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| Eric de Kolb 1946 red reptile "accordion" bag, from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
Eric de Kolb
The Designer, His Handbags, and An Elaborate Tale of Reinvention
In 2024, The Vintage Purse Museum wrote an article about handbag maker Eli Bogan and his possible connection to artist and designer Eric de Kolb.
A year later, we felt it was important to post a separate piece solely about Eric de Kolb, so we've updated the original de Kolb portion of the article here, with more detailed facts about Mr. de Kolb, his life, and his work. As we shared in the the first article, Mr. de Kolb's true backstory is much different than how he presented himself in later years. On the surface, Mr. de Kolb was something of a bon vivant, a charmer, a dandy—but on a deeper level, he was quite complicated, and for very good reason.
We reiterate that our intention is not to tarnish anyone's reputation, but to clarify and correct the misleading biographical information that's been widely published online. As we do with all of our historical articles, we made a tremendous effort to back up certain claims with proper documentation, rather than rely on the copy-and-paste of websites.
Eric de Kolb (1910-2001) was an artist, fashion designer, jewelry designer, and packaging designer. Today he is best remembered for his extensive art collection, generous donations of artworks, sponsorship of art exhibits, and his gold jewelry designs inspired by antiquities.
Our initial goal in researching Mr. de Kolb was to find out more about his short-lived handbag business. We were also attempting to establish a firm connection between his bag designs and leather artisan Eli Bogan's handbag manufacturing company. Instead, we uncovered more than we anticipated about the charismatic Eric de Kolb.
First, we learned that much of what is online about him is inaccurate. Some of this is minor. For instance, his date of birth is often misstated as 1916—which, like other information, could be due to a single erroneous statement taken at face value. Other portions of his history are inconsistencies and inaccuracies that are much more significant.
Eric de Kolb stated that he'd worked in the 1930s as a fashion designer for Balenciaga, Patou, and Lucien LeLong. (All still in business; we reached out to them but they did not reply.)
Based on a timeline of residency that we were able to establish through old documents, Mr. de Kolb would've started his clothing design career in France in 1939. While we could not find evidence of his European fashion experience other than his statements to the press, we do know that Paris fashion houses operated during WWII, even after the 1940 Nazi occupation of Paris. This is because Lucien Lelong negotiated with the Nazis to continue manufacturing under the regime's rules and restrictions.
September 28, 1942 US newspaper advertorial. It mentions Eric de Kolb's affiliation with Lucien Lelong. The ad directly below it is from the same newspaper, the previous day, and shows sketches of some of his handbags.
28 Sep 1942, Mon Hartford Courant (Hartford, Connecticut) Newspapers.com
28 Sep 1942, Mon Hartford Courant (Hartford, Connecticut) Newspapers.com
His 1940 US naturalization documents state that in May 1939, while in France, he married his first wife Rosa (b. 1915 in Austria). We don't know if they knew each other in Austria or first met in France.
Eric and Rose de Kolb (then known as Erich and Rosa Kolb) left France and emigrated to the US in September 1940 on the ship Exochorda sailing out of Lisbon, Portugal. (The Exochorda was acquired by the US Navy in October 1940 and renamed the USS Harry Lee). Lisbon was a port city in which up to 200,000 people over a period of several years waited their turn for an available ship so they could escape the Nazi occupation.
Also traveling on the Exochorda were Anna Rauschning and her five children. Anna’s husband Hermann Rauschning (1887-1982) was a German politician and member of the Nazi party who became an author and activist against Nazism. Mr. Rauschning emigrated to the US, eventually settling in Portland, Oregon. He was not on the Exochorda, but followed his wife and children to the US shortly after their journey.
