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October 6, 2008 |
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Created and Maintained by: The Photoimaging Information Council |
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Columns |
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What is it about scrapbooking that’s turned a simple paper-and-scissors hobby into a hugely popular cultural phenomenon? Is it the artistic expression of creating beautiful, eye-catching pages? Is it the memories they inspire of loved ones and happy times? Or, perhaps it’s the idea of making a book that’s all about your family, your pets, or your favorite hobby. Whatever its appeal to the individual, scrapbooking has made its way into nearly 25 percent of all American households and generates more than $4 billion a year in revenues.  Annie Grace Clark Scrapbook, Database #SB00017
Young women of the late 19th Century liked to arrange their “scraps” artistically on scrapbook pages. This one includes a cutout of William Gleason, a St. Louis baseball player, decorative cards with flowers and animals, plus several product advertising cards: W. Campbell & Co., Warner's Safe Yeast, Hall's Vegetable Sicilian Hair Renewer, and James Pyles Pearline. Advertising Ephemera Collection. The Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 – 1920John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History. Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/eaa/ This column will introduce readers to the basics of scrapbooking and how to make attractive, archival pages without spending a fortune. We’ll discuss how to choose the right papers and embellishments for your pictures; how to mix and match colors, patterns, and textures, and how to use a variety of great resources, including the Internet, for inspiration. We’ll even cover digital scrapbooking and how you can comfortably incorporate it into your own work. First we’re going to learn a little about the craft. Scrapbooking has a long, distinguished history that has developed along with advancements in printing and photographic technologies. It wasn’t until the mid to late 1990’s, however, that scrapbooking started to grow with such enthusiasm—spawning magazines, TV shows, web sites, and dozens of consumer trade shows.  Scrapbook Cover, Annie Grace Clark, Circa 1887. Color Drawing/Lithograph, from the Advertising Ephemera Collection: Database #SB0001a. The Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 – 1920 John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History. Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/eaa/
Since then, scrapbooking has grown at a phenomenal rate, especially after the tragedies of 9-11 rekindling our awareness of family, history, and tradition. What better way to preserve your cherished memories than to record them in a book with your own pictures, stories, and memorabilia to look back upon in the years to come? History of Scrapbooking For centuries, people have filled blank-paged books with quotes, clippings, letters, and pictures to preserve the memories of their lives and the times in which they lived. Today’s scrapbooks are distantly related to “Commonplace Books,” used by Renaissance scholars, philosophers, doctors, and poets to write down memorable quotes, verses, jokes, devotional texts, as well as their own musings. As you might expect, Commonplace books were not limited to scholarly ramblings, but also reflected the thoughts and emotions of the young women of the day.  A Valentine card from the 1920’s is integrated into this 12x12-inch layout of the author’s mother, made for a “Legacy” scrapbooking contest sponsored by Basic Grey
Renaissance scholar Desiderius Erasmus wrote about the daughters of fellow humanist Thomas More and their enthusiastic approach to “Commonplacing”: "As they flit like so many little bees between Greek and Latin authors of every species, here noting down something to imitate, here culling some notable saying to put into practice in their behavior, there getting by heart some witty anecdote to relate among their friends, you would swear you were watching the Muses at graceful play in the lovely pastures of Mount Helicon, gathering flowers and marjoram to make well-woven garlands." By the early 19th century, paper companies began to market blank books with title pages and frames for etchings and engravings, but they were not called “scrapbooks” until the 1840s, when printing companies began to design multi-colored graphics, or “scraps,” printed on embossed paper and die-cut into different shapes. A sheet of scraps usually included multiple illustrations of a single theme, such as flowers, children, or holidays. The die-cuts were held together by little tabs of paper that could be easily cut or torn apart, similar to the Valentines Cards children still share today. And just like our modern-day stickers, Victorian scraps were used to decorate cards and letters, or to glue into blank books, hence the name "scrapbooks."  Photographic copy of an early 20th Century Valentine card from the author’s collection, mounted on Basic Grey scrapbook paper, with hand-sewn ribbon around the edge.
A popular pastime for women and children in the late 19th century, scrapbooks were commonly used as educational tools to teach children how to organize and classify information and to develop their artistic senses. As color printing became more prevalent in the Victorian age, people had greater access to greeting cards, postcards, calling cards and popular advertising “trade” cards used to promote products and businesses—all of which became popular items to decorate scrapbooks. In fact, most of these items would have been lost forever had they not been saved in these period books.* Scrapbookers may also be surprised to learn that one of America’s most beloved writers and humorists, Mark Twain, was a “proto-scrapper,” one of the first serious scrapbookers and product designers. Twain carried his scrapbooks wherever he traveled, filling more than 300 volumes with pictures, souvenirs, and articles about his books and performances. In 1872, he became frustrated with the difficulties of working with paper and paste, so he patented a self-adhesive scrapbook, which he successfully marketed as "Mark Twain's Patent Scrapbook." By 1901, he had sold at least 57 different types of albums, reportedly raking in $50,000 with this invention, which was more profitable than all his other books combined.  Mark Twain filled more than 300 scrapbooks with his memorabilia. He even patented his own line of self-adhesive scrapbooks. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Photographs didn’t become common scrapbook items until Eastman Kodak introduced the Kodak Brownie camera in 1900. This little black box made black-and-white photography accessible to consumers everywhere for just a dollar and added family snapshots to millions of scrapbook pages. * Digital Scriptorium (http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/eaa/browse.html) Bio
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