To look at Teresa Vielé’s scrapbooks today, over a century after they were compiled, is to gain particular perspective on the social and cultural customs of urban, upper-middle-class life at the end of the 19th century. The books themselves originate with a certain formal hand, in which elegant stationery and engraved calling cards are all glued down in neat, straight rows. Precise penmanship graces every letter, note and invitation. The range of material, too, is abundant, spanning both business and personal items: there are bills and bank notes, receipts from insurance companies, poems and dried plant specimens. And then, gradually — as life itself becomes rapidly unhinged — there are the subtlest visual hints of disorder. Entries become uneven and sloppy, dog-eared or torn up altogether. Over time, Vielé’s scrapbooks come to illuminate the rupture that characterizes her life in general — and her identity, in particular. In its stunning shifts of voice, tone and comparative cultural perspective, this may just be the one of the earliest “modern” scrapbooks. (Special Collections, University of Delaware Library.)

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