According to Albrecht Hagemann’s 2018 book “Hermann Rauschning: Ein deutsches Leben zwischen NS-Ruhm und Exil” (“Hermann Rauschning: A German Life Between Nazi Fame and Exile”), the Exochorda was where Eric met Anna and Hermann’s daughters Heilwig, 25, and Luise, 24 (nicknamed “Ise”), and offered them jobs. Hagemann wrote (translated from German): “Heilwig and Ise took part in a company run by Eric de Kolb, their acquaintance from Exochorda. As a capable designer, de Kolb tried his hand at designing and producing fashionable handbags. Handsome as he was, both Heilwig and Ise had fallen in love with Eric. Ise ultimately decided the developing love triangle for herself; she married her crush in 1947.”
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| Eric (de) Kolb's photo from his 1940 US naturalization documents, screenshot from FamilySearch.org. |
A 1946 travel document states that Louise Rauschning was working as a handbag designer and living at 25 Park Ave., which at that time was Eric de Kolb's home address. While we couldn't find a marriage certificate, it is very possible they wed the following year, as reported in Mr. Hagemann's book.
Per everything we read online prior to finding his naturalization documents and the ship Exochorda’s 1940 manifest, we were under the impression that he was married twice, first to Louise Rauschning (Americanized from “Luise”), then to Elvira Esterhazy. This is not so. His first wife, as we stated above, was Rosa Kolb. After their arrival in the US, Rosa changed her name to "Rose," Erich changed his to "Eric," and, in 1941, the couple took the surname "de Kolb" (sometimes spelled with an uppercase “D”).
This explains why an October 1940 US newspaper article (directly below) about the recently emigrated fashion designer and his wife refers to them as Mr. and Mrs. “Kolb,” and not “de Kolb.” The woman in the newspaper photo with him is Rose, the first wife who is never mentioned in his online biographies.
We feel it's necessary to emphasize that we do not know the intricacies of their relationship. It may have been a solid marriage that eventually broke down. Or, this may have been a marriage of necessity due to the circumstances of war.
The 1940 article, published a month after they emigrated to the US, says the couple were “refugees” from Paris. This article also calls Mr. Kolb "thoroughly French," and says that Mrs. Kolb worked out the details to get them from France to the US.
Eric de Kolb's backstory slowly evolved over the years. Here's part of the text of a September 29, 1942 Hartford (CT) Courant advertorial, which is primarily about a showing of his handbags at the Sage-Allen department store: "...Eric de Kolb, French emigre designer of hand bags...continued to send his sketches to Lucien LeLong and Balinciagea (sic) in Paris after he had entered the French Navy as a lieutenant in September, 1939. Mr. de Kolb, whose collection of hand bags is on display at Sage Allen and Company on Monday told some of his experiences from the time France entered the war and he was forced to give up his peacetime occupation as (a) dress and hand bag designer, until he and his wife sailed for New York in the fall of 1940 on the Excorde (sic). Five days after the war began he entered his unit which was attached to a naval factory in Loi (sic) in the north of France. At the time of the German advance in that section, he said, they were ordered to retreat to Toulouse in the south. In Toulouse it was hoped that units could reform, but these plans were abandoned with the fall of France. Shortly thereafter Mr. de Kolb met his wife in Lisbon and they sailed for the United States."
It's possible he was in the French military in some capacity, although we could not confirm this through French records. It sounds reasonable that Rose preceded him to Portugal, and he fled France at a later date. "Loi" could be a misspelling of the Loire (a river in France), but we also found a 1939-1940 history of the French Navy that said the 5th Maritime Region was based in Lorient, a port city. "Balenciaga" and "Exochorda" are also misspelled in the article. It is likely that Mr. de Kolb recounted these details, and that the spelling errors are that of the newspaper's reporter or copy editor.
Three decades later, in a 1970 newspaper article, Mr. de Kolb was quoted as saying that, during the war, he received an interim passport and US visa from the US embassy in Paris, so that he could design dresses for a US department store. Per the Exochorda's manifest, the de Kolbs had, indeed, secured their passports in Paris in May 1940, which were part of the Quota Immigrant Visa (QIV) number system.
