Thread by @stwajda

I was totally delighted when the @V_and_A announced an exhibition on bags. For reasons #materialculture types in particular know, in the last two years I have been fascinated with #shopping bags and #knitting bags: vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/ba…

My former employer, @michiganstateu Museum, has a lovely collection of nearly 300 "designer" paper #shopping bags dating back to the famous @Bloomingdales bags of the 1960s. Here's a wonderful post about Bloomingdale's bags from @cooperhewitt: cooperhewitt.org/2016/05/04/the…

Also at MSUM care earlier textile shopping bags made by women. The history of the #shopping bag has been one told mostly by manufacturers and mostly by historians of technology and business, both based on invention of machines to manufacture paper bags. mo.ma/2m4XhKh

Walter Deubener (1887-1980), a grocer in St. Paul, MN, in 1918 reinforced paper bags w/cord & added carrying handles. After amazing sales, he went into full-time bag manufacturing. He patented the handles in 1919 and other aspects of the bag in the 1920s.

#Shopping bag, work bag, sewing bag, purse, reticule, pocket, etc.: women used various portable and wearable textile, leather & plant fiber containers for different purposes over the centuries. Yet these objects aren't part of shopping bag story. From Godey's Lady's Book, 1881:

I really started thinking about shopping bags, women's work, & the work of decoration when I came across what was my favorite object in my MSUM exhibition on #WWI #propaganda, "War and Speech": a plain paper bag w/a glued-on magazine cover on one side & a red cross on the other.

The bag was owned by Abigail Rena Bogert Boyce (1871-1954), who lived in Kinderhook, NY. Donated w/this bag were handmade buttons and jewelry and a @RedCross uniform. Boyce saved this bag to memorialize her #WWI service. She carried it to & from her Red Cross #knitting meetings.

Now, cloth #knitting bags were a patriotic THING during #WWI. Donated bags were auctioned for women's war work supplies. Women's magazines & newspapers offered many designs to be made of available fabrics, especially cretonne. Women could purchase commercially made knitting bags.

#Knitting bag costumes for children were a thing. Jokes about the ever-growing size of knitting bags were a thing. Knitting bags grew so large they were banned by some merchants fearful of shoplifting.

But in 1918 a new craze in #knitting bags swept the nation. Red Cross chapters & women's groups began to purchase Kraft paper (the type in sturdy brown bags), decorate them w/patriotic imagery, & sell them to raise funds for their war work. Here's @goodhousemag advice:

Even @voguemagazine got into the act, printing more magazines so that women could use several patriotic covers on their paper #knitting bags. (Boyce's bag, made by the Interstate Bag Co. as mentioned by Vogue, was decorated w/the April 1918 cover of @ladieshomej, by the way.)

“A year or so ago it would have seemed incredible that anything so feminine and frivolous as a Vogue cover could ever become very martial, and yet many of our recent covers have had the great war-time spirit,” @voguemagazine’s editor observed.

It was one thing to knit for the doughboys, but evidence of that work was sent overseas. Cloth #knitting bags were stylish or patriotic, but rarely both. Textile shortages required women to signal their patriotism w/other materials. Answer? Decorated paper bags (& not hats).

But here's an interesting fact: It was Deubener's wife Lydia who had the idea to glue pictures to paper bags to make them more appealing to customers. That gets glossed over in histories of the paper bag. It wasn't about branding or advertising at first but about women's taste.

And it's then no surprise that newspapers in 1918 reporting on the paper #knitting bag craze at the time noted that the idea for patriotically decorated Kraft paper bags came from Minneapolis/St. Paul.

In 1927, @sciam interviewed Deubener about his paper bag invention. "Mrs. Deubener" is pictured and mentioned. We never learn her first name. We do learn it was her idea to paste lithographs onto the bags.

The caption to this undated @sciam photo: "Bags are bought for two reasons--because they hold things and because they look attractive. These girls are applying the second reason to the bags--beautiful lithographs." The bag was also decorated to imitate leather and basket weave.

So many issues here: historians of technology, business, and advertising ignore or gloss those pasted-on images on those paper bags, though from the start design/decoration was important for the sale.

Lydia Deubener knew this. At the Kresge's she & her husband ran, it was cash & carry. Shoppers bought what they could hold. Yet the Deubeners thought they could sell bags only if the bags were decorated to appeal to women who had, for a long time, bought or made their own.

#Ephemera: paper is worn, recycled, tossed. So, too, are textile #knitting bags. It's a marvel that Boyce's paper #knitting bag exists. It allows us to ask new, inclusive questions about invention, technology & business, propaganda & advertising, and women's lives.