MSS 0093. Commonplaces, Albums, & Scrapbooks

This collection contains four sample books of denims, tickings, and furniture checks manufactured by Massachusetts textile mills. The sample books were created by textile selling agents J.S. & E. Wright & Co. and Wright, Bliss, and Fabyan between 1866 and 1882.

This album features sixty photographs of young African American women posing with department store displays and working in the store’s offices.

This scrapbook was created by Winsor Bradford Leach, a printing instructor at two integrated Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps in Plymouth and Holyoke, Massachusetts, between 1936 and 1938. The scrapbook contains photographs of life in the camps and print samples compiled by Leach.

This album bears an inscription on the first page, “For Mother, From Austin, With Kindish Christmas Greetings” and is predominantly comprised of chromolithographic trade cards, many originating from businesses in Philadelphia and St. Louis.

This late nineteenth-century British album, created by an unknown author, features scraps, chromolithographic prints, and original artwork, with many images containing motifs of Orientalism and depictions of the colonial British Far East. Other common themes include fashion, religion, literature, and landscapes.

This notebook contains twenty-two handwritten pages of instructions, illustrations, and samples for a making a portfolio, working with metals and leather, and constructing a scrapbook and a tape-sewn book, as well as threading a handloom.

This friendship album belonged to Sarah Belville of Christiana, Delaware, and contains poems, tributes, and classical quotations from Belville's friends, who sometimes sign or initial, give their location, and date their contributions.

An artifact of the the early twentieth century calligraphy revival, this 114 page vellum-bound manuscript lettering book has ink-drawn and watercolor original artwork, painted copies, and book or newspaper clippings of English letters glued onto its pages.

This nineteenth-century album contains approximately 154 illustrated collecting cards depicting various human-built or natural landscapes, places, activities, and wildlife. Many, if not all, of these collecting cards were part of sets produced by Louis Prang & Co. of Boston, Massachussetts.

This item is a 1935 autograph book that belonged to Edith Gerselda Lynch, a student in the class of 1937 at Howard High School in Wilmington, Delaware. The book contains signatures and messages from Lynch's friends, acquaintances, and family, including a signature from Howard High School teacher and librarian Pauline A. Young. The pages provide a glimpse of student life at a Delaware-based African American high school prior to desegregation.

Delaware native Robert J. Voshell spent his career working for the Delaware Department of Motor Vehicles and served as a State Senator representing the Milford area from 1993-1998. The Robert J. Voshell collection of Delaware political ephemera scrapbooks contains 17 volumes and 2 albums of flyers, clippings, bumper stickers, newsletters, brochures, posters and other ephemeral material pertaining to local, state and federal elections, Delaware government and politics.

This sketchbook was created by American journalist and author Mary Wager Fisher (d. 1915) and includes full-color drawings and pencil sketches from the 1870s and 1880s. Most of the drawings depict plants observed around Seattle, Washington, but Fisher also included sketches of buildings, household objects, and people observed elsewhere.

This friendship album belonged to Lillie J.S. Watt of West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and contains autograph inscriptions, signatures, and drawings done by her friends between 1884 and 1909.

This gift book was used as a scrapbook by Lillian Ann Gibbins to commemorate her graduation from St. Elizabeth Academy in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1926.

This mid-nineteenth-century American commonplace book was created by Eleanor Peale Jacobs (1805-1877) of Philadelphia and New York, with contributions from various friends and members of the artistic Peale family, who copied extracts of poetry and prose throughout. The volume also contains calligraphic writing and several ink and watercolor illustrations.

This Victorian scrap album bears a crossed out name on the inside cover, with the inscription "A present from his dear sister on his birthday Sep 17 Age 2 years 1880." The crossed-out name appears to be Charles Wright. The red and black cover with a gold embossed title "Album," features die-cut color scraps of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, flowers, cherubs, angels, and children; and visiting cards, prayer cards, and devotional cards.

This nineteenth-century American scrapbook, apparently belonging to a child named Harry Anderson, contains visiting cards, rewards of merit, holiday cards, trade cards, prayer cards, die-cut images and art prints.

Created by Phyllis G. Chew of Salem, New Jersey, these two scrapbooks of newspaper and magazine clippings document World War I, beginning in August 1914 and ending with the United States's entry in 1917.

Two of the three scrapbooks in this small collection are identified as having been made by Bertha Edgerton of Creston, Lake County, Indiana. The Bertha and Ruth Edgerton scrapbooks, made during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, contain collectible scraps and images from seed packets and catalogs, scrap sets, catalog illustrations and advertisements, and Sunday school cards.

The Rachel Leah Lindeman album is a presentation album which was given to Lindeman on March 18, 1862, in honor of her birthday. The album, which contains thirty-four pages of photographs, poems, artwork (pencil sketches, ink drawings, cartoons, illuminations, watercolors, etc.), elaborate calligraphy, and pressed flowers dating from 1862 to 1877, is a fine example of a Victorian presentation album with colonial Indian influences.

This single volume scrapbook contains advertisements for automobiles, as clipped from magazines published during the 1950s, particularly the Saturday Evening Post, plus an occasional newspaper clipping.