Patterns in bright green

This leather handbag was designed by George Bain but possibly made by one of his students or a member of his family. Using bold, bright green paint on the inserted leather panels highlights the embossed designs. On one side is a complex of embossed spirals, a design that is repeated on another of his bags. On the other is a series of key patterns.

The spirals are in an interlinked group of seven, set in a circle. This design is a mirror image of that at the centre of the cross on the Pictish Aberlemno cross-slab which stands in the churchyard. There, the three strand spirals (triskeles) turn clockwise. However, on the handbag they move anti-clockwise. The design on the other side of the bag is from Bain’s reconstruction of the key-pattern on the Pictish Collieburn cross-slab.

Bain often uses specific details from both Pictish stones in his Methods of Construction. He clearly studied them in great detail, but probably did so from early-20th century book illustrations. Travelling to visit them was difficult in the 1920s and 1930s.