My designer purse gems were not difficult for me to select from my rather large collection of favorite designer and style bags. Some are on my studio wall to provide a decorative view of this room. Others decorate my bedroom, and the rest are housed in their own cabinet. Four of my designer purse gems are featured in this blog post. Indeed these four are my favorites even though I have many others that I love.
For example, I own about a dozen Coach bags. These and others purses are the ones that serve as decoration on my studio wall. They are all still usable as pocketbook. They are truly my designer purse gems.
This wall displays most of my Coach Bag collection as well as others and is the view on my studio wall
My Gems
From the above and other purses that I have collected, there are four that are the absolute gems. The images below or either from my own collection or from the companies themselves. How I wish you could see them and touch them. Maybe one day, they will all be in a design museum or a handbag collection in a interdisciplinary one. Museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art, also in New York and The Smithsonian in Washington D.C. Then you will able to see them in person.
These are pictures of the bags that I posses or similar ones to my own. From left to right, Coach original Wills bag, new Coach Willis 18 bag, Dooney & Bourke teton bag, and the Furla round bag.
Public Gems
Did you know that there are other museums that do house outstanding everyday objects of superior design? Well, there are. Even though some of my bags are design to last ‘forever’, I hope that as many people as possible will be able to enjoy them by experiencing them. Then my designer purse gems, will be your design purse gems, too.
A $5 garage sale chair had a full description of its identity on the bottom. But it took its owners to the verge of discarding it to realize the treasure they had purchased. A very famous design couple, pictured at left, were the designers. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress). In addition, a world famous furniture company produced it.
Unknowingly, a $5 garage sale chair was used casually, left in the garage gathering dust and almost given away to Goodwill. Fortunately, the owners of this priceless designer chair discovered what they had. But it took the purchasers over a year to discover the priceless treasure they had bought for $5. They discovered it by accident. They turned the chair over. There was a metal plate with the names of both the manufacturer and the designers.
It turned out to be a Herman Miller original production Charles and Ray Eames design prototype from 1946 as the metal plate indicates. It was made by the Herman Miller Company in Zeeland, Western Michigan over 60 years ago.
The $5 garage sale chair bottom with identification
These furnishings are also well documented in publications like Design in America, The Cranbrook Vision: 1925 -1950. The book accompanied the exhibit that traveled from Detroit, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and then to several stops in Europe.
The $5 garage sale chair featured in the book, Design in America, The Cranbrook Vision: 1925-1950
According to a Herman Miller spokesperson, in this news video, the original Charles and Ray Eames chair, in the same style as the $5 garage sale chair, went immediately into the Museum of Modern Art Collection in 1946.