QIVs were a per-country limited admission system created by the US in 1924. The couple had a sponsor in the US, listed on the manifest as Rene Lidz (sic), who may have had some influence with the US embassy as he was a French-born American citizen. We are certain that this was a misspelling of Rene Silz (1891-1960), an importer/exporter/interior designer who emigrated to the US from France in 1913, and served in the US Army in WWI. Mr. Silz lived in New York, but frequently traveled abroad for work.
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| Rene Silz's 1919 passport photo, screenshot from MyHeritage.com. |
Mr. Silz said he was in Paris when it fell to the Nazis. He escaped in July 1940 on the ship SS Exeter, sailing from Lisbon to New York. It is unclear how Mr. Silz and Mr. de Kolb knew each other, as it doesn't appear that Mr. Silz had ties to Austria, Mr. de Kolb's home country. Mr. de Kolb's naturalization documents cite them as friends, so we can only assume that they met in France in 1939 or 1940, and that Mr. Silz possibly assisted him with fashion industry connections in the US. Fun fact: Rene Silz and Eric de Kolb shared a birthdate of March 10th, although they were born in 1891 and 1910, respectively.
We found both of their names in an 1880-1940 French government "Central File of National Security." We do not know why their names were on this list as we could not see the entire text of their individual dossiers. Based on a translation (from French to English) of this central file's purpose, it may have been due to their ethnicities or foreign statuses in 1939-1940, with Mr. Silz an American citizen, and Mr. (de) Kolb, formerly of Austria. To be clear, we don't think either of them were spies! We are reasonably certain they were both simply trying to conduct business in France and did not know that the war would escalate so quickly and with such horrific consequences.
Mr. Silz was quite the character. There were many colorful—and some questionable—newspaper stories, but one of particular note was that, in 1916, Mr. Silz was briefly using "de" in front of his last name as well as the honorific "Count." This royal tidbit is important to remember later in this post.
We don't know much about Rose de Kolb, but we believe we found her birth name in Austrian Catholic church records. (We will add it to this post if we can verify it.) Rose de Kolb’s US naturalization process was finalized in 1946. By then she'd moved to Reno, which at that time was known as the "Divorce Capital of The World." This was where one could get a "quickie" divorce after a mandatory six-week residency. Perhaps she decided to stay after the six weeks.
In 1948 she legally changed her name to Rose Marie Charel. (This is not her birth name.) Ms. Charel, who had worked as a dealer in a casino, passed away in 1966 at age 51 in Reno. Her obituary mentions a sister in France as her only surviving relative. She was interred in a Catholic cemetery.
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| Rose (de) Kolb's 1940 immigration application photo, screenshot from Familysearch.org. |
Some sources cite Eric de Kolb as being Roman Catholic, and it appears that two of his three wives were Catholic. He also incorporated Catholic themes into some of his art and jewelry designs, and was said to have been commissioned by Pope John Paul II to paint "The Miracles of St. Anthony." (We reached out to the press office of the Holy See for verification of this but have not heard back.)
What is not widely known is that Eric de Kolb was Jewish.
His name on his 1910 Austrian birth certificate is Erich Egon Kolb. There is also a line on the birth certificate for his Hebrew name, “Jisrael.” His parents were Rudolf Kolb (b. 1873 in Hungary) and Margarethe Tonello Kolb (b. 1885 in Austria).
In a 1970 St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper article (directly below), it was reported that Eric de Kolb came from an “aristocratic Viennese” family, and that his father and grandfather were art collectors. His family was somewhat involved in the arts (specifically, ownership of a cinema), and they did have some notable artworks. They may have been wealthier than some of their fellow Austrians, but they were not aristocrats. Eric de Kolb’s paternal grandfather Simon Kolb was a butcher. His mother Margarethe’s father, Sigmund Tonello, owned a restaurant. (The family's original last name was Toneles, per a document provided to us by a Kolb family member.)
In December 1938, nine months after Hitler declared the Anschluss territorial takeover of Austria, Rudolf Kolb attempted to relocate himself, his wife, and their 28-year-old son Erich from Vienna to Ecuador. Rudolf Kolb stated on his formal request to the The Fursorge-Zentral der Isr. Kultusgemeinde Wien (Welfare Center of the Jewish Community of Vienna Emigration Department) that he was an unemployed restaurant owner, his son Erich was an architect, and that he had sold some furniture to provide the funds to make the move.
