SPECIAL POST! The Old Masters - A 1960s Handbag Trend

Treffen im Park by Jean-Baptiste Joseph Pater, bag by Stylecraft. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

The Old Masters – A 1960s Handbag Trend

The Vintage Purse Museum has in its collection a number of 1960s handbags and purse accessories featuring reproductions of “Old Masters” paintings on fabric. Handbag makers employing Old Masters designs on silk include Stylecraft of Miami, Soure Bags NY, Faye Mell and others. As with all handbag fads, it's sometimes difficult to say which handbag maker was "first." However, when we started looking into this, we felt that the originator of the Old Masters handbag trend in the US was more than likely Tano of Madrid (est. 1930s and still in business). Our hunch was confirmed by Steven Giner of Tano, to whom we are very grateful. (More about his assistance below.)

The Coach to Louveciennes by Camille Pissaro, clutch by Tano, made in Spain. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

06 Nov 1961, Mon The Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) Newspapers.com

There were countless 1920s-1970s makers that had antique paintings as focal points of their handbags using various media, including beads, tapestry and needlework (often petit point). Many of these were 18th century designs featuring romantic European motifs such as the “courting couple,” or elegant ladies being serenaded by a lute-player. Sometimes decorations were more subtle, as in the case of the handbag company Tyrolean, which was known to embellish some of its 1950s bags with Fragonard art on porcelain cameos. There were also 1950s-1970s handbags with basically the same idyllic painting aesthetic, but set in Asia.

The Vintage Purse Museum discovered a 1934 article about an exhibition of Japanese art painted on silk by the “famous old masters of the Ukioye (sic) School.” We acknowledge that silk painting is an ancient art, and there are a number of resources online that explain the history and techniques of many types, including ukiyo-e. 

For this article, our focus is 1960s Italian screen-printed fabric with Old Masters designs on handbags and purse accessories, including coin purses, eyeglass cases, beauty compacts, photo holders and more. While this trend seems somewhat niche, many Old Masters items were produced in a relatively short period. These handbags and accessories primarily used silk or satin fabric (we’ve also seen reproductions of artwork on leather; example at bottom of page), and most often showcase paintings of landscapes or people surrounded by foliage. The goal in our researching Old Masters handbags is to pinpoint the inspiration, and take a closer look at how they were made and marketed.

Earliest mention of Old Masters handbags that we could find (1960) in the newspaper archive. 
13 Sep 1960, Tue Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) Newspapers.com

Souvenir de Mortefontaine by Jean Baptiste Camille Coro, handbag by Stylecraft. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

First, let’s address the issue of copyright. As a general rule, works of art over 100 years old are considered public domain, which means it was perfectly legal to use these art pieces as handbag motifs and on apparel and décor.

Unquestionably, Old Masters artworks have been subject for centuries to numerous cycles of heightened popularity and attention in museums and the art world. Because public interest comes and goes, these paintings were reproduced by an assortment of industries over many years. An example of early use of celebrated artworks as mass-produced products are small-size tobacco “silks” (also known as “blankets,” “flags” and “felts”) of the 1910s, which were premiums that came with the purchase of tobacco products. Sometimes silks were sewn together to make blankets or wall art. There were series of tobacco silks representing countries’ flags, college pennants, and other collectible designs that included Old Masters paintings. Most Old Masters tobacco silks were portraits. During this time period, around 1913, one could purchase Old Masters prints in frames for residential use. 

As to 1960s home décor, we found references to Old Masters in newspaper advertisements for reproduction prints and paintings, tiny silk or satin pictures of Old Masters artworks in ornate frames, and inset on the lids of trinket boxes. 

The curator of The Vintage Purse Museum recalls her mother making needlepoint versions of Old Masters works in the 1970s. Old Masters needlepoint craft kits were sold by the Hiawatha company as early as the 1940s. Hiawatha is also known for producing beaded handbag craft kits and supplies in the 1930s-1940s.

