For as long as people have had precious items and money to carry about their person, bags and purses have played an important part of our daily lives. Accessories such as these small bags have always been valued for their practical usage, so much so, they have evolved into the handbags that we know and love today. Throughout the ages they have been a relatively cheap and easy way to update fashions and have proved to be a vital indicator of style and taste.The forerunner of the handbag was the 'redicule' adopted in France in the late Eighteenth Century. Although British women took longer to embrace the idea, they soon came to rely on them and called them their 'indispensables'.The term 'handbag' initially referred to the hand held luggage bags usually carried by men. But in the last third of the Nineteenth Century practical and stylistic elements of the leather travelling bag, such as its metal fastenings and compartmentalised interior, ticket pockets and sturdy handle, inspired the new handbag for women, the precursor of the Twentieth Century handbag.This bag, from the 1830s, has a beaded pattern in the form of a landscape, which runs around the whole of the bag. The top edge is crocheted in silk and the lower edge has a beaded fringe.