Nature Domesticated: A Victorian Seaweed Scrapbook

Nature Domesticated: A Victorian Seaweed Scrapbook

Seaweed Scrapbook

As children many of us will have collected flowers to press between the pages of books and, if we were very organised, gathered them into scrapbooks. But how many have done the same with seaweed? During the Victorian era seaweed collecting was a popular occupation for young ladies. It was a Romantic, but sentimental and safely domesticated, way to explore the natural world for women who were not expected to study science for its own sake, but as a social accomplishment. The present scrapbook (book sold) is an early Victorian example containing thirty-four artfully arranged specimens of red, green, and brown seaweeds. Its upper cover is embossed with the name Miss Mary Carrington, but we not not sure whether she was the collector or perhaps the recipient of the completed scrapbook.

Seaweed Scrapbook

What was so appealing about seaweed collecting that it became a popular hobby? For the Victorians, the natural world was inextricably tied to religious and moral edification, with amateur collectors drawn to its study “as a culturally approved form of recreation… seen as aesthetically pleasing, educational and morally beneficial, since lifted the mind to a new appreciation of God”. “Queen Victoria as a young girl made a seaweed album; later in the century, materials for such an album could be purchased at seaside shops like that of Mary Wyatt in Torquay, who specialized in natural souvenirs” (Logan, The Victorian Parlour, pages 144 & 124).

Seaweed Scrapbook

Mounting the seaweed allowed the hobbyist a level of aesthetic freedom, as they were expected to artfully arrange the samples rather than simply pasting them into a book.

“In the late 19th Century, the book Sea Mosses: A Collector’s Guide and an Introduction to the Study of Marine Algae by A. B. Hervey outlined how to properly press and mount various types of algae. The tools needed are a pair of pliers, scissors, a stick with a needle in the end, at least two ‘wash bowls,’ botanist’s ‘drying paper,’ or some kind of blotting paper, cotton cloth, and finally cards to mount the specimens on. Pliers and scissors are used to handle the specimens and cut away any extraneous, ‘superfluous’ branches, and the needle is used like a pencil so that the plant can be moved around with relative ease to show the finer details… The drying and pressing process consists of layering the mounting papers with various types of blotting cloth and additional paper topped with weights… Most seaweed in this case will adhere to the mounting board via gelatinous materials emitted from the plant itself” (Harvard University, Mary A. Robinson online exhibition).

The creator of this scrapbook must have followed a similar set of instructions, as each specimen is carefully fanned out to achieve a naturalistic beauty and symmetry, and no adhesives have been used.

This delicate process exposed not only the beauty of the seaweed, but reflected the character of the collector. Nature was at the centre of the Victorian domestic imagination, and “one reason for the appearance of various representations of the natural world in the parlour… was a continuing apprehension of the world as beautiful – or at least a continuing prestige attached to those who were sensible of that beauty” (Logan, p. 142). In other words, collecting and carefully arranging seaweed demonstrated the participant’s refined sensibilities and her appreciation of nature’s more subtle forms of beauty.

For more on scrapbooking see our related posts on a Jazz Age scrapbook and a Victorian illustration scrapbook. And to learn about another Victorian hobby see Painting by Words: The Original Drawings of Charlotte Brontë.

Seaweed Scrapbook

Seaweed Scrapbook

Seaweed Scrapbook

Hot slugs! What a Jazz Age Scrapbook Teaches Us About Materiality

Hot slugs! What a Jazz Age Scrapbook Teaches Us About Materiality

81357_26_Hinshaw

As both academics and the public grapple with the nature of books and the impact of digital media on our daily lives,  one of the issues at the forefront of the discussion is materiality. How is a book made and distributed, who buys it and how do they use it? How are its physical characteristics related to its reception and influence? Does the shift to digital negatively alter patterns of consumption and creation?  You might think “A book is a book”, but often the answers to these questions are far more complicated and interesting, if difficult to elucidate for the majority of texts. Sometimes, though, the physical importance of a book is immediately obvious. We recently had an evocative piece with a particularly strong material presence, a Jazz Age scrapbook and diary that sheds light not only on the culture of the 1920s and the experience of a young person’s coming of age, but the relationship between an object and its consumer/creator.

Flapper Scrapbook

Senior year scrapbook compiled by Christine Hinshaw in 1925.

The owner of this scrapbook was a young woman named Christine Hinshaw, who was born in Winchester Indiana in 1908, the daughter of Dr. Otis W. Hinshaw and his wife Luetta Pearl Moody, both from well-to-do Quaker families. From the evidence of the scrapbook, Christine was a popular and outgoing student who served as the class secretary and was a member of the English Club, Drama Club, the Guild Girls (a church group), and the Delta Theta Tau sorority.

