The Miser’s Purse by Laura Camerlengo
The Miser’s Purse, originally written by Camerlengo as a thesis for the Parsons/Cooper-Hewitt Master’s program, tells the compelling story of how a small, decorative purse became deeply embedded in 19th-century Victorian popular culture. Known at the time as long purses, gentlemen’s purses or simply purses, they came to be called miser’s purses because their diminutive openings made it difficult to retrieve coins. The e-book contains 29 images and a video of the author demonstrating how to use a miser’s purse.
Laura L. Camerlengo is an Exhibitions Assistant with the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Costume and Textiles department. She has organized several textiles exhibitions for the museum, including her most recent, “Embroidered Exemplars: Scottish Samplers from the Whitman Collection.”
Ms. Camerlengo has an M.A. in the History of Decorative Arts and Design from Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution/Parsons, the New School for Design. She has written about nineteenth-century costume and accessories for 19th Century magazine, The Historian journal, and Berg Publishers, among others. She reports on contemporary fashion and style news as the fashion editor of BELLA NYC magazine.
