19th Century Leather Portmanteau for Dutch Oil Tycoon Sir Henri Deterding

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A portmanteau is meant to travel, but few come with a passenger list quite like this. Made in 19th-century Melbourne … Read more A portmanteau is meant to travel, but few come with a passenger list quite like this. Made in 19th-century Melbourne by Pausacker, Evans & Co., one of the city’s leading makers of solid-leather trunks, this handsome example bears a brass plaque on the lid for "Sir Henri Deterding, K.C.B.E."

Deterding was the oilman who transformed Royal Dutch into a global force and helped forge the 1907 alliance with Shell Transport & Trading that became Royal Dutch/Shell. In 1920, he was appointed an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his wartime service and Anglo-Dutch relations. We suspect the engraved plaque was added around then, turning an already well-traveled Victorian trunk into something considerably more personal.

The leather is worn exactly where a portmanteau should be worn, carrying the evidence of trains, ships, hotels and hands. It is luggage from an age when travel required trunks, porters, and apparently, an oil empire. See less