Special Updated Post 2023: The Straeter Lite-On Handbag

1950s Straeter Lite-On handbag, from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

The Straeter Lite-On Handbag
Special Updated Post

This post about the innovative 1950s Straeter Lite-On handbag supersedes The Vintage Purse Museum's original article from 2017. We added quite a few updates to that article over the years, so its format had become a bit muddled. Then, last year, we received information about Mr. Straeter from the wonderful research team at Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam. This new version of our historical article is to clarify and organize facts about the Straeter Lite-On handbag, as well as to dispel one very persistent myth!

The Vintage Purse Museum's butterscotch-colored leather Straeter Lite-On bag, made in Germany.

The Vintage Purse Museum first learned of the Straeter Lite-On handbag after seeing this 1955 video from British Pathe'.

The exterior of the bag looks very much like the a classically-styled 1950s leather purse. However, the inside is a remarkable confabulation of utility and art. Meant to help a stylish lady light up her front door's keyhole when she arrives home from the club after a martini or two, it is a combination of handsome handbag, fancy flashlight, and beauty compact.

The metal compact is 24-karat gold-plated, which was an upscale finish on handbag hardware utilized by a number of mid-century bag makers. It has ornate stylized etchings of nude women on the gold part, and a Grecian woman statue on one side of the mirror. There are makeup mirror bulbs underneath the compact, and it operates by pushing the buttons on either side of the clasp. You can lift the mirror to check your makeup or light up your doorway.

Brown suede Straeter handbag, labeled "Made in The Netherlands."
From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

Interior of the bag above.

Additional view of interior of the bag above.

Closeup of the bag's copyright notice under the mirror flap. We assume "persecuted" was
a typographical error, or perhaps a mistake in translation from Dutch to English.

These handbags were available in a variety of colors, materials and sizes, and there appears to have been some variation of their interiors. We learned much more about style and color choices from ads, one of which we received from a relative of Straeter's US representative. (More about that below.)

Mon, Sep 21, 1953 – 14 · The Leader-Post (Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada) · Newspapers.com

The Vintage Purse Museum's brown suede Straeter is missing items such as the instruction booklet, cigarette case and comb, but has the lipstick holder and perfume bottle. Hidden inside its workings is the enormous, old-school, flashlight-size battery.

The large battery has a Straeter Lite-On label. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

We acquired an original 1956 press photo that attributed this bag to LS Mayer, which we thought was curious, particularly because earlier newspaper fashion columns were gushing about its inventor, Willy Straeter.

Original press photo from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

Reverse of press photo above.

We received the following info from our friend Lisa Larsson (@LSMayergal on Facebook and Instagram), historian and curator of The World of LS Mayer, after we asked her about the LS Mayer/Bagcraft connection to the Straeter handbag.

KEEPING THE 'LITE-ON' I was recently contacted by the owner of The Vintage Purse Museum to enquire about a mysterious '...
Posted by The World of L S Mayer on Sunday, September 13, 2020

We later found the 1955 ad below, which attributes the Straeter Lite-On to LSM Bagcraft, which was its UK producer, as we learned from the World of LS Mayer.

27 Nov 1955, Sun The Observer (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

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Now for some myth-busting. One of the most important things about this bag that we cannot emphasize enough is that there is an incorrect attribution attached to it that continues to this day, despite our attempts to clear it up. On several websites and other sources we found online, it is stated as fact (or distinct possibility) that this purse was originally a collaborative design in the 1930s by Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dali, who were friends. We contacted the Schiaparelli and Dali organizations, and were essentially told by Dali representatives that there is no evidence of this. The Schiaparelli people never answered.

In fact, there is no documentation that supports a Dali or Schiaparelli connection, per the World of LS Mayer, as well as our continued research. There is also no evidence that this bag was manufactured and sold prior to 1951 or after 1957. In fact, the window of time for its production is likely smaller than that.

We also checked out Delman, which, along with Bagcraft, is the company noted on the label of the Straeter bag in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (as linked by The World of LS Mayer). Delman was a retailer, not a manufacturer, and simply carried the Straeter bags in its chain of retail shoe stores. (Retailers occasionally labeled handbags with their own stores' labels in addition to or in place of the manufacturers' labels.)

Because of the British Pathe' video stating these bags were of "Anglo-Dutch cooperation," as well as the confirmed Bagcraft affliation, we weren't certain that anyone but Bagcraft manufactured Straeter Lite-On handbags, especially with that gold-plated compact component. We explored the theory that the Straeters labeled "Made in Germany" and other countries were not actually manufactured in those countries, but imported from the UK. So we once again contacted Lisa Larsson and asked her opinion. She suggested that perhaps there were licensing deals with Mr. Straeter and Bagcraft in other countries. The reason we thought to ask was because we had learned that the US had an importer/representative of Straeter, which led us to wonder if there were importer/representatives in Europe labeling UK bags with different labels, or actual factories (Germany, Netherlands, etc.) making and labeling the bags. This brings about the question of legality as to the labeling of the bags "Made in Germany" or "Made in The Netherlands," and so on, if they weren't actually constructed in factories in those countries. So, it's more than likely Mr. Straeter and/or Bagcraft contracted with factories in countries outside the UK.