Somehow, Erich managed to escape to France, but Rudolf and Margarethe Kolb never made it to Ecuador. They were killed in 1942 at the Maly Trostenets extermination camp in Belarus.
An October 1, 1937 Austrian Jewish-affairs newspaper, Die Stimme, says (in German) that Erich Egon Kolb was an architect. As we could only view a snippet, we do not know its context, but this occupation was confirmed on his father's unsuccessful 1938 immigration application. As far as we can tell, after emigrating to the US, Mr. de Kolb never publicly stated that he had been an architect.
We looked further, and noticed the address Margaretenstrate 78 in Vienna along with his name in that 1937 newspaper mention, and later found the same address with his father Rudolf's name in a 1911 listing for a building permit. Margaretenstrate 78 was the location of Margaretner Bürgerkino (now known as Filmcasino) an Austrian cinema built in 1911.
According to a translated page of the 2019 book "Jüdisches Leben in Wien-Margareten" ("Jewish life in Vienna-Margareten") by Gabriele Anderl (sent to us by the Kolb relative), Margaretenstrate 78 was not only the location of the cinema, but also the extended Kolb family's residence. The book also shares the individual fates of many members of the Kolb family, some of which are deeply disturbing, and confirmed by other historical documents we found online.
In 1938, after the Nazi occupation, the cinema's furnishings and artworks were "Aryanified," and the business taken over. The cinema's owners, Arnold and Alice Kolb, were deported, then later taken to Maly Trostenets in 1942, where they were killed. Arnold was the brother of Rudolf, Eric's father. The brothers were business partners and owned personal property and real estate, including the cinema building, which was seized by the Nazis, who had established the "Vermögensverkehrstelle" ("Property Transfer Office") to oversee the theft of Jewish assets exceeding 5,000 Reichsmarks. This is likely why Rudolf Kolb referred to himself as "unemployed" on his 1938 relocation request. Everything he'd worked for was gone. Just four years later, he and other members of the Kolb family would also lose their lives.
After the war, in 1948, Eric de Kolb, using his birth name, Erich Egon Kolb, and his cousin Hans Georg Kolb (1914-1999), the son of Arnold and Alice, applied for restitution from Austria for family properties stolen by the Nazis, and received an undisclosed settlement. In 2010, one piece of important art was allegedly returned to the heirs of Arnold and Alice Kolb. We connected with artist Rosalinda Kolb, the grandchild of Arnold and Alice Kolb (the relative we mentioned previously; name used with permission), who graciously emailed some family documents that helped us in our search for further information.
As we’ve explained in other articles we’ve written for The Vintage Purse Museum Photo and History Archive, handbag makers who emigrated to the US were quite often Jews fleeing circumstances related to escalating acts of antisemitism. Some of them changed details of their lives, including birth names, birth dates, and countries of origin. Quite a few of the US-emigre handbag makers' children and grandchildren have told us that their relatives never spoke about what happened to them. This was because they were afraid, and some carried that fear their entire lives, even long after they became US citizens. With what we now know of Mr. de Kolb's traumatic history, it would be completely understandable if he invented, erased, or embellished a large part of his origin story.
Mr. de Kolb said that when he was young, he’d been recommended as a student to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. We reached out to the Academy to see if he’d ever been a student. They had no record of his enrollment, but suggested we contact the Academy of Applied Arts, which employed the artist Otto König (1839-1920), under whom Mr. de Kolb said he’d studied. The Academy of Applied Arts was called Kunstgewerbeschule during this time. We contacted them and they told us they have no record of an Erich Kolb attending the school, but that it was possible that Mr. König had taken him on as a private student. Mr. de Kolb had stated that he’d shown promise as an artist from a very young age, and would’ve been approximately six years old at the time he said he became Mr. König’s student, and ten years old when he passed away.
