UK television show sparks a memory for Gisborne local

Karen Bruce with her mother’s “rediscovered” handbag. Picture by Paul Rickard

Karen Bruce was lost for words when she spotted a handbag on hit UK television show The Repair Shop exactly like one her mother had owned.

The unique tooled Egyptian leather handbag was sent to her mother Jean in 1941 by her father, Wint Hopkinson as a gift. He was a soldier in Egypt, serving in World War 2, and sent the handbag from Cairo.

“We’ve still got that,” she said, thrilled to see the handbag on television. She had to go and find it straight away. It was in the linen closet, having survived various house moves and looking a lot more intact than the one on television.

The Repair Shop’s leather expert Suzie Fletcher set out the task ahead to restore the bag.  This one was also a gift sent back home from a soldier during World War 2.  It had survived a shrapnel attack while the buyer was leaving a market in Cairo.  Two bloodstains on the leather were proof of the tale, something the UK family didn’t want to remove as an important piece of history.

Included in the parcel sent to Karen’s mother, were two leather hand-stitched footstool covers.  After his return from war Wint found some rounded cheese crates and moulded the covers to fit.  He added castors to the bottom and the footstools with Egyptian leather covers are in Karen’s sitting room.

Her father was invalided out before the war ended, due to a sinus disorder aggravated by the hot desert sands.

“What they put up with in the war, didn’t help their health at all,” Karen said.

Back in New Zealand, Wint married Jean and they had three children. They were beneficiaries of The Rehabilitation Board NZ Act 1941 which allocated finance, employment or training assistance to returned servicemen.  The programme provided an opening for servicemen and their families to re-establish themselves back into the community.

The Hopkinsons bought an 11-acre vineyard at Manutuke, Gisborne.

Rediscovering her mother’s handbag inspired a determined Karen to buy some “decent leather cleaner” and to replace the mirror on the inside flap.  She also dug out a black and white photo of her mother in 1941 clutching the bag to her side.  Jean’s sister, Kitty Gardner from Tokomaru Bay is also in the photograph.  Kitty’s husband Harold was a pharmacist and ran the only chemist on the East Coast at the time, in Tokomaru Bay.

“Mum used the handbag quite a bit, but she soon forgot about fashionable things when she had a farm to run,” Karen said.