The book itself is a purpose-made school scrapbook divided into sections such as autographs; clubs and activities; sports, dances and other entertainments; “stunts & jokes”; “Kodak snap-shots”; and commencement. Though the book is copyrighted 1910 and the interior illustrations are in Edwardian and Art Nouveau styles, the cover is decorated with an up-to-date Art Deco design, indicating that the firm re-published it year after year, updating only the covers to save on expenses.

Flapper scrapbook

Hinshaw received the scrapbook on May 30, 1925 and began writing in it immediately, making extensive notes and also preserving the material traces of her experiences. A close look reveals that she initially based her topics on the printed headings, neatly entering her name and high school and describing various activities in their labelled sections. But she also adapted it to her own particular use, often ignoring the printed titles and using the pages differently than the publishers intended. In this way she took full advantage of each leaf, filling the book completely and creating a complex and highly personal record that goes far beyond a simple school scrapbook.

Flapper Scrapbook

The first section of the book is for classmate and teacher autographs and photos, but instead Christine lists them by name (the book was a graduation gift, so she may not have had the opportunity to obtain signatures in person), and writes notes, nicknames, and jokes alongside. Ruby Graft was “Sure a good old sport” and Don Baker had “loose paper scattered on the floor – Oh no!”, while history teacher Kate Brooks had “finally got married”, and of the school coach she had this to say: “By garsh he knew his onions!”

Flapper Scrapbook

Flapper Scrapbook

Hinshaw’s personality shines throughout the scrapbook, particularly in chatty, humorous recollections of her friends and their hijinks.  One evening after a meeting of the English Club, “a bunch of us kids went to one of the cafes up town & danced with their player piano. Bill Moorman’s lights on his car went out, it rained – oh how it rained! We got home way after midnight”. On another page she copies the joke poem “He drank but once, he drank no more, what he thought was H20 was H2SO4” and commented that, “I don’t know any Chemistry but they say its poison. I mean H2SO4”. Jazz Age culture makes a striking appearance in small-town Indiana when she writes that, “Joanna Mills was up at the dance with her hair slicked back fit to kill. She said ‘Look me over folks I’m from Broadway.’ Hot slugs” (her favourite exclamation, used frequently in the scrapbook).

Flapper Scrapbook

Calling and greeting cards.

Flapper Scrapbook

Holiday cards.

Flapper Scrapbook

Hinshaw was active in the The Drama Club, which “practised every morning from 8.30 to 9am on ‘Come out of the Kitchen’. With Fred Oxley & Geo Kendall running wild really the moral standard of our class was VERY low”. She writes about the play alongside a programme and a clipped newspaper review in which the reporter describes Hinshaw as having “covered herself with glory” in the lead role. She used the next page of the scrapbook to preserve the ribbons from her diploma, even though it was intended for “spreads & entertainments”.

Flapper Scrapbook

School play review and diploma ribbons.

Social rounds were also a significant part of Hinshaw’s life. She attended numerous bridge parties even though she was often “bored to tears. Bridge parties make me sick”, and pasted a number of Art Deco-style scorecards into the scrapbook.

Flapper Scrapbook

Bridge scorecard.

Flapper Scrapbook

Bridge scorecard.

Memories of a dances are preserved via a dance card with its tiny pencil still attached by string, as well as three full corsages.

Flapper Scrapbook

Dance card – “had a wonderful time”.

Flapper Scrapbook

Corsage.

Flapper Scrapbook

Dried flowers originally given for commencement, “They were awfully pretty”.

A high point of the summer was her attendance as a delegate at the three-day “Sunday School Convention” (The Indiana Convention of Religious Education) held at Winona Lake in June, her description accompanied as usual by newspaper clippings, programmes, and other ephemera.

Flapper Scrapbook

Graduation, as to be expected, forms a substantial portion of her remembrances, and she describes the event itself as well as satellite activities like dinners, picnics, and dances.

Flapper Scrapbook

Graduation programme.

These celebrations required a new wardrobe, and on two pages she pastes in the pattern-book illustrations of the dresses she had made, along with fabric swatches and notes. A peach silk dress was modeled after a professional pattern but altered so that it “Didn’t have any sleeves or collar,” and a dress made of moddish blue and red patterned fabric “Had a lace collar and jabo ”. She sketches her graduation dress and writes, “I had blond satin slippers there awfully pretty”. Fashion was clearly an important part of Hinshaw’s life. At one point she wonders about her new clothes for college and whether she will get a fur coat. When her parents give her a diamond ring as a graduation present she becomes too excited to attend a school event scheduled for later that day.