Straeter Lite-On label from bag in the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

We wanted to know more about the Lite-On's inventor Leonard Friedrich William (L.F.W.) "Willy" Straeter. When we started our investigation in 2017, we thought he was Dutch, so we contacted the Tassen Museum of Bags and Purses in Amsterdam to see if he'd left any descendants in the area, or at least some information about his life and work. They said they'd try to help, but we did not hear back. (The Tassen Museum closed its doors March 2020.)

In autumn 2022, on a whim, we contacted the Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam (OBA, The Amsterdam Public Library) and, wow, did they deliver! Their information team members Frank Verbeek and Andrea van Wely did a deep dive into their archives and sent us a number of articles, along with translations and explanations, for which we are extremely grateful.

1936 classified ad placed by Mr. Straeter for an agent with capital to represent a "new English invention, a film device that records and projects." Ad found by the OBA team.

Per the OBA team's findings, Leonard Friedrich Wilhelm Sträeter was born in 1910 in Münster, Germany. (His birth surname had a slightly different spelling than that which he used while living in The Netherlands, and it appears that he changed "Wilhelm" to "William.") His occupation was manufacturer. (In Dutch, the word is "fabrikant.") In US newspaper articles, he is alternately referred to as an "inventor" or "engineer." These job titles appear to be accurate, based on the information shared with us by the OBA team.

He was married to Johanna Cornelia Wilhelmina "Anneke" Koops (birth surname alternately spelled "Coops"), with whom he had two children (names withheld for privacy). Leonard and Johanna married May 11, 1940 and divorced August 26, 1970. The couple had several addresses in Amsterdam, including Vijzelstraat and Valeriusstraat.

We reached out to one of L.F.W. Straeter's children on their personal Facebook page (discovered by the OBA team), as well as a person whom we believe to be one of Mr. Straeter's grandchildren. They didn't respond. We tried several times over the last year to contact potential relatives before writing this updated article.

February 18, 1953, The Telegraph. Article clipped and sent to The Vintage Purse Museum by the OBA information team.

1955 The Telegraph newspaper article about Mr. Straeter surviving an incident in which a street
facade collapsed and "how he narrowly escaped." Article found and shared by the OBA team.

In addition to a number of articles about the Straeter Lite-On handbag, as well as information about Mr. Straeter and some of his relatives, the OBA team sent us a link to a blog post with a clip of a 1950 article about Anneke Straeter, featuring a photo of her, one of her children, and the green 1950 Skoda 1102 Roadster in which she had won the concours d'elegance in Noordwijk, Netherlands.

We learned from the OBA team that L.F.W. Straeter passed away at age 65 in Amsterdam in 1976. His name in the newspaper obituary is "Wil Sträter," and it lists his wife (or ex-wife) as Anneke Sträter-Coops, with his children using the surname spelled "Straeter."

***

While trying to establish the time frame for the sales of these bags, we found newspaper ads and fashion columns about the Straeter handbag as early as 1953. The latest reference is the original press photo from our collection, dated 1956. This does not mean they weren't made earlier or later. However, we have not found additional documentation, other than the patent application, which only indicates date of invention rather than a starting date for production. Based on this, we believe the Straeter Lite-On handbags, in various colors and sizes, were in production from about 1953-1956.

As to a decades-earlier lighted handbag, we have only found patent-holders who are not Mr. Straeter, nor are they Salvador Dali or Elsa Schiaparelli. The inventors' names and their patents are noted in Mr. Straeter's US patent. Such citations are typically made when filing new patents, likely to acknowledge previous, similar inventions in order to avoid patent or design infringement.

Mr. Straeter originally filed the patent in 1951 in the US. The document also says he filed his original Netherlands patent in 1950. Again, it should be noted that patent date is not necessarily the same as production date.

Screenshot from the 1954 Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office.

Mr. Straeter's US patent for the Straeter Lite-On, screenshot from Google patents.

We found an ad for the Canadian representative of the Straeter Lite-On, which gave the company's Netherlands address as 227 Kerkstraat, Amsterdam. Today this bustling street is a series of apartment row houses and small shops, so we are reasonably sure that Mr. Straeter had an office there. If bags were being made at this location, it was a very small operation.

Andrea van Wely from OBA told us in an email: "The Kerkstraat is the longest street of Amsterdam. And another nice fact (although we did not verify the information) is that Kerkstraat 227 is a very old residence. Construction year...(was)1737. Even for an old town as Amsterdam this is very old."

According to the website of the Bag Lady Emporium, "Straeter Lite-On America" was among the exhibits at the January 1954 Accessories Show at the Hotel McAlpin in New York City. This event was organized by the editors of Handbags & Accessories (a trade publication), but there is no mention of names of the US reps for Straeter.

