weavers to the neighborhood of Round Pond in Bristol, Maine, where they had a 200-acre farm. Weaving operations were inside a barn on the property.
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| Screenshot of the former Tenafly Weavers barn in Round Pond, Maine, taken from Zillow. |
In the late 1940s, the Swetts set up a rehabilitation program for disabled World War II veterans, training them to use the looms.
Mr. Swett passed away in 1958, and the company was purchased by Dorothy F. Gross in 1959, who moved it to her own studio/barn in Damariscotta, Maine. Mrs. Gross had been making jams, jellies and fruitcakes marketed under the name Singing Cove Sweets, which is how Tenafly Weavers became Singing Cove Products. We don’t know how long her post-1959 woven goods’ labels read “Hand Woven by Singing Cove Products Inc. - Successor to The Tenafly Weavers,” but perhaps she continued to include the name because of The Tenafly Weavers' reputation and legacy. The wool for her fabrics primarily came from Maine and New Hampshire sheep, and much of the raw materials were spun in a mill in the town of Phillips, Maine.
In 1968, Singing Cove Products was purchased by bank executive Horace Chapman Brewer (1922-1990) and his wife, Joan Ruby Higgins Brewer (1921-2006). We believe the company closed its doors around 1975, but were unable to confirm the exact date.
Maine had and still has a large weaving community. Here's a 1951 article that mentions both Peggy Ives and Tenafly Weavers.
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Sailor Made - US Marine Hospital - San Francisco and The Dorothy Liebes Connection
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"Sailor Made" yarn embroidered handbag, from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.
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The Vintage Purse Museum acquired this interesting piece of history after a link to it was sent to us by our lovely Instagram friend @dolledup.desirae. She asked us if we knew anything about the label, and we didn’t, but we were determined to find out—so we acquired the bag!
Desirae is from the Bay Area and has a different handbag with this label, and the seller of our bag told us theirs was owned by their mother, also from the Bay Area. We immediately hit the newspaper archives, input a few keywords, and found articles referencing The Red Cross Arts and Skills Corps.
After WWII, there were numerous wounded and disabled military service personnel in hospitals all over the US. This form of occupational therapy was not a new concept in WWII, as shared in our story about Tenafly Weavers, who were employing veterans of WWI. However, the Arts and Skills Corps seems to have been a more concentrated and well-participated organization, at least in part because of tremendous media exposure.
According to the website of The American Red Cross (a humanitarian organization, established in 1881 by Clara Barton): “Arts and Skills Corps began in 1944 as a means for rehabilitation by giving patients an opportunity to do creative and constructive work under the direction of artists and craftsmen. At its peak, the Corps offered instruction in arts and crafts to the war-injured in 105 domestic hospitals (6,645 volunteers in 1945-46).” (The Vintage Purse Museum found articles with references to The Red Cross Arts and Skills Corps from 1943 until the early 1970s.)
These arts and skills included—but were not limited to—leatherwork, jewelry making, toy making, wood craft, block printing, painting, drawing, fly-tying, metalwork, book-binding, and weaving.
Here’s where it gets even more interesting: The concept for The Red Cross Arts and Skills Corps was created by Dorothy Wright Liebes, sometimes referred to as “the mother of modern weaving.”
Dorothy Katherine Wright Liebes Morin (1898-1972; date of birth varies online) was a native of Santa Rosa, California. Her parents were Frederick Wright and Elizabeth “Bessie” Wright. She was the eldest of four siblings.
Nicknamed “Dynamo Dot,” Dorothy Liebes attended San Jose State Teacher’s College, University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University, and California School of Fine Arts (now known as the San Francisco Art Institute). She started out as a teacher. Then, after studying weaving at Hull House, Chicago, founded her own textile business. (Liebes was the surname of her first husband, and she continued to use it professionally after their divorce in 1929.) There’s conflicting information about the starting date and location of her company. One source says she established Dorothy Liebes Designs, Inc. in 1930 in San Francisco, but another says it began in 1934 in Berkeley. She moved her business to New York in 1952.
