Featured Help identify this little purse

With regard to the pinkish one, I think you are right with the basket idea. I recall in the 1940's-50's seeing similar, starched to within an inch of its life, with a tumbler inside with a small floral arrangement. It seems to me the stiffness to make the handle firm was achieved with a sugar/water combination or very heavy starch and hand molding the handle as it dried. Oh, the laborious efforts these homemakers did to enhance their homes!

The second little purse with the silk ribbons may have been a Sunday School purse for a young girl, just large enough to hold her very own collection plate money and a hanky.
They would be lovely framed in a shadow box.

 

My post just got all messed up(!) I'm going to rewrite it now...

 

Sandra, I'm trying to rewrite my post - part of it disappeared!

Anyway, I immediately thought the same about that "pinkish" one. My grandmother taught me how to make one ca.1964-65 - Grandma died in 1966, so I know it was before then. Yes, we used a boiled sugar-water solution to stiffen the "fabric".

I actually remember going to Woolworth's with her to buy a plain water glass to use inside it.

Once washed, the sugar-stiffening is gone, but you can re-soak it in a new solution and reshape it to make it stand up properly again.

I still have mine around here someplace. If I can dig it out, I'll post a photo.

 

NOW, THAT ring looks like an old window shade pull!!!!!

 

Oh, those are very cute! Framing them in a shadow box sounds like a nice way to both display and to take good care of them.

 

I concur with the miser's purse for the first - square crochet item. As for the second two...the white round one and the little pink one; may very well be for holding a spool of tatting thread.