*Photos document all pages, beginning with a few two-page spreads, then from the beginning one by one.
A total joy for me to find this late 19th/very early 20th century kindergarten album, a complete embodiment of Froebel kindergarten theory, containing progressive sequences of pricked paper designs, geometric yarn drawings, paper weavings and folded paper works, with the gray paper on board, accordian fold, hard cover album entirely full. I've handled lots of kindergarten works, but I've never found an album so pure in terms of advancing through Froebel's series of lessons--complete with hand-written labels throughout, including, for example, "invention" written under the more advanced paper weavings. I swoon at the minimalist yarn drawings, which now read like Fred Sandback (one of my favorite artists ever) sketches, and at the paper weavings, with their brilliant colors and patterns, but here it is especially the series of pages of paper squares folded into shapes and labeled as representative of objects--a duck (distinguished from the bird or chicken next to it just by one tiny fold) a picture frame, a clock, "two fish boxes or pocket book" that were the most fun to discover, drawing connections between simple folded shapes and things in the world--the moments abstraction and representation/signification meet. And how to beat those little faces drawn on the bird and duck?! Delights throughout, and harder and harder to find one of these that hasn't been taken apart--here I think of much greater value for being kept whole as an embodiment of whole teaching--learning--philosophy.
11 1/4 " 9 5/8. 30 accordian fold pages filled (blank backs). Some scattered foxing/fading/toning, somewhat more pronounced in photos than in hand, and a few unfolded bits/minor losses to a few of the folded shapes, all as thoroughly documented. Wear to the black cloth covered hard board covers but sturdy and sound. For me, holding this one in my hands feels like Christmas x a thousand, really a special one.
