Founded in 1892 by the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Holy Angels Academy graduated 21 young women in 1913, one of whom was Alice Sweemer, who devoted her entire scrapbook to the celebratory events surrounding her graduation. Sweemer went on to attend Carroll College, the oldest college in Wisconsin. (Carroll was chartered by the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature on Jan. 31, 1846, two years before Wisconsin became a state.) Included in her scrapbook is Sweemer’s change-of-address card which included a poem: The Sweemers will soon pack their apparel, to leave for a college called Carroll, where they expect to have fun by the barrel. Her book includes an exquisite series of portraits of all 21 of her classmates.

11.20.08     Comments (0)     digg | del.ic.io.us | reddit

Unabashedly gushing in their yearning for romantic attention, “Him” books enabled young girls in the acquisition, documentation and — let’s face it — stalking of any of a number of would-be male companions.

11.19.08     Comments (0)     digg | del.ic.io.us | reddit

In the days before television became a staple in every American living room, the opportunity to ogle over stars was restricted to print journalism. Keeping star scrapbooks offered the chance to collect pictures and revel in the minutiae of a famous person’s civilian life, creating a kind of vicarious thrill for star-obsessed viewers. Scrapbooks featuring movie stars were popular during the 1920s and 30s, often made from the simplest materials: in this example, a two-ring notebook holds lined paper which enabled the owner to introduce her own captions, of varied length, depending on the level of interest.

At the other end of the production spectrum were star scrapbooks that were produced by manufacturers, often as premiums, to encourage collecting and sell products — in this case, ice cream. My Scrapbook of Stars, which was released in numerous editions during the 1930s, was issued as a cover for the premium photos of movie stars that you could get from sending in the lids from Dixie Cups. Instructions on the cover’s reverse were detailed and included tips on cutting and framing pictures of your favorite stars.

11.18.08     Comments (0)     digg | del.ic.io.us | reddit

In the realm of artists and poets, the scrapbook embraces new territory. Memories conflate, reposition themselves, diffuse and are recaptured, only to be brilliantly juxtaposed in some whimsical form on a subsequent page. Brian Coffey, a robust chronicler of the everyday, produced scrapbooks that he termed “Self-Books” — which were unedited and haphazard, with taped-over annotations and plenty of impulsive, hand-scrawled opinion. Notes Rebecca Johnson Melvin, curator of the Coffey collection at the University of Delaware, “The Self Books are unique to the Brian Coffey Papers. They are neither simply journals nor scrapbooks, but a combination of both ... which contain journal entries, correspondence, newspaper clippings, early drafts of poems, and notes for future works. The Self Books offer a rare glimpse into the mind of the poet. They are unselfconscious, intended for no one but the author and his family. They also reflect the spirit of the time in which they were created; Coffey frequently includes newspaper clippings detailing current events.” The covers of Coffey’s books, too, are striking because they capture the lack of pretense that resonate throughout the self-books themselves. (Special Collections, University of Delaware.)

11.17.08     Comments (0)     digg | del.ic.io.us | reddit

Baby Grows in Age and Grace enabled the more devout parent to keep track of the religious milestones in a child’s life. An accompanying chapter on motherhood as co-operation with God sets a serious tone for a memory book that allocates areas for marking signs of development (physical, spiritual); record of baptism; world happenings on baby’s birthday and preventative measures for illness — which included such ancient afflictions as diphtheria, whooping cough and scarlet fever. Also earmarked for record-keeping are baby’s first spontaneous prayer, attendance at first mass, and date on which child first recognizes holy pictures.

11.14.08     Comments (0)     digg | del.ic.io.us | reddit

With clear, blocky handwriting and dogged intentionality, Molly Kelley unfolds her chronicle over the pages of her book so that the passage of time is carefully orchestrated: there are drawings, collages, certificates, and posters; artifacts rescued from a hike; diary entries recording special dinners with Aunt Jessie; even a fragment from a broken shovel. Today, eighty years later, the ghosted impressions of cloth tape (cellophane tape wouldn’t be invented for another year or so) add an additional layer of withered beauty to these pages, once carefully composed, with limited means, by a thoughtful young diarist.

11.13.08     Comments (0)     digg | del.ic.io.us | reddit

Dan Eldon, a young photojournalist who was killed in Mogadishu in 1993, was a devoted scrapbook-keeper who combined ephemera and drawing in journals that accompanied with him wherever he went. In one book, he included a letter to his mother in which he saved individual grains of rice — and wrote on each of them. Eldon’s journals are at once wide open and highly specific and while his nomadic travels led him to exotic locations, he never stopped observing the smallest detail, the most remarkable element.

11.12.08     Comments (0)     digg | del.ic.io.us | reddit

Minnie Reed’s high school scrapbook typifies many schoolgirl preoccupations — parties and field trips — and is filled with photographs in which she, the photographer, is notably absent. Featured in these pages are pictures of the man she would later marry: she met him on a boat ride, even though her mother warned her that “nice girls don’t take boat rides.”

(His name was Leopold Helfand: Minnie Reed Helfand was my grandmother.)

11.11.08     Comments (0)     digg | del.ic.io.us | reddit

As a Christmas present, two aunties prepared a scrapbook for their nephew, named for his father, their brother, and compiled as a chance to share their family’s cultural history, which consists of Dad’s assorted artifacts — most of them dating from childhood, including drawings and letters, report cards and school projects, and that most prized possession, the tail from a boy’s coonskin cap. Their opening editorial is a letter to Eddie the younger, promising to add to the scrapbook over time — at birthdays and holidays — thereby putting in place a system that lent additional value to these already treasured findings.

11.10.08     Comments (0)     digg | del.ic.io.us | reddit

In 1913, Harry Wolfson began a scrapbook to document his college life at Harvard. He was one of a handful of Jewish students there at the time, where he served as president of the Harvard Menorah Society. In his junior year, Wolfson won one of two coveted travel scholarships in the college. (The other one went to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s grandson.) Throughout Wolfson’s scrapbook are clippings not only from Harvard, but also from his hometown newspaper in Scranton, Pennsylvania — yet the scrapbook itself is touchingly personal, even narrow. The world is, for the most part, shut out while young Harry concentrates on sports, studies, and making sense of his rich, intellectually expanding world. The degree to which his scrapbook reads like an ordinary college boy’s collection of memorabilia adds to its charm, revealing the more human, vulnerable side of this remarkable young man. Wolfson’s accomplishments eventually led him back to Harvard, where he would hold a distinguished professorship for nearly half a century. (Harvard University Archives, Pusey Library, Cambridge, MA.)

11.07.08     Comments (0)     digg | del.ic.io.us | reddit