Below is a screenshot of a ship's manifest listing "Leonard" Straeter's 1953 visit to the US. Perhaps he was meeting with US representatives regarding importing and distributing the Lite-On, or prepping for the 1954 accessories' show the following year. Or maybe, as the newspaper clipping below it states, he was there to present one of his handbags to First Lady Mamie Eisenhower.

Ship's manifest screenshot from MyHeritage, to which we have a paid subscription.

13 Mar 1953, Fri The Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia) Newspapers.com

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A few years after our 2017 post about the Straeter Lite-On, we returned to the newspaper archives and found the obituary of New Jersey resident John S. Hendry (1904-1954). The obituary said he was the US importer of Straeter Lite-On handbags at the time of his death in July of 1954. Prior to that he worked for women's clothier Oppenheim Collins, then was an executive at Mayflower Store Interiors, Inc., a division of McKendry-Adams. He and his wife, Ethel Jean "Lee" Liberty Hendry (1914-1999) were married in 1937. They were active in numerous local theatre groups and owned a hearing aid store in Buffalo, New York prior to Mr. Hendry's affiliation with Mr. Straeter. We spoke with Mr. Hendry's daughter Linda (last name withheld for privacy), who, although very young in 1954, remembered the handbags. After her father passed away, her mother, Lee, tried to keep the handbag business going. Linda remembers that there were many shelves full of Straeter bags stored in the family's garage. She and her sister Suzanne helped their mother by testing the batteries in each bag prior to them being transported to a large department store in New York City.

1952 newspaper photo of John S. Hendry, US rep for Straeter Lite-On bags,
clipped via subscription to Newspapers.com.

After we spoke with Linda, she found her Straeter bag in storage. Inside was an advertisement created by her mother after her father's passing. She graciously mailed a copy of it to The Vintage Purse Museum. This ad helps us know more about the Straeter Lite-On's features and the many colors and fabrics it came in.

Advertisement for Straeter Lite-On handbags created by Mrs. Hendry, courtesy of her daughter Linda. Note that this was after Mr. Hendry passed away, so many were discounted in price.

Closeup of upper right portion of advertisement sent to The Vintage Purse Museum by the daughter of John and Lee Hendry.

The Vintage Purse Museum found an article that appeared shortly after Mr. Hendry's death, which said a real estate developer named Alexander Doig (1893-1966) was representing Straeter Lite-On handbags in the US.

1966 newspaper photo of Alexander Doig, US Straeter Lite-On rep,
clipped via subscription to Newspapers.com.

Mr. Hendry's daughter Linda was not familiar with Mr. Doig, but there is a 1925 newspaper article (unrelated to the handbag business) that seems to link Mr. Doig with Mr. Hendry, indicating they had a relative in common. They were also originally from the same town in Scotland. Therefore, we believe they were at least acquainted and possibly related. Interestingly, Mr. Doig's wife, Elizabeth (1896-1946), had a Dutch maiden name.

We talked to Alexander Doig's daughter, Marilyn (last name withheld for privacy), who remembered the handbags. She was very close to her father, particularly after her mother's death when Marilyn was just 16 years old. She told us her father had gifted her with two Straeter Lite-On handbags. She no longer has them, but she shared a Lite-On related memory with us. In 1953, Marilyn's husband was a US serviceman stationed in Germany. She was pregnant at the time, and wanted to join him there. As her father was traveling to the UK for Queen Elizabeth II's June 2, 1953 coronation, they flew to Europe together. Marilyn went on to Germany while Alexander Doig was in England. He had plans to travel from there to Amsterdam to speak to someone about representing Straeter Lite-On handbags. Marilyn recalls that her father was not in touch with her for a while after that, which was unusual for him. She learned from her brother that something had happened concerning the handbags, which, said her brother, caused their father to "become depressed." Marilynn never found out what happened, but the timeline appears to show that Mr. Hendry and Mr. Doig were both connected to Straeter Lite-On America from 1953-1954.

Marilyn told us that even though her mother had Dutch ancestry, there was no connection to L.F.W. Straeter. What remains a mystery is why Mr. Hendry, an entrepreneur with no prior involvement in the bag business, and Mr. Doig, a real estate developer, would become handbag representatives, nor how they came to know Mr. Straeter.

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Fun fact: The high-end fashion brand Loewe created its own homage to the Straeter Lite-On.

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We'll once again update this post should we receive more info. Scroll down for more photos and advertisements.

Special thanks to Lisa Larsson of The World of LS Mayer, Frank Verbeek and Andrea van Wely at Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam, The Bag Lady, and the daughters of the two US Straeter representatives. Other information was obtained through Newspapers.com and MyHeritage.com, to which we have paid subscriptions, and through Google. This article c2023 by Wendy Dager/The Vintage Purse Museum. Please do not use information or photos from our website without requesting permission, vintagepursemuseum@gmail.com.

Butterscotch-colored leather Straeter bag and brown suede Straeter bag.
Both from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

14 Feb 1954, Sun The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) Newspapers.com
Additional photos below of interior of Straeter Lite-On bags from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.