Top, Landscape With a Group of Figures by Giuseppe Zais, bag with bracelet handle by Faye Mell Design. Right, The Swing by Jean-Honore Fragonard, bag by Soure. Bottom, The Clothed Maja by Francisco Goya, coin purse, no maker label. Left, Music Lesson by Jean-Baptiste Hilair, eyeglass case, no maker label. 

When it comes to the Old Masters in mid-century apparel, we found a 1960 social column about a group of women in Modesto, California who were at a party in which they were all wearing “attractive ensembles,” including one whose dress was “an old masters silk print of dark green and brown tones on white.” We also found a 1961 newspaper advertisement for a scarf by Jacqmar (est. 1932, still in business) “in pure silk from their Old Masters series - a Bellini reproduction in sepia on seaspray.” In 1962, there was a fashion column by Dorothy Sams, who reported: “Old masters are reproduced on pure white silk, making a lovely shirt for beautifully tailored silk slacks.”

A 1963 syndicated article by Newspaper Enterprise Association beauty editor Alicia Hart claimed spring hairdos were influenced by the “coiffures of women painted by artists such as Da Vinci and Fragonard.” Hart said that famous ‘60s style icons Brigitte Bardot, Elizabeth Taylor and Jacqueline Kennedy were sporting these hairstyles.

All of this information is meant to show the bigger picture—no pun intended—of the Old Masters as an all-encompassing beauty, home décor, and fashion trend. 

When we first embarked upon our journey to discover the origins of their use in handbags, we knew there were several possibilities with regard to their manufacture, based on previous research. One was that handbags and purse accessories were assembled in Italy—from which the fabric came—and the completed product was shipped to the US. 

The other theory was that Italian-made fabric was exported to US makers’ factories, where bags and matching purse accessories were constructed in-house by gluing or sewing the Old Masters-printed fabric to plain fabric backing (usually matte black) and attached to handbag hardware. (We don’t know how or where these bags and accessories were assembled for retail sales in Europe or how they were marketed to European consumers or tourists.)

Treffen im Park by Jean-Baptiste Joseph Pater, no maker label in any of these items other than "Made in Italy." Set includes handbag, clutch, makeup bag, comb case with comb and mirror, cigarette case, and lighter case with lighter. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

Some Old Masters handbags and accessories are labeled “Made in Italy,” while others only have the names of the US companies that made the bags, so both of our theories are probable, depending on maker or importer. 

Steven Giner of Tano told us where their bags were constructed, and gave us the name of the Italian city in which the fabric was made. We also learned from him that his father, Sebastian Giner (1930-2019) was the originator of Old Masters handbags.

Mr. Giner wrote: “My father, Sebastian Giner, conceptualized the old masters collection in the late 1950s. The fabrics were screen printed in Prato, Italy and shipped to Tano Iberica in Madrid to be cut and sewn and then exported to the US. My father ran the business with my uncle Peter here in the US while my grandfather (also Sebastian) ran the Tano Iberica factory in Madrid…It was a very creative space.” 

Photo of application process at the Tano Iberica handbag factory, courtesy of Steven Giner.

Photo of employees assembling bags at the Tano Iberica factory, courtesy of Steven Giner.

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Photo of Tano employee in the stitching area of the factory, courtesy of Steven Giner.

Another issue we wanted to verify was the actual process used to make the fabrics. We reached out to numerous resources, including several long-established silkscreen companies in Italy, and asked if they could explain how the fabrics were printed. The 1960s ads for Old Masters bags are somewhat confusing as these bags were alternately called: “reproduced,” “painted,” “silkscreened” and “hand-screened.” We'd hoped the Italian companies would look at photos of our bags, and tell us how 1960s silkscreening machinery worked. While we didn’t get any replies, we are pleased to know from Mr. Giner that the process for making Old Masters fabric was, in fact, screen printing, which is the same as silkscreening.

