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Beginners and Basics
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SCRAPBOOKING
By LeeAndra G. Slatten
Dec 7, 2004, 15:35

I. BEGINNINGS OF SCRAPBOOKING: THE EARLIEST HISTORY

The earliest known reference to what we would now call a scrapbook is from 1598, but the use of notebooks to collect information started much earlier during the time of Aristotle and Cicero. These men, and their pupils, used this earliest form of the scrapbook for philosophical, religious, and rhetorical discussions. The word 'album,' in fact, comes from Greco-Roman times when a praetor's public notices were recorded on paper tablets or white tables.

During the Renaissance, which took place between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, the soon-to-be termed commonplace book came into its own as the period's overflow of information and culture needed a place to reside. An intense renewal of popularity in the study of Greek and Roman culture as well as the rise of libraries and philosophical schools such as Humanism provided the perfect opportunity for the creation of commonplace books as scholars and other literary-minded people copied their favorite passages or poems into blank books to create personal anthologies of works that had inspired or touched them.

In addition, Giorgio Vasari, an Italian author in the sixteenth century, advocated in his book of Italian artists the saving of prints and drawings by placing them in albums, a recommendation that influenced the creation of museums and libraries during that time period and a practice that continued to be popular in Europe up until the 1900s. The philosopher John Locke focused enough attention on the commonplace book in his 'New Method of Making Common-place Books' manual, published in 1706, to create a new and separate genre. His book discussed the proper technique for the preservation of proverbs, quotations, ideas, speeches, and other forms of written or spoken word that paved the way for the modern day idea of journaling.

In 1769, one of the direct predecessors to our modern day scrapbook was created when William Granger published a history of England with extra illustrations of his text as an appendix. Later, he expanded on his idea by including blank pages which readers could use to add in their own illustrations or prints as desired. This process, known as grangerizing, came to mean any book that was rebound into a different edition with new additional prints, letters, or other memorabilia. These types of books were also known as extra-illustrated books and achieved the most popularity during the 1800s.

Our third president, Thomas Jefferson, was one of the first well-known American scrappers, in a manner of speaking, as he saved newspaper clippings from and during his presidency into a series of albums for future reference. Other people during this time period saved notes, news articles and other clippings, illustrations, craft instructions, and even diary entries into homemade albums with wallpaper and cardboard covers. Some folks who could afford to 'waste' books in their collections actually pasted their ephemera, printed paper memorabilia like tickets or playbills, onto old book or catalog pages.

By the early 1800s, albums had evolved into ones resembling those of today with embossed covers, engraved clasps, and locks. Along with Granger books and commonplace books, people in the 1800s kept diaries, journals, and friendship albums. Friendship albums were almost exclusively owned by women and kept a lady's favorite quotes, poems, calling cards, and hair weavings in one place. Hair weavings, which started in Germany, were intricate weavings of pressed ribbons and flowers into a friend's cut strands of hair to display in an album along with a poem or remembrance of that friend.

II. EVOLUTION OF SCRAPBOOKING: IMPROVEMENTS IN TECHNOLOGY

In 1826, the scrapbooking craze really took off with the publication of John Poole's 'Manuscript Gleanings and Literary Scrapbook while the year previous had seen the publication of a serial titled 'The Scrapbook' which defined a scrapbook as a blank book which held newspaper articles and pictures for preservation. The actual term 'scrapbook' had been coined just a few years earlier because of the bright pieces of paper left over from a printing job, or scrap, that people had begun to paste into their albums for decorative purposes.

Scrapbooks of this time period would have included calling cards, the decorated name cards men and women left at their friends' homes at the start of their visits or to indicate they had stopped by with the intention to visit, national advertising trade cards, religious cards with Biblical inscriptions, rewards of merit for good grades and good behavior for schoolchildren, and carte-de-visite photographs which are better known to us as postcards.

Surprisingly, one of the biggest supporters of scrapbooking during the late 1800s was the author Mark Twain! He loved the hobby so much that he devoted entire Sundays to the creation of his personal scrapbooks and even patented a series of scrapbooks in 1872 to be sold by Brentano's Literary Emporium in NYC as well as through the Montgomery Ward catalog. His scrapbooks contained alternating gummed and non-gummed pages with perforations on the non-gummed pages for easy removal. An article from the St. Louis Dispatch in June 1885 states that Twain made about $50,000 on his scrapbooks. In comparison, the sale of all his novels combined had netted him about $200,000.

