VICTORIAN SCRAPBOOKING
by Rebecca Haug

Some 19th century scrapbooking albums were made with elaborately tooled leather covers, engraved clasps and brass locks.

Today the hobby of scrapbooking has become a multi-billion dollar industry with specialized magazines, conventions and a large number of companies creating products solely for the activity. The hobby has even surpassed golf in popularity: one in four households has someone playing golf while one in three households has someone engaged in scrapbooking.  A modern day scrapbook is a combination of a photo album, diary, journal and a keepsake.

The popularity of scrapbooking is not a new phenomenon; “keeping a scrap-book” was a popular 19th century pastime, especially for women and children. The Oxford English Dictionary, which defines a scrap-book as a “blank book in which pictures, newspaper cuttings, and the like are pasted for preservation," suggests that 1854 is the earliest known date of the word "scrap-book" being used in print although other methods of collecting mementos were popular since the 18th century.

Disposable paper items such as trade cards, die-cuts and greeting cards were collected by both children and adults and pasted into Victorian scrapbooks. These decorative albums were composed of "scraps," collectible cards, and trade cards, which were sometimes arranged quite artistically on a page. Scrapbooks were indispensable as a method of illustration in teaching children both at home and in the Sunday-school. Women’s magazines from the 1800s often describe the making of a scrap-book as an essential “rainy-day occupation” for children and include a list of scrapbooking supplies to be kept on hand for such a day. 
 

REWARD OF MERIT:  These cards were awarded to students in schools and Sunday schools for punctual attendance, good conduct and improvement at school; they often found their way into scrapbooks to be viewed at family gatherings.

A nineteenth century school-girl scrapbook often displayed portraits of her favorite authors, with little sketches of their lives and quotations from their works. As the student’s literary taste changed as the years went by and she cared for other authors, the old scrapbooks were interesting as milestones to indicate her progress.

For adults, nineteenth century scrapbooks were created for a variety of reasons: as a craft project, as a way to preserve letters or photos, and as a way to document a family history or special event. For whatever purpose the scrapbooks were first fashioned, today they offer a glimpse of the lifestyles and cultural trends of the day through their use of newspapers, calendars, leaflets, advertising trade cards, greeting cards, calling cards and more. The very methodical person in the 1800s arranged their scrapbooks under separate categories, or even had a small library of scrap-books devoted to various departments—historic, scientific, or sociological.

GREETING CARDS: Holiday cards, such as this Christmas greeting card, were typically unfolded rectangles printed on stiff paper or cardboard.

For the ordinary Victorian housewife, a scrapbook was not always so ambitious; it was often just a labyrinth of memories puzzling to everyone except its owner.  Nevertheless, with an expenditure of a few moments’ time, adults were able to preserve odd and curious bits of information, poems which had brought them comfort or strength, stories, artistic sketches, and other memories; which without the scrap-book would have been lost.  For the historian, these collections of ephemeral bits of printed paper are invaluable as window into the social history of the 19th century.

MORE INFO:
Collectible Ephemera & Antique Advertising
Antique advertising includes calendars, postcards
trade cards, almanacs, leaflets and flyers.