There’s a great deal online about Ms. Liebes, her famous textiles, and her contributions to fashion and interior design, but we hoped to learn more about this “Sailor Made” bag. Here’s what we discovered: In 1943, the National Director of the newly formed Red Cross Arts and Skills Corps was sculptor Jane Sage White Fuller Canfield (1897-1984; often referred to as “Mrs. Cass Canfield” in newspaper articles). Dorothy Liebes, who was already well known for her work in the textile industry, was National Art Director. Some sources give different Red Cross job titles for both women, but Ms. Liebes is consistently credited with coming up with the idea of the Arts and Skills Corps.
According to the 2012 document “In Service to the Nation: Arts and Crafts and the Military” by Tara Leigh Tappert, Ph.D., the Arts and Skills Corps was “Initially in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco...the program spread across the country and attracted thousands of volunteer artists and craftsmen who offered instruction in arts and crafts to the war injured in military and domestic hospitals.”
We reached out to Dr. Tappert, who graciously shared her knowledge. We asked her if Dorothy Liebes personally instructed veterans in the art of weaving. In her email to us, Dr. Tappert wrote: "Arts and Skills trained some 2,500 artisans across the country to work with wounded and disabled veterans in over 100 hospitals. While Dorothy Wright Liebes may have been involved in designing the training program for the participating artisans, I don't think she was doing direct hands-on work with the wounded and disabled military service members."
The Vintage Purse Museum’s bag, which we at first thought was woven, was examined by two of our needlework expert friends. They told us it was not loom-woven, but hand-embroidered and stitched yarn. We believe it was constructed by a veteran who was recovering at the Marine Hospital in San Francisco during the mid- to late-1940s. (The Marine Hospital, built circa 1853, was renamed the Public Health Service Hospital in 1912; however, we found references to it still being called “the Marine Hospital” in newspapers as late as 1977.)
As to the “Sailor Made” label, we could not find its origins. We know that Ms. Liebes was in charge of numerous exhibits and demonstrations of veteran-made wares, and had close ties to the Bay Area. We thought perhaps she encouraged the sales of Sailor Made products at such events. We asked Dr. Tappert if it was possible that Ms. Liebes had something to do with the labels and where these products were sold. She wrote: "The objects made by the wounded and disabled service members working with artisans trained through the Red Cross Arts & Skills were exhibited and for sale throughout the U.S. in many ways—at the hospitals, as well as at museums and art centers. The labels may well have been developed as a way to advertise the Arts and Skills program, but I would not say that Liebes specifically designed the label. Still, it would be her sense of business being applied to the marketing of the products that were for sale."
By the early 1950s, the Arts and Skills Corps was referred to in newspaper articles as the “arts and skills service” (lower case).
Dorothy Liebes went on to have a spectacular career as a textile designer, color consultant, and advisor to Dow, DuPont, Jantzen and other companies. Her designs were exhibited in museums, and she received numerous professional accolades. She and her second husband, journalist Relman Morin, died less than a year apart, in 1972 and 1973, respectively.
Dr. Tappert told us there is currently a Dorothy Liebes exhibit at Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum in New York City, running until February 24, 2024.
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Jo Hagewood Bags, Gatlinburg, Tennessee
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| Jo Hagewood woven nylon bag, from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
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| Label inside bag above. |
Josephine “Jo” Lala Ogle (1916-1991) was born in Blount County, Tennessee, at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains. Her parents were Samuel Burton Ogle and Lillie Mae Boling Ogle, who had ten children, including Jo. The Ogle family were early settlers of The Sugarlands, near what was to become Gatlinburg. (There are numerous historical articles about the Ogles and the Gatlinburg area.)
Per the 1940 US Census, Josephine Ogle was living with her parents and working as a waitress at an unnamed hotel. Josephine Ogle’s first husband was Lorris Vester Hagewood (1908-1956). In the 1940 US Census, Lorris Hagewood was listed as a carpenter. He and Josephine Ogle married in 1940 or 1941, and had a daughter, Paula. According to the 1950 Census, Lorris was the “manager” and Josephine was the “bookkeeper” of a “wholesale bag co.” They also owned several commercial properties, including the Hagewood Motel, which was sold in 1965 to the Conners (Lorris Hagewood’s sister and brother-in-law).
