History of Scrapbooking

During the Mid 1800's, companies such as London based W&H Rock began producing leather albums that contained preprinted pages devoted to various themes. These albums were embellished with flowers and birds. Some early albums were printed with pockets to put photos in and other albums had sketching pages to draw or do water color art on. Mark Twain{the famous author who wrote Huckleberry Finn} had his own invention, Mark Twain's Adhesive Scrapbook that included prepasted pages. This was one of Twain's most popular books.

Printed pages of stationery and embellished writing were used as decorative elements in scrapbooks.

In 1825, a serial called "The Scrapbook" was issued. It included ideas on how to fill a blank book with pictures and clippings. In 1832, Fisher's Drawing Room Scrapbook was a published volume that encouraged the art of scrapbooking. There were a series of these and they were decorated with pretty gift decorations on the covers, front and back. They became coffeee table books that were displayed.

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Queen Victoria had a scrapbook that she displayed in the Royal Palace. Thomas Jefferson had a scrapbook of news clippings, drawings, dried leaves and other items. .

There were also friendship albums that were created and given as gifts. Young women in the Victorian period often created memory books or visitor’s albums filled with signatures, scrap, cards, hair, handwriting, poetry, and even photographs of their family and friends. Again, these were a way of sharing with others, and of preserving memories.

Mark Twain was an avid scrapbooker.

He devoted entire Sundays to this hobby and then sold his books through Montgomery Ward.

Thomas Jefferson kept leather-bound books filled with news clippings, drawings, dried leaves and other memorabilia.

In the 1970’s "Roots" was introduced by Alex Haley, and a huge interest in genealogy was born. This interest in genealogy led to people wanting to capture their heritage.

In the 80’s and 90’s scrapbooking began to get more and more popular, and today we have a wide variety of scrapbooking choices, with color choices, embellishment choices and even tool choices.

These days we have variety of pages to fit every theme available in scrapbook stores. Rubber stamps, ink, paint, stickers, ribbons, buttons and other items are available to embellish pages. I like the new Disney pewter clips of Mickey Mouse ears and Mickey that just came out. Look for them in your local scrapbook store. Scrapbooking has become a big part of our lives. We want to tell our stories and preserve our memories for future generations.