This "pictorial scrapbook" is a revelation to me. I have never paid much attention at all to Victorian scrapbooks, typically filled with die cuts and trade cards and illustrations of fashionable ladies cut from journals--most seeming very much of the 'seen one, seen them all' variety to me. But amidst those, I am now becoming more aware, there were some extraordinary albums being created--very inventive photo collages, for example, and "scrapbook houses" picturing room after carefully decorated room, and examples like this one, which just feel of a different ilk entirely. This album is filled exclusively with prints of girls and women and a few boys, too, cut from trade catalogs/newspapers/journals, each brought to specific life through very rich hand-coloring, each given a hand-written name, and each placed within a carefully constructed and artfully composed arrangement, such that each figure feels in conversation with the rest, and each two-page spread feels very dynamic and completely resolved. I find it very striking, and really quite a sophisticated work of art. Photos document every page, each as good as the next I think. Dated 1883, the album seeming to have been a gift to a young Barbara Spaulding, but with a few other names written on the inside cover, so whose work is a bit unclear. I'm completely smitten with this and now have to start opening every scrapbook I see in search of another as good.
7" x 5 1/2" 18 page faces filled--all pictured. All leafs filled front and back. Very good condition, no notable losses, color very bold, just gorgeous, all the better and bolder in hand. Scattered stains and toning spots here and there, and there is one clean tear coming down from the top of the page next to the boy holding an orange, as detailed.
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