The handbag business was located in the mountain resort city of Gatlinburg, in Sevier County. (Sevier County, Tennessee is the birthplace of music superstar Dolly Parton, who later built Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Sevier County. During the course of our research, we learned that Dolly Parton’s best friend is an Ogle family member.)
A 1949 Knoxville News-Sentinel column, “Strolling,” by longtime columnist Bert Vincent (1896-1969) said that Josephine Ogle Hagewood’s nylon bags were a popular item at a store on Gay St. in Knoxville, Tennessee (about an hour from Gatlinburg), with a whopping 200 dozen of them sold in two weeks. Bert Vincent was at the store with Ms. Hagewood and asked, “Aren’t you proud? Look at those women grabbing for the bags you designed.” Her response was an emotional, “Yes—I am—but, well, I just can’t understand it."
Bert Vincent said that Jo Hagewood initially brought a few dozen samples to the (unnamed) store, and the department heads quickly asked her to make more of them. Ms. Hagewood ended up recruiting 48 home crafters, including her family and friends, to loom nylon scraps into bags. She’d originally made her handbags out of cotton, but couldn’t get enough cotton scraps, so using nylon was, she said, “sort of an accident.” She soon learned that she preferred nylon anyway, because it dries quickly after washing.
In a follow-up column, Bert Vincent said he was chided by someone (their name is in the column, but we are withholding it for privacy) for crediting Jo Hagewood with being the “genius” behind these designs. The person told Mr. Vincent that they’d been produced by Smoky Mountain crafters for three years prior to Jo Hagewood’s business venture. Bert Vincent acknowledged that “…this art, this genius is not confined to just one weaver, nor to any 10 or 20 weavers.” But he also wrote, “Of course I bragged on Mrs. Hagewood. Why shucks, I’d brag on any mountain woman who hit the big city markets with a homemade article that outshone the smartest creations of the sophisticated cities.”
Once the Hagewoods found local success, their sales expanded nationally, with Josephine Hagewood occasionally providing live demonstrations of loom weaving at department stores. Lorris Hagewood had at least three patents for different styles of woven nylon bags from 1953-1955.
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| One of Lorris Hagewood's patented designs, screenshot from Google patents. |
Many Hagewood handbag advertisements emphasized their folksy origins, and several ads even called them “handwoven hillbilly bags.” Some advertisements for woven nylon bags of this era do not have the Hagewood name attached, but the styles appear to be similar to those patented by Mr. Hagewood, although there could have been imitators.
The woven nylon handbag trend lasted into the 1960s, but it’s unclear if these later bags were made by other companies. It’s possible Ms. Hagewood stopped producing handbgs a few years after her husband’s death at just 48 years old, as she also had real estate and motel businesses to run. We found early 1960s woven nylon handbag classified ads geared to church groups, who were encouraged to sell them for fundraisers. There’s no mention of maker, and there is no evidence Ms. Hagewood was connected with this mail-order business.
It is unclear when Josephine Hagewood married her second husband, William Roy “Bill” McInturff (1916-2010). Josephine Ogle Hagewood McInturff passed away in 1991 at age 74 in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. She is buried in the Smoky Mountain Memory Gardens. Her headstone says “A wonderful person and wife.”
Special thanks to Tara Leigh Tappert, Ph.D, for her invaluable help. Most information for this article was found on MyHeritage.com and Newspapers.com, to which we have paid subscriptions, and through Google, with credits linked or noted. We reached out to a number of other individuals and organizations for assistance with this article, including The Red Cross and the Presidio Trust, which manages the site of the former US Marine/Public Health Hospital. The Red Cross didn't respond, but the managers of the Presidio Trust were very kind and responded immediately; however, their focus is primarily on the architecture and archeology of the sites they manage. We also contacted several historical societies and relatives of weavers, and will update this post if we acquire further information. This article c2023 by Wendy Dager/The Vintage Purse Museum. Please do not use information or photos from our website without permission, info@vintagepursemuseum.com.
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