The invention of photography, and its direct ancestors, obviously changed the art of scrapbooking forever as scrappers now had the means to capture scenes of their lives in a way that wasn't possible before with only printed media. Louis-Jacques Daguerre invented the daguerreotype in 1837, but it wasn't until 1839 that this process was made public, so the latter date is often given for the birth of photography. Others quickly refined and added to the evolution of photography with the invention of halftone plates and photo engraving in the last half of the nineteenth century until George Eastman marketed his Kodak camera and photographic rolled film in 1888 and completely revolutionized the entire photographic industry up to that point.

There was a sharp decline in scrapbook popularity around 1940 as photo albums were being mass produced and people began to focus on photography as a hobby, but luckily for us, the publication of Alex Haley's 'Roots,' a story which alleged to tell his family's history and autobiography back to eighteenth century Africa, in the mid-1970s as well as a surge in genealogical research gave rise to a renewed interest in scrapbooking and preserving family history in such a fashion.

III. MODERN DAY SCRAPBOOKING: CURRENT MARKET AND TRENDS

Scrapbooking experts would probably pinpoint the Christensen family's display of 50 family albums at the 1980 World Conference of Records in Utah as the starting point of the modern day scrapbook. Marielen Christensen, the family's matriarch, had begun scrapping in 1976 with sheet protectors inside loose leaf binders. The Christensens quickly capitalized on the interest their scrapbooks had created by writing the first modern day scrapbooking book, 'Keeping Memories Alive,' as well as founding the first modern day scrapbook retail store, The Annex in Spanish Fork, Utah, in 1981.

The Christensens, as well as many other Mormon families, are required by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to document their family history, so modern day scrapbookers can thank, in part, this mandate for the quick rise in popularity in modern scrapbooking. Many scrapping companies began, and are still based, in Utah because of the large Mormon population located there.

The traditional values scrapping emphasizes falls into line with other religions as well. Many scrappers, including many on this site, are Christian-minded and documenting their history, as well as their spirituality or spiritual journey, by way of regular scrapping and faithbooking. The co-founder of the scrapping company Creative Memories, Rhonda Anderson, wrote a how-to book on faithbooking, layouts or albums which specifically detail spiritual moments, lessons, or anything else deemed important enough to pass down, and several well known 'scrapping CEOs,' including Lisa Bearnson from 'Creating Keepsakes' and Sandra Joseph of Memories Expo, are known for their religious beliefs.

The creation of the Internet has also played a major role in scrapping's evolvement into the most popular hobby in the United States as you can attest to since you are reading this either on POTH's website or in your e-mailbox! Once the average family could afford a personal computer and a connection to the Internet, millions of scrappers could connect on a daily basis with other scrappers around the nation and world to share ideas, tips and articles, and photos of their LOs by way of scanners or digital cameras. Hundreds, if not thousands, of scrapping stores popped up with ways for customers to purchase paper, embellishments, and accents with a click of the mouse and have it sent directly to their homes. Other websites popped up to promote scrapping by way of message boards and LO postings with room for comments or suggestions like twopeasinabucket.com, scrapjazz.com, or pagesoftheheart.net.

The latest major divergence from what we would now term 'traditional' scrapping has been the introduction of digital, or computer, scrapbooking into the hobby in the late 1990s. An article in 'Ancestry' magazine from 1999 begins to describe the different methods and computer programs used in digital scrapbooking, and it has only ballooned in popularity since that time. While scrappers have used the computer to print out journaling or clipart to attach to their otherwise paper layouts for a few years, digital scrapbooking, in its most inclusive form, is completely computer-created. The top three programs are Adobe's Photoshop and its more affordable sister program Photoshop Elements, Jasc's Paint Shop Pro, and Microsoft's Digital Image Pro although other programs from Corel and Ulead are growing in popularity as well. These digital layouts are either burned onto CD-Rs, compiled into digital albums that can be viewed on television screens or computer monitors, or printed off at home or at professional print shops to store in traditional albums.

IV. CONCLUSION: THE TIMELESSNESS OF SCRAPPING IN ANY FORM

No matter how it's done, scrapping is more than a simple hobby to display the latest baby's photos or showcase the creator's talents with the most up-to-date tools. It's a way to preserve the past for our future, to make our mark on the world, and to love those whom we cannot know. As they say, you can't move forward if you don't know where you come from. As scrappers, we take on the responsibility of teaching our children and their children that each person's story is special and deserves to be documented.

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