Embroidered Clutch
date: label: Date
content: 20th century
notes: label: Caption
content: Stitches swirl into flowers on this embroidered clutch made of light yellow silk. On the purse’s front flap, which closes with a metal snap, two blue blooms bookend a beige one traced in blue. Similarly, one of each color sits next to the hand grab in the back. A mixture of green and brown leaves surrounds the flowers on the front and back. The bag’s back features a zippered compartment, and its interior is lined with silk moiré.
label: Caption
content: The clutch belonged to renowned scholar-librarian Dorothy Porter Wesley (1905-1995), who organized and developed an unparalleled collection rooted in African American history that would become the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University in Washington, DC. Porter Wesley might have carried the clutch at a formal university event. Some news accounts described attendees’ clothing along with the occasion itself. Perhaps this clutch’s blue accents coordinated with the “summer frock of blue figured cotton crepe” that Porter Wesley wore to the Howard Faculty Wives’ Club annual dinner, as chronicled by the Baltimore Afro-American in 1942.
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anacostia Community Museum Collection
creditLine: label: Cite As
content: Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: Anacostia Community Museum
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 1997.0020.0009
objectType: label: Type
content: purse
objectRights: label: Restrictions & Rights
content: CC0
physicalDescription: label: Medium
content: silk, cotton, metal
label: Dimensions
content: Open: 8 1/2 × 10 5/8 × 13/16 in. (21.6 × 27 × 2.1 cm)
label: Dimensions
content: Close: 8 1/2 × 6 1/8 × 13/16 in. (21.6 × 15.6 × 2.1 cm)