MSS 0093. Commonplaces, Albums, & Scrapbooks

This nineteenth-century American children's scrapbook bears the inscription "To Ella, Much Love from Edith and Edna." The scrapbook features trade cards; Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, and New Year's greeting cards; collectible scraps of flowers, animals, and children; one silk program for "Nunnemacher's Grand Opera" featuring a performance of Martha by the Milwaukee Philharmonic Society.

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.

This collection consists of two albums of specimens of dried and pressed plants and wild flowers made by early nineteenth-century London Grove, Pennsylvania, botanist John Jackson between 1810 and 1819. One of the albums was given to Dr. Francis Alison (1751-1813), son of the Presbyterian minister and educator Rev. Dr. Francis Alison (1705-1779).

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 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 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.

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 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.

American editorial cartoons from World War II era collected by Brooklyn, New York, resident Robert S. Mallouk and an autobiographical essay about his experiences as a soldier.

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 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.

The creator of this late nineteenth-century scrapbook is unknown, though the contents suggest that the compiler was a child who may have lived near Albany, New York. This scrap album includes chromolithographed scraps, trade cards, religious cards, visiting cards, and larger color-printed images.

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

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.

This scrapbook, compiled by an unknown creator, is a collection of turn-of-the-twentieth century portraits of world leaders and international celebrities. From royalty to military and diplomatic leaders to men and women of science, arts, and letters to personalities of the stage and silent screen, the news clippings, engravings, and cut illustrations from popular reading sources found in this scrapbook present a glimpse of fame documented in another era.

This early twentieth-century American scrapbook primarily contains greeting cards, many of which are valentines. Other card types include Easter, Christmas, and birthday. Only two cards had visible signatures.