There are several regions in Italy that are well known for silk making and silkscreening, with the most famous being Lake Como, often referred to as “The Silk City.” Prato, where Tano sourced its fabric, is Tuscany’s second largest city (after Florence, known for fine leather goods), and has been a vibrant textile hub since the 12th century. We don’t know if other US handbag makers purchased their fabrics from a factory in Prato or if they had them made elsewhere in Italy.

Quite often, once a mid-century handbag company had a successful design, other makers followed suit, which is why it is sometimes difficult to definitively identify a bag’s maker without a label. Additionally, many US makers sourced their fabrics and handbags (of all types) from the same suppliers in Europe and Asia, which is why you sometimes see similar bags with different maker labels. 

Interestingly, some of the Old Masters bags appear to have recognizable twists to their construction. For instance, our Faye Mell Old Masters bag has a bracelet handle, which was used in other types of Faye Mell Bags, and our Stylecraft Old Masters handbags use metal framing that we've seen in other Stylecraft pieces. Soure, too, has a distinctive frame and handle style. So we're fairly confident that these companies brought in fabrics from Italy and constructed their bags in-house in the early 1960s. Faye Mell and Stylecraft were located in Florida, and Soure had its factory in New York.

Dancing Lessons by Louis Jambor, no maker tag. We believe this may be of more recent manufacture than the other Old Masters bags in The Vintage Purse Museum collection. 

As we have noted in previous articles, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT; a set of multilateral trade agreements originally ratified in 1947 and strongly affecting businesses during its 1964-1967 “Kennedy Round”) caused the increase in the number of imports of numerous products, including apparel and fashion accessories. 

US handbag companies imported Italian leather and straw bags for decades prior to the 1960s, but a 1961 newspaper article about lower-priced imports stated that a whopping 1,249,000 handbags came to the US from Italy in 1959 alone. (Also reported to have been imported to the US in 1959 were 592,000 bags from France and 325,000 from Japan.) 

Certainly, on a marketing level, the prestige factor of having a European-made handbag was a plus for consumers. However, importation was a necessity for US bag makers, who, by the late 1960s—in order to stay in business—were compelled to bring in more items from Europe and Asia. This does not mean imported handbags were an inferior product. They were simply more economically feasible to import rather than to make domestically.

Per newspaper advertisements, the silkscreened Old Masters handbag trend appears to have started around 1960, peaked in 1961 and lasted until about 1962. Wallet-maker Aristocrat also jumped in on the trend in 1961 with their “Museum Masters” series.

Museum Masters wallet by Aristocrat, unused, in original box. Leather with inset silkscreened reproduction painting, Montmarte by Maurice Utrillo. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

 

12 Feb 1961, Sun The Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) Newspapers.com

In subsequent years, handbag makers such as Soure began reproducing Old Masters on handbags that were not silkscreened, but printed on heavier linen-like fabric. (Scroll down for photo and accompanying ad.) The romantic art motif of courting couples and ornate scenery on handbags was a mainstay throughout the 1960s and early 1970s in cut velvets and chenilles, tapestries and needlepoint. 

Still, there was really nothing quite like the elegant 1960s Old Masters silkscreened handbag. It’s at once a fashion statement, a sumptuous fabric, and a representation of the power and longevity of a museum-worthy spectacle. It won't surprise us if the trend comes back in the near future.

Special thanks to Steven Giner. Other information was obtained from Newspapers.com, to which we have a paid subscription, and through Google searches. This article c2023 by Wendy Dager/The Vintage Purse Museum. Please do not use information or photos from our website without requesting permission, info@vintagepursemuseum.com. 

Canotiers, Déjeuner au bord de la rivière by Pierre-August Renoir and Rue Jean Durand Et L'eglise Stains by Maurice Utrillo. Both handbags by Soure, from their 1964 line of "Old Masters." These are not silk. The fabric feels more like linen or other similar material. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

07 Dec 1964, Mon Daily Independent Journal (San Rafael, California) Newspapers.com

Leather coin purse, made in Italy, no maker tag, original artist unknown. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum.

01 Dec 1964, Tue The Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts) Newspapers.com