Upon updating this article, we learned that one of Mr. de Kolb's official biographies stated he attended the "Graphic Inst, Vienna," where he studied painting from 1938 to 1939. This could not have happened in this time period due to the Anschluss. We reached out to Die Schule der Medien Graphische, and they quickly responded with his attendance record, which we screenshot, translated from German, and pasted directly below. He did attend this school, but as a teenager, and he studied photography.
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| Erich Kolb's attendance record at the "Graphic Institute," where he studied photography from ages 16-19. Information courtesy of Die Graphische. |
We also reached out to Ecole des Beaux-Arts, a French school he said he attended, but did not receive a reply. This does not mean he was not an art student or a child prodigy as he indicated in numerous interviews; only that we could not verify most of his statements.
At some point, he began calling himself Eric de Kolb-Wartenberg. In a 1959 newspaper article about his wife Louise’s sister Anne’s wedding, Eric and Louise were using the honorifics “Count” and “Countess.” Mr. de Kolb was (and still is) also occasionally referred to as “Baron.”
In the 1600s, there was a Count Kolb von Wartenberg of the House of Wartenberg in Germany. However, we could find no evidence that Mr. de Kolb was related to the Wartenbergs. The "1943 Who’s Who in the East – Volume 16" says Eric de Kolb’s father was “Rudolf de Kolb-Wartenberg,” and his mother was “Margareta Turello (sic)-Borgia,” which seems to be a reference to the noble Spanish-Italian House of Borgia. The "Who’s Who" also lists Mr. de Kolb’s date of birth as March 10, 1916; but, as we stated before, his birth year was 1910. Louise Rauschning de Kolb's birth year was 1916, which may have influenced the altering of his birthdate.
Many "Who’s Who" entries were submitted by the “who” in question, and were not fact-checked. We could only see a snippet of information from this 1943 directory as the full page was not accessible online. However, we found a later biography of him in the "Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933-1945" ("Biographical Handbook of German-speaking Emigration after 1933-1945") published in 2014. This has some of the same information as the earlier "Who's Who," along with more of Mr. de Kolb's résumé up to 1978. We screenshot and pasted his entry below, along with our comments.
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| 1. Birthdate, parents' names, date of marriage to second wife are factually incorrect. 2. He may have converted to Roman Catholicism, but he was born Jewish. 3. 1939 emigration to France is correct. 4. We cannot prove nor disprove most of his academic credentials, but some of it as stated in his biography is incorrect. As to the reference to "Prof. J. Schmutzer," there was a famous Austrian photographer, printmaker, and professor Ferdinand Schmutzer (1870-1928), who taught at the Academy of Fine Arts, but we do not know if he was Mr. de Kolb's teacher. 5. It is possible Mr. de Kolb designed dresses for Lelong and Balenciaga upon emigrating to France, but we could not confirm this. 6. We cannot prove nor disprove his military service, rank, or medals received. 7. He did receive accolades for his packaging designs, and his contributions to the art world are accurate. |
Eric de Kolb arrived in the US in 1940 and, per the October 1940 newspaper article, immediately started designing clothing for an unnamed department store. He left the apparel business in 1941 or 1942, and began his handbag design company. We found a 1949 New York State industrial directory listing him as proprietor of a handbag company on 404 4th Ave. We believe he was out of the handbag business prior to this directory's publication. It could've been that the information was collected in 1948 and not published until 1949.
1942 advertisement for "Strictly Personal" and other bags by Eric de Kolb. A popular 2002 handbag reference book identifies this bag as being from 1969, which is incorrect.
