Impressive Presents

The Museum of Bags and Purses celebrates its 15th anniversary by showcasing a remarkable selection of bags given to the museum by private individuals, collectors and designers in the 15 years of its existence.

Donated bags and their stories

A quarter of the 4,000 bags in the museum collection are donations and the exhibition highlights the many remarkable ways in which the bags from all over the world came to be in the museum's possession, using letters and photographs to illustrate the stories of the bags and their previous owners.

Precious surprises

In many cases, the donated bags were once the property of famous fashion houses and designers such as Moschino, Stella McCartney, Louis Vuitton and Judith Leiber. But the most fascinating exhibits are those that came from private individuals - like the letter case that was sent to the museum by post, accompanied by a hand-written letter stating 'If the museum doesn't like this bag, you can throw it away.' The two-hundred-year-old letter case with its Wedgwood medallion is now one of the exceptional pieces in the collection.

Maritime and exotic items

Other noteworthy exhibits include snakeskin and crocodile leather bags from Egypt and the Dutch East Indies. Dutch employees stationed in the Dutch East Indies travelling home by boat would often stop off in Egypt and buy bags as souvenirs at the Port Said bazaar. There's also the handbag recovered from the shipwrecked SS Kerwood, which set sail from New York to transport aid supplies destined for Europeans hit hard by WWI. It hit a mine on 1 December 1919 off the Dutch coast and was only discovered in 2002.