Sweet Candy Vintage Travel Wallet

A travel scene drawn right across one side

Look closely at the printed side and it behaves less like a pattern than like a page torn out of a scrapbook. A woman stands with her back to you, straw hat on, long rust-coloured skirt, facing a row of landmarks drawn in fine pen and captioned Hradčany, Prague Castle, Český Krumlov. Stamps and EXPRESS MAIL postmarks drift across the upper half. Lower down sit a suitcase plastered with labels, a green instrument case, a small seated dog, a round turquoise medallion and a tag reading Ticket, arranged the way stickers end up on an old trunk, each one drawn at a slightly different angle. A dark band with a dotted motif crosses the whole thing at mid-height, like a strip of film. If it is the print that draws you, there are other patterned wallets in the same range.

15.5 × 10 × 2.8 cm, and the depth you notice first

Laid flat it measures 15.5 × 10 cm, which is unremarkable enough. What stands out is 2.8 cm of depth, which you see on the edge rather than on the face: it is why the caramel tab has a real distance to cover as it crosses the top, and why this reads as a wallet you carry in your hand rather than one you slide into a back pocket. The coin purses and pouches in the parent department give a useful idea of the neighbouring sizes.

A wallet pieced from three panels: dragonflies, brown and beige

The other side is not printed in one go. A cream panel carries dragonflies with finely drawn wings, thin sprigs and small pink buds; next to it sits a plain brown panel with a pronounced grain; across the bottom runs a wide beige band whose surface is lightly crackled. Pale stitching outlines all three, and the same stitch colour reappears on the tab, and that is what ties the arrangement together visually. Below the band, a last strip of the travel print reappears, so the two sides are never entirely separate.

The details worth checking

Snap stud, zip and the orange tab on the seam

Two things keep it shut. The caramel tab comes over from the far side and clips onto a round snap stud stamped SC, ringed in aged gold-tone metal. Separately, a zip along the top edge runs on a beige tape, its pull finishing in a flat hook. Sitting on the beige band is a metal plate in script lettering; on the seam, an orange tab with gold lettering pokes out, on the left from one side and on the right from the other, depending on which way round you are holding the wallet. All the hardware shares the same dulled gold tone, which sits with the ochres of the print instead of competing with them.