One afternoon this week, a box of donations was brought to the museum by a member of a local family with long-standing ties to Batemans Bay. Among the items was a beautiful purse – embroidered with beads – which, according to family legend, once belonged to none other than Dame Nellie Melba. Or so we were told.
The purse came in a zip loc bag together with a handful of photos not of Dame Nellie herself, but of her tombstone in Victoria. The back of the photos had a timestamp indicating they were taken in 2006, on a camera using film. But there was no inscription or further information.
The purse had belonged to the family member’s mother, now deceased. The family didn’t have much information on where the purse may have come from, or how it ended up in their mother’s possession, other than the legend of the link to Melba.
Nothing like a mysterious object with a potentially fabulous story to set ablaze the back office of a small coastal museum!
It might seem immediately implausible that an item belonging to one of the great artists of the Victorian and Edwardian eras would somehow end up in a small town on the NSW South Coast. But local history does have a connection to the famous soprano: enter Eva Mylott.
Eva Mylott was born in 1875 on an estate in Tuross Head, one of nine children to Irish parents. Eva showed early promise as singer with a deep contralto voice, winning a local singing competition at the age of seven. She moved to Sydney to pursue singing as a career, and was tutored by several of the most accomplished teachers of the time. In 1902 Eva became the protégé of Dame Nellie Melba herself.
The two toured together in the UK for several years, before Eva continued her career in the US, where she eventually married and had two sons, one of which was the father of actor and director Mel Gibson.
Eva certainly spent enough time with Dame Nellie for the two to have exchanged gifts, and Eva returned to do a tour of the South Coast in 1912 during which the purse could have passed into local hands. However, while this certainly makes a connection to Dame Nellie Melba possible, it doesn’t provide anything in the way of proof.
When detailed information about the provenance and history of an item is unavailable, (as in this case, where information about the purse is lost to the donating family), the focus shifts to the item itself, and any clues it might offer. If we can establish when and perhaps where the purse was made, that might tell us more about whether it could once have been in the possession of Dame Nellie Melba.
The purse is a metal framed clutch bag, about 20cm x 15cm, and made from buff coloured fabric – possibly silk – with a layer of embroidered muslin in the same shade over it. The frame of the bag is covered in fabric, and has a kiss clasp closure. At the front of the bag is a bead embroidered tag.
The embroidery is made up of small white and grey glass beads, and larger imitation pearls in two sizes, interspersed with thread embroidered flowers in a faded pink. Unfortunately, the design doesn’t immediately make clear when the purse was made. The pattern is floral and geometric in a way that recalls both the botanical swirls of turn of the 20 century Art Nouveau, and – particularly in the tag attached to the closure – the bold angular shapes of the interwar Art Deco aesthetic.
None of the volunteers or staff at the museum are specialised in textile history, which means that we start our sleuthing using the internet.
A photo search turned up a number of beaded purses. Only one is anything like our object: a beaded clutch, similar in size to ours and with a covered frame, but brown and gold in colour, and with a less complex embroidery pattern. The bag is listed as handmade in Belgium in the 1950s. It doesn’t have the embroidered tag our purse does, but does have a brand label inside.
Our purse could easily be from the same time, which would mean it couldn’t have belonged to Dame Nellie Melba, who passed in 1931. This is, however, hardly conclusive, and the investigation continued.
Time to call in the experts. We got in touch with a collector of vintage handbags, who suggested we inspect the beads more carefully to determine what material they were made of. If the beads are plastic that would mean the bag is from the 1950s, while glass beads would keep open the possibility that the bag is from an earlier decade, probably the 1920s judging from the fabric-covered frame of the bag.
Looking at the beads through a magnifying loupe confirmed that the smaller beads are glass. Interspersed with these are larger beads with a pearlescent coating which is wearing off in places, and the key will be determining if these are also glass. Unfortunately, the loupe we’re using isn’t strong enough to tell conclusively without removing more coating, and further damaging the beads. It appears we’ve reached the end of what can be done on site.
But, given the potential significance of the purse, the next stage is to get in touch with larger museums that focus on textiles and have the equipment we need to analyse the beads properly. Although a small museum can’t chase up every lead, something like this is important enough to reach out and ask for help.
So, keep your eyes peeled, because this story isn’t over yet.
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Want to learn more about Eva Mylott? Read this excellent article in the March 2004 edition of the Journal of Moruya and District Historical Society.
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