You've seen this before, but this tree in our front yard was so beautiful a few weeks ago that I had to go out and take another shot at it. The next day, a howling wind blew off all of the leaves and left it just decorated with berries. Well, at least now the birds can find the berries.
I found the absolutely coolest website last night. I was looking for dresdens, which are embossed foil paper ephemera that used to be made in Germany (thus the name). They are what puts the Vic in Victorian paper ornamentation. In this search, I discovered that there is a hot market for the real McCoy in dresdens, the antique ones being very collectible and expensive. There are also companies that are reproducing dresdens and scraps, which are small chromolithographs of various subjects that nineteenth century folks used to paste in their albums.
Historic scrapbooks fascinate me. I mentioned this months ago, in the early days of this blog's existence -- when I described a scrapbook that belonged to Sharlot Hall that was made up of clippings pasted over the pages of another (completely unrelated) book. I've had the opportunity to examine and work with many historic scrapbooks, and each one is a hoot.
Many people in the nineteenth century kept scrapbooks, and it wasn't something that was limited to just the upper classes. You pasted in clippings of poetry, notes from your friends, recipes, articles or images from newspapers and magazines, greeting cards, announcements, photographs, bits of ribbon or cloth, whatever you had that you wanted to keep. The books themselves were often homemade or recycled books, or they were commercially made specifically for the purpose. Some scrapbooks had the glue printed right on the pages, and all you had to do was to dampen the spot where you wanted to put your scrap, and place it there.
Photographers sold photographs of public figures for people to put in scrapbooks. For a few cents, you could put a picture of a famous actress, an artist, a writer, or a notorious outlaw in the pages of your album. As soon as photography hit the mainstream, contemporary celebrities tapped into the potential of mass-produced images of themselves to heighten their popularity, and in turn photographers were able to advertise as "image maker of the stars," or the nineteenth century equivalent of that. The business for star pix was so lucrative that photographers bought the rights for really popular images from each other; for later historians like me, figuring out who the original original photographer of well-known images is an epic hunt.
Photos aside, one of my favorite things to find in old scrapbooks is the tidbit of poetry or prose that somebody liked enough to cut out and paste down. Sometimes it would be a single line, so small that it must have been hard to save. I also like to find craft patterns and recipes.
One time I found a recipe for a "good, plain chocolate cake" while digging through a historic newspaper. I was sadly short of cash at the moment, and wanted to do something special for my brother-in-law, who loves vintage everything. I set out to make the cake, but failed to realize that all-purpose flour would not work -- the recipe expected that cake flour would be used. As the cake rose beautifully, my family gathered around the oven to watch the antique recipe work... and I pulled a gorgeous, light-brown treat from the oven only to watch it fall within minutes of coming out. None of us wanted to see the effort wasted, so after it cooled I frosted it lightly and then cut it... and it was like a rich, thick brownie. R-- was delighted but I haven't tried anything like that since.
I've tapped into the recent scrapbooking craze just enough to take advantage of the interesting papers and techniques, but not enough to have to buy an equipment organizer to haul it around in. I want to create a book about our trip to England last year, and maybe about the next trip we take, but I'm not "scrapping" everything the Emperor and I do. That said, I think I will incorporate some of the fun things I've found in historic scrapbooks into my own. It's nice to follow a continuing tradition.
I had better wind this up with what little knitting news I have: the left front of the Sienna Cardi is just a few rows short of being finished, and the purse handles are put together but not yet felted. I'm hoping that this weekend I can get a good bit done on the sleeves.
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