Handbag

As I have mentioned before, I collect little boxes. This one is a recent acquisition. The moment I saw it, I knew it had to come live with me.

When I was a two-year-old, I went absolutely everywhere with one of my mother's cast-off handbags dangling from my arm. It had a particularly stiff and obdurate clasp which I found frustratingly difficult to open. I clearly remember being in a rage, and thrashing the bag viciously onto the ground in an attempt to make the thing open up and release the hoard of treasured feathers, stones, and trinkets I'd carefully accumulated inside! That pocketbook was such an integral part of me that it even made a cameo appearance in a contemporaneous portrait.