11 Aug 1942, Tue The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio) Newspapers.com
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| Eric de Kolb "Strictly Personal" silk bag, made to look like a book. The poem inside is quite poignant from the standpoint of our modern-day investigation. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. 1945 ad for "Strictly Personal" bag, no maker mentioned.  01 Mar 1945, Thu The Miami News (Miami, Florida) Newspapers.com |
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| Inside of "Strictly Personal" bag above. |
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Closeup of the poem inside, which we interpret as a very meaningful clue to Mr. de Kolb's past. 30 May 1945, Wed The Ottawa Citizen (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) Newspapers.com |
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| Bergdorf Goodman label inside bag above. |
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| Eric de Kolb label inside bag above. |
We found 1942-1948 Eric de Kolb handbag newspaper advertisements, references in handbag trade publications, and his handbag patents. It is very curious that, even though there are numerous 1940s ads for many styles of de Kolb handbags, we rarely see his bags for sale online today. We are extremely interested in knowing precisely why Eric de Kolb-labeled bags are so scarce. We have several theories that we are looking into, and will update this post if we can confirm one of them.
The few that we've seen for sale over our four decades of collecting are the accordion-sided and "Strictly Personal" handbags, and perhaps four or five leather or reptile de Kolb bags of different styles.
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| 1944 Eric de Kolb patent, which resembles the Strictly Personal design. Screenshot from Google patents. |
We also saw a 1920s beaded bag (for sale online) that had the de Kolb label, along with "Made in France" and "Finished in U.S.A" labels. As it was reported that he put antique keys as ornamentation on some of his handbags (see 1943 advertorial directly below), we theorized that he may have also purchased some older beaded handbags to slightly revamp and resell. We don't know if he bought these decorative "French and Spanish keys and door locks" (and, possibly, the '20s bags) from someone in the US, or if he imported them from Europe, which would've been very difficult with the war still in progress. The advertorial below only says he "has purchased large collections" of them. It's possible that this collection of keys was acquired for him by his friend, the importer Rene Silz.
Advertorial for Eric de Kolb bags with antique lock and key adornments.
27 Jul 1943, Tue Alameda Times Star (Alameda, California) Newspapers.com
Eric de Kolb first filed for his coat of arms trademark in 1944. He said on the application that the trademark had been in use since January 1940, but this would be inaccurate, as he emigrated to the US in September of that year. We don't know if his label appeared in the dresses that he is said to have designed for a US department store as we have not seen it inside anything other than those very few handbags. It is more likely that the department store's label appeared in these dresses. However, the one major department store (that we know of) that carried his handbags was Bergdorf Goodman, as its label is sometimes found alongside the de Kolb label.
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| Eric de Kolb registered trademark, screenshot from Google books. |
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| Label inside the bag pictured at the top of this post. These bags were not manufactured in France, but the implication gives them some cachet. Upon using a Google image search, we could not find a direct match to this coat of arms, although there are similarities to the Kolb coat of arms. |
Per the many advertisements we found in the newspaper archive, Eric de Kolb handbags were constructed of fabric, leather, reptile, wood, and plastic (including Vinylite). Despite the variety, he is best known by vintage handbag collectors for his accordion-sided handbag.
In the 1970 St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper article, Mr. de Kolb, who by then was much more famous for his art collection and gold jewelry designs, was quoted as saying the following with regard to fashion design: “In France, a designer is something completely different from the designers here. In France, a designer does nothing but sketch and drape. I am not a pattern maker. In this country cutters are used to taking clothes apart and cutting directly from the pieces. I could find no cutters to make patterns from my designs. There was just no such animals around, so I said to the head of the department store, ‘Look sir, it makes no sense for me to stay and take the money from your pocket. And so I left.’”
Many successful midcentury handbag makers began their careers as leather workers and/or pattern makers, with some continuing to have a hand in the crafting process even after they became company owners. Eric de Kolb, to paraphrase his own words, was a designer rather than a manufacturer.
This is why we believe that Eric de Kolb had his bags manufactured elsewhere, possibly by Eli Bogan. Our unproven theory is that Eric de Kolb's famous “accordion-sided” handbag design may have been produced with the de Kolb label in 1946 by the Bogan Handbag Company, a wholesale manufacturer. It seems very possible that Mr. Bogan took over this style in 1947 and used his own label after Mr. de Kolb was pretty much done with the handbag business. The Vintage Purse Museum has the de Kolb example below, as well as a Bogan-labeled accordion-sided bag. There isn't much difference.
