Scrapbooking began as a means of preserving personal and family history through the collection of stories, photos and memorabilia. It is thought to have begun in the 15th century after the invention of the printing press.
The first scrapbooks were called commonplace books or "commonplaces". These were essentially books which contained all kinds of collected information about a certain topic or theme. Following commonplaces came "friendship albums" . These albums appeared in the 16th century and were collections of signatures, quotes, stories and drawings by friends, personal acquaintances and patrons. Often they were created during trips and included the calling cards and descriptions of visits with people who were met along the way. Many includedlove letters or poems in them as well.
Mark Twain, the famous American author and publisher of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, created, published and sold the very first scrapbooks with pre-pasted pages. Mark Twain loved making and keeping scrapbooks! As an avid traveller and speaker, he filled his scrapbooks with souvenirs, memorabilia and articles from the places he visited. He often became annoyed with having to find glue, so he invented a way of "printing thin strips of glue" on paper. In 1872 he patented his "self-pasting" scrapbook and by 1901 there were more than 50 different kinds of scrapbooks available. All you had to do was add some water to the back of what you wanted to paste in the album and it ingeniously stuck to the pre-pasted page. See
www.pbs.org/marktwain/scrapbook/index
for an on-line interactive scrapbook produced by pbs that talks about Mark Twain´s life and his scrapbook invention.
Scrapbooks passed through another very important development stage with the invention of photography in the 19th century and the affordable availability of the Kodak Brownie camera at the beginning of the twentieth century. Now it was possible to include photos in the most personal of albums.
But it was the the World Conference in Record Keeping, in Utah in 1980, where modern scrapbooking was born! Marielen Christiansen, a speaker, brought and displayed 50 family scrapbooks that she had designed and created over the previous years. At that time, a new product called "sheet protectors" was available. Marielen inserted her family memory pages into these sheet protectors and then placed these sheets inside three ring binders.
She revolutionized the Fair. Based on the success of that presentation, she and her husband published a very helpful book called The Making of a Scrapbook. That was the official birth of the scrapbooking industry in the United States and the rebirth of a 5 century-long tradition of memory-making. Marielen and her husband AJ went on to create the company, Keeping Memories Alive. Following this, they launched the first scrapbooking catalogue and on line web-store.
Since then, scrapbooks and the making of scrapbooks have developed into a billion dollar industry around the world. If you search in Google you will find thousands of sites. The art and hobby of scrapbooking has recently arrived in Spain. You are now able to find materials, websites in Spanish and Catalan, and even stores where you can purchase materials and get lots of ideas on how to scrapbook!
If you would like to learn more about Marielen Christianson and her pioneering work with scrapbooks, see
