Personally, I started scrapbooking as a way to preserve my precious memories of family and friends.
I feel the memories that I have in the way of photo’s mean nothing without a little story behind them. Have you ever flicked through someone’s photo album and just seen faces and places? How great is it to know the story behind where, when and how these photo’s came about. Who are these people? what are they doing?, when was that event?
Scrapbooking allows you to answer these questions in a manner that helps preserve the memories for generations to come. You may say - this is a passing fad! However scrapbooking has been around for many years. They didn’t necessarily have photos but did contain etchings, engraving or lithographs. Queen Victoria even had a scrapbook to display in the royal palace.
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.
One of the biggest supporters of “scrapbooking” in the 1800’s was Mark Twain. He devoted his Sundays to creating his scrapbooks.
The art of scrapbooking changed dramatically around 1839, when photography was available to the public. However by 1940 there was a decline in the hobby as photo albums where mass produced and photography became the hobby. However, after the publication of Alex Haley’s “Roots” that told his family history back to 18th century Africa in the mid 1970’s, was the importance on genealogy and preserving the family history an important factor. Therefore the resurgance of scrapbooking began.