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| Front view of the de Kolb "accordion" bag pictured at the top of the page, opened. The lining is navy blue, green, and yellow satin. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
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Side view of accordion bag. The sides are not Bakelite or Lucite, but a molded faux-tortoiseshell thermoplastic. 21 Jul 1946, Sun The Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, Maryland) Newspapers.com |
It’s well-documented that midcentury handbag companies often copied each other’s designs or sourced them from the same wholesalers. Other makers, including Fre-Mor and Du Bonnette, had a version of the accordion bag. We don't know if Mr. de Kolb licensed his designs to others, but in the case of Mr. Bogan, we feel strongly that there was an established business relationship.
There's some circumstantial evidence. For instance, Mr. Bogan cited a drum-shaped bag design of Mr. de Kolb’s as a reference for the "Fanfare" handbag, which Mr. Bogan patented in 1949. Directly below is our Bogan Fanfare (center), with the Bogan (left) and de Kolb (right) accordion-sided bags on either side of it. Below the photo is Mr. de Kolb's patent.
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| Left: Bogan accordion-sided bag. Center: Bogan "Fanfare," based on a de Kolb patented design. Right: De Kolb accordion-sided bag. All from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
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| Eric de Kolb 1944 patent, which was referenced by Eli Bogan in his 1948 patent application for his "Fanfare" bag. Screenshot from Google patents. 1944 ad with sketches of Eric de Kolb bags, including the patented one above. Did Mr. Bogan also produce these for Mr. de Kolb? We may never know.  19 Dec 1944, Tue The Tampa Tribune (Tampa, Florida) Newspapers.com |
Citations are very common in patents as a way of noting similarities in previous designs, thus avoiding patent infringement accusations or lawsuits. In this case, it was likely standard due diligence, but it also could’ve been a personal nod from one business associate to another.
Another very interesting thing we found when updating this article was that Mr. de Kolb designed a handbag for Bonne Bell cosmetics. This information appears in the 1945 ad below (with "Bonne" misspelled.)
We wonder if his association with Bonne Bell had anything to do with him eventually working for Gourielli, Inc., better known as the Helena Rubinstein cosmetics company. We found a 1949 announcement in the trade publication Drug and Allied Industries saying that he was named art director for Gourielli, Inc., an affiliation that launched his career as a packaging designer.
In the 1950 US Census, Eric de Kolb was listed as an art director at an unnamed cosmetics firm, and his wife Louise de Kolb was an accessory director at a cosmetics company. We could not find documentation of Mrs. de Kolb's employment, but she likely also worked at Gourielli, Inc. One might call it a "package" deal. (Sorry!)
Mr. de Kolb held numerous patents for upscale packaging including perfume bottles, atomizers, boxes, and more, with assignees Gourielli, Inc., then, later, Coty and Clairol. He also patented a "combination dispensing bottle and toy" for the Fuller Brush Company, and was said to have designed packaging for Schiaparelli, Jergens Co., and the Barton Candy Corp.
Helena Rubinstein (1875-1965) was an intriguing woman. We read that she was a "social climber" (not our words), and had married her second husband Prince Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia (1895-1955) in 1938, allegedly because she was eager to have a royal title. She was also a generous supporter of the arts.
We can't say for certain if Ms. Rubinstein's personality and activities influenced Mr. de Kolb, but we did find parallels, including the assumed royal title, high society member, and art aficionado. They were also both Jewish, although we don't know if Mr. de Kolb ever revealed this to anyone after he emigrated to the US. It is unclear if Ms. Rubinstein and Mr. de Kolb socialized, but there was a professional connection. Not only was Mr. de Kolb her company's art director for about seven years, he was named interior designer of her flagship store in 1952, along with Martine Kane (Mathilde Martine Silberfeld Kane, b. Australia 1893-d. New York 1975). (See photo and caption below.)
