When she was in her 60s, Nula Murphy Thanhauser turned her passion for collecting antique and vintage purses into a second career, selling, appraising, and lecturing about them all over the country. She favored the most whimsical of Art Deco, Art Nouveau, and Egyptian Revival handbags and accessories. At one of her first shows, in 2006 in West Palm Beach, Fla., “customers were six deep in her booth,” Antiques and The Arts Weekly, a trade publication, reported at the time.
Ms. Thanhauser’s first career had been rooted in social work; she helped women and children as the executive director of the Angel Guardian Home in Brooklyn and the Philadelphia Society for Services to Children.
Ms. Thanhauser, formerly of East Hampton, died on Friday in Nashville, where one of her daughters lives. She was 79 and had cancer.
A first-generation American, Ms. Thanhauser, the youngest of three daughters, was born in New York City on Jan. 17, 1943, to Mary Ellen Corroon Murphy of County Westmeath, Ireland, and James Halprin Murphy of County Clare, Ireland.
She graduated from Holy Cross High School, a Catholic preparatory school in Queens, and Marymount Manhattan College. She later earned a master’s degree in social work at Fordham University in the Bronx.
She and Robert (Roger) Sidney Thanhauser Jr. were married in 1977. They moved to the Society Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia, where they raised three daughters and lived for more than 25 years. They summered in East Hampton for many years before moving here in 2005. Her husband died in 2012, at which point she moved to the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Enthusiastic about community service, in Philadelphia Ms. Thanhauser served on the St. Peter’s School board of trustees and the Friends of Independence National Historical Park, among other organizations. She was a regular reader of The New York Times and enjoyed taking on its most challenging crossword puzzles. Another of her pastimes was restoring handbags.
Her family said she will be remembered as a family-oriented person with a “creative and independent spirit.”
Ms. Thanhauser’s daughters survive. They are Sarah David of Washington, D.C., Kaitlin Flynn of Nashville, and Clare Thanhauser of Marietta, Ga. She also leaves five grandchildren, Ford, Grace, Oliver, Lily, and Caroline, who called her “Lala,” and a niece she was very close to, Diane Slote of Penn Valley, Pa. Her sisters, Myra Ellen Mahon and Clare Ann Slote, died before her.
Ms. Thanhauser was cremated; no services are planned. Her family has suggested memorial donations to Mary’s Meals at marysmealsusa.org.
