Full of Charm and Variety: The Scrapbook Collection of the Filson Historical Society

Kathryn Bratcher

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Full of Charm and VarietyThe Scrapbook Collection of the Filson Historical Society
Kathryn Bratcher

Scrapbooking is not a recent phenomenon; the history of turning a book into an album filled with ephemera dates back to the Middle Ages, when it was quite common for well-educated people to keep diaries or journals that recorded their thoughts on life's activities and events around them. Perhaps the earliest known surviving journal is the Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris (The diary of a bourgeois from Paris.) Written by an anonymous French priest sometime between 1409 and 1449, this personal account of fifteenth-century life in France is a treasure trove for historians.¹

During the nineteenth century, the emergence and increased accessibility of printed material sparked a new trend. People began filling blank, bound books—previously used for journals or artwork—with clippings, cards, and printed memorabilia. The books could be used to house a mix of personal journal entries, hand-drawn sketches, and watercolors, along with various scraps of printed material, such as calling cards. These books were literally books of scraps. Throughout the nineteenth century, scrapbooks that more closely resemble what we think of as scrapbooks today began to emerge. Several technological changes, including the development of the industrial printing press, drove this evolution, creating the basis for the art form still practiced today.

There is a wide variety of topics in the Filson Historical Society's large scrap-book collection; church histories and registers, recipe books, school memory books, family keepsakes, et cetera. One of the most common themes for scrapbooks is ephemera from social activities. During the latter part of the nineteenth century, elaborately printed greeting cards, calling cards, postcards, prayer cards, advertising trading cards, and other materials began to be viewed as novelty keepsakes.

The scrapbook of Virginia and Louis Bryant includes family correspondence from relatives in Danville, Kentucky; scattered material on Centre College; literature on Kerry cattle; and liquor bottle labels, with some from Kentucky distilleries. The scrapbook also contains memorabilia, correspondence, arrangements, menus, and receipts from a 1923 tour the couple took to Europe and the Mediterranean, and a 1924 tour of Canada and Algeria.

A scrapbook that Miss Marion Amis Green (1886–1963) donated to the Filson has pages dedicated to a grand tour of Europe in 1880. The tour started at Liverpool, a major port for steamships crossing the Atlantic, and proceeded [End Page 67] through England, France, Italy, Germany, and Scotland before concluding back at Liverpool. The scrapbook's creator pasted staionery letterhead and illustrations of the hotels in the book and added the dates of her party's stay at the hotels to give a wonderful visual timeline.