Mr. de Kolb was collecting African art as early as 1944, per a snippet of an announcement in the New York Public Library's Staff News, stating that he was donating his African arms to the Schomburg Collection (now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture). So perhaps Mr. de Kolb was the one who influenced Ms. Rubinstein, who also collected African art. Or it could've been a coincidental mutual interest.
According to the trade publication Art Director & Studio News, Mr. de Kolb resigned from Gourielli, Inc. in 1956 in order to open his own packaging company at 20 E. 53rd St. Sources vary as to the exact name of this business, but it was usually called something like "Eric de Kolb Industrial Design Co." in press mentions and other documents. However, we could not find this name or a variation of it in the New York State business entity database.
In 1960, he started Colplac Corp. We found a 1964 ad for "Foto-Rama" personalized coasters sold by a company with the same name, but could not verify that this was his product.
Eric de Kolb and Colplac Corp. were mentioned in the November 16, 1967 Ohio Jewish Chronicle after Mr. de Kolb donated 20 Marc Chagall lithographs to the B'nai B'rith traveling art exhibit. The article said that Colplac Corp. was a distributor of the works of American and European artists.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Louise and Eric de Kolb were known for their impressive collection of ancient art. He created gold jewelry based on some of these pieces, which are desirable collectibles today. He was said to employ craftspeople to make this jewelry from his designs. Mr. de Kolb was also a surrealist painter, and once owned or had an interest in Gallery D' Hautbarr in New York City
The de Kolbs were socially active, and their names appeared in society columns, with mentions of their participation in art shows, charity functions, and country club golf and tennis tournaments.
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| This is the only photo we could find of Louise de Kolb. April 16, 1957, The New York Times, screenshot via basic subscription, which is why the photo is pixelated. Photo caption reads: "PLAN BENEFIT FETE: Mrs. Eric de Kolb, left, vice chairman of the junior committee, and Miss Irina Bazaroff, a committee member, work on arrangements for the Russian Easter Ball. The event, which will be held next Monday in the ballroom of the Ambassador, will aid the Association of Russian Imperial Naval Officers in America." |
One of Mr. de Kolb's art pieces, a "Greek Geometric Bronze Colt," appears in a 2013 edition of Art of the Ancient World Royal-Athena art gallery magazine, with a caption saying that it was part of the "ex Eric de Kolb collection...disbursed in 1984." Louise Rauschning de Kolb passed away in July 1983, so perhaps he donated or sold some of their collection following her death.
Eric de Kolb married Vienna-born Countess Elvira Alexandra Esterhazy in December 1983. (She was descended from a Hungarian royal family.) The pair had been acquainted since at least 1964, as we found a New York Times article in which they, along with other prominent community members, attended a charitable event hosted by the Hungarian Catholic League of America. They lived in New York, but had another residence in Capri, Italy. (He was known in Italy as "Barone de Kolb-Wartenberg.") Ms. Esterhazy's obituary says that she "designed jewelry in partnership with her eventual husband," which indicates that they collaborated while he had his gold jewelry business in the 1970s.
Eric de Kolb was 91 when he died in 2001. He did not have children with any of his three wives, and we could not find an obituary for him. Multiple sources cite him as passing away following cataract surgery, but we did not find confirmation of this. Elvira Esterhazy passed away at age 94 in 2023.
We know that many of our findings are quite different from that which is usually reported about Eric de Kolb, and we understand that they may be disconcerting. While he certainly embellished his backstory, what we’ve presented here doesn’t change the fact that Eric de Kolb was a fascinating and complex human, and a masterful creator of designs in a number of industries and mediums.
Special thanks to Rosalinda Kolb, Die Graphische, The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, The Academy of Applied Arts, and the Musée de l'Armée. Other resources used were Google and Familysearch.org, as well as Newspapers.com and MyHeritage.com, to which we have paid subscriptions. This article c2024, updated c2025 by Wendy Dager/The Vintage Purse Museum. Please do not use photos or content from our website without requesting permission, vintagepursemuseum@gmail.com.
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