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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;M.E. Lawrence, post: 3662590, member: 18749&quot;]I found your board when I was looking around for information on a tam o&#039; shanter coin purse that my mother gave me years ago. She said that a cousin or aunt had made it, and that this lady was in &quot;an asylum&quot; for unspecified reasons, where she died in 1937. I&#039;m the family genealogist, and have tentatively concluded that she was an aunt-in-law who was hospitalized for a mental illness (depression?) perhaps for years. I wondered if this purse, whose lid is unmarked, but would appear to be German silver made/marketed by Bostonia (the one with a design of antique coins), might have been some form of occupational therapy. I reason that if Bostonia supplied Native people with the means to make souvenirs, perhaps they supplied hospitals with hardware and patterns as well. (Or perhaps someone just bought a kit for her.) If any Antiquer could point me to more information about this theory, I&#039;d be grateful. For what it&#039;s worth, the purse is still very usable, and I&#039;ll pass it along to my daughter or a granddaughter.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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