Reader Cindy tipped me to Jessica Helfand’s new website www.thedailyscrapbook.com. Jessica is the author of Scrapbooks: An American History which features more than 200 historical scrapbooks from the Victorian era through the present day. “To read another person’s scrapbook” observes Jessica Helfand in Scrapbooks: An American History, “is to acquire a body of knowledge about an entirely different time and place.”
I collaborated with a collector of early scrapbooks for my first book, “Making Journals By Hand” and included just a handful of those scrapbooks in the introduction to the book. These kinds of journals/scrapbooks are endlessly fascinating, mostly because of the lack of self consciousness in the layout & design. They’re memory containers first, beautiful pages second. Flipping the pages of historical scrapbooks is like looking back in time not to a place, but to a persons frame of reference.
Check out the archive of scrapbooks at Jessica’s site for more images.
Visit Amazon for additional videos from Scrapbooks: An American History
I find these to be so intriguing. They are just so personal and unique.
Comment by Seth — May 13, 2009 @ 7:34 pm
They look so delicious……..can you please turn over a few pages so we can see more?
Comment by Joanne B Kaar — May 17, 2009 @ 3:28 am
I love these old scrapbooks. Those drawings of the hats are amazing!
Comment by Carson — July 11, 2009 @ 9:49 pm