Suitcase

Materials: cardboard(?), canvas, wood, leather, metal.

Measurements approximately: 8 inches high, 18 inches wide, 11 inches deep.


Metallic object found inside the suitcase:

 

You might try "valise" as a search word

 

I applied wax on the leather parts and that made them look a lot better. Any tips on how to make the canvas look better and protect it?

 

Well that certainly improved it.

Shoe polish wax? Furniture wax?

 

A brown encaustic wax made of natural ingredients. It's technically for furniture but works well on leather.

The underside of the metal piece says "H Z A flevsborg" or something similar. I'm not sure about all the letters. That sounds like a German or Swedish name.

 

Well I had to look it up as I had never heard of encaustic wax

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encaustic_painting

 

I don't know much about it either, but the wax is beeswax based and encaustic is what the tub says. When it comes to contact with heat, or mild warmth during the application, that makes it more liquid and once the application is complete, it hardens to a flexible wax consistency. Once hardened, it can be polished using a cloth.

 

Think the medallion is probably the maker of the valise & would have been attached to a handle. I sort of see FLEUSBORG but Google keeps telling me I must mean FLENSBORG. There are some results for Fleusborg, but they mainly seem to be errors in the digitization of old publications. Neither Flensborg nor Fleusborg is yielding any luggage makers.

 

An article about luggage:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-humble-suitcase-180951376/

Does any one of you know when cardboard luggage became common? The valise this thread is about is made of cardboard-like material covered with canvas. The edges (where it closes) are wooden though.

 

LOL - It's a customs tag: H.Z.A. Flensburg

HZA

 

I managed a luggage shop in the 1980s, and we also had a large repair shop in the back, so I'm pretty familiar with American luggage of various construction and materials (and I just have a weakness for old suitcases). Guessing that European pieces would be similar in many ways - you can't really date by the materials, chipboard was used in the 19th century and was still common in new cases in the '80s, probably is still used, and a few manufacturers, mostly high-end, were still using wood frame construction when I sold luggage. All sorts of different materials have always been used for luggage, but by style, yours should date somewhere from the 1890s into the 1920s (more common in the 20th century), and some manufacturers likely kept producing similar designs a bit later.

It's a nice looking little piece, I especially like the stamped design on the corners and the cross-striping on the fabric...

~Cheryl

 

Thanks for all the interesting knowledge, must've been interesting to work in the world of luggage. I think the piece is nice too, when I saw it I instantly thought it was somehow stylish.

Another thing I forgot to mention earlier is this weird black stain on one side of the luggage. It looks like tar, now very dry and brittle and can be scraped off carefully. Why would it be on the side surface? Is it just a random stain, or was it once used as adhesive for something? What about ways to remove the stain?

 

Interesting.

 

So is this, courtesy of Wikipedia:
In May 1945, Flensburg was the site of the last government of Nazi Germany