Flapper Scrapbook

The most substantial way that Hinshaw altered the scrapbook, though, was by transforming it into a poignant diary recording the summer between high school and college, as basic descriptions of class activities become longer entries discussing her day-to-day life and the excitement and anxiety she felt at embarking on adult life. Early in the book she describes her classmates’s transitions into employment or college, noting with some sadness that “Certainly doesn’t take a class long to scatter”. Later she writes, “We seniors were going to have a picnic or a party before we got scattered but we didn’t…lot of the kids are working. There were 34 in our class and not half of them were at Alumni”. By Alumni she meant the Alumni Banquet, where she “Had a pretty good time. This is the last function. Now we are DONE”.

Though her school days were ending, new opportunities presented themselves. “Mary Robinson is to be married June 29 and she has asked me to play at her wedding. I sure got a kick out of that. I have never played at a wedding before”.

Flapper Scrapbook

Flapper Scrapbook

Ribbon from wedding corsage.

In July Hinshaw spent a week with the Guild Girls at a cottage by Lake Webster, and though her mother was a chaperone, Christine was allowed to “take our car up & keep it there”. Along with her description of the lake trip she pastes in a butterfly she found, which is still remarkably intact.

Flapper Scrapbook

In an entry dated July-August 1925 Hinshaw reports that she is “learning how to cook. Get all the meals. Boy I’m keen. Clean chickens bake cakes & pies. Hot stuff! Am teaching Mom to drive the car. She tickles me so”. Though Hinshaw relates most of the stress of graduation with upbeat humour, she does record one momentary loss of equilibrium, an unusual, stream-of-consciousness entry. “Camping with . It’s awful cold. Still run the radio. Aunt Blanch comes down a lot. Gee. Talk about cooking – but I really do like it. I would like to write something here but I guess I won’t. It’s nothing anyhow only a bubble. Sometimes strange things happen. I love to ride horseback”.

Flapper Scrapbook

Throughout the summer Hinshaw prepared for the start of college at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, about fifty miles south of Winchester. In a wonderful example of both her pride and trepidation at entering college she writes that she had to, “get my certificate filled out for Miami…. Made 159 on it. 120 is normal intelligence. Hot slugs. Wonder folks don’t put on dark glasses when there near me. Oh yes I oughta make something wonderful of my self. I’ll probably take in washing”.

Flapper Scrapbook

The final entry in the scrapbook reads, “Was over at school a minute this afternoon. There are so many new kids it doesn’t any more seem natural I have no desire to go back. I am no longer Pres of Guild or Secretary to Delta Theta Tau. I have gone to the last card party I will attend before I leave & have had Delta tonight. My trunk is gone & I’m all ready. I can hardly wait. Sure & I suppose I’ll get homesick but who hasn’t. There will be over 800 in my class. Am not expecting to know them all the first day. People this certainly is a great life if you don’t weaken”.* Hinshaw’s conclusion is followed by the only such illustration she made in the scrapbook, a stick figure in a skirt and feathered hat carrying a suitcase toward a building that looks like a house but is labelled “Miami”.

Flapper Scrapbook

Hinshaw’s scrapbook is an entirely personal, deeply engaging, and visually enchanting record of one young woman’s coming of age during the Roaring Twenties. But it’s also a wonderful example of an individual creatively combining book, text, images, and ephemera as a record of her life.  Though pundits like to argue about the ways that new technologies alter or enforce certain behaviors, we can look to this much older technology, the scrapbook, to understand how individuals take control of the tools at their disposal and adapt them to their own circumstances.

*This phrase, a rallying cry for soldiers during the First World War, had become popular as the title of a Gene Byrnes comic strip published in the New York Evening Telegram between 1915 and 1919.

For more Jazz Age culture visit our post Flappers at Sea, and click here to browse our stock.

Scrapbook

Scrapbook

Does anyone know what this is?

All we know is that it’s the most interesting page from a 19th-century scrapbook we recently acquired. And to be honest, the mystery is probably more fun than learning the truth, as the last couple of days have been dominated by discussions of “what the wheel is for” (he runs along an electric tram track, obviously) and “why does he have a sponge cake on his head?” August is a slow month in the book trade.

Even disregarding the silly picture the scrapbook is great. The hobby was incredibly popular–as early as the late 18th century stationers were selling blank books for people to fill with prints and other ephemera, and it remained an important activity for young women throughout the nineteenth century.

This particular book was  produced in 1829 (according to the title page), and the binding is typical of the period: red half skiver, a form of cheap, thin leather produced from the inner side of a sheepskin. We can tell that this scrapbook was well cared for because the fragile skiver has not deteriorated. The book’s condition and the obvious care taken in cutting out, placing, and coloring the scraps within it indicate that it was a much-loved item.

One of the most interesting parts of the book is the title page, itself an ephemeral item that was meant to be removed by the purchaser. It’s unusual to find one intact, and this example is a typographic masterpiece, weaving together a variety of typefaces including the tiniest I’ve ever seen forming decorative curls around the larger phrases.

Definitely click to enlarge!

There’s also a guide, in case you can’t read the very tiny text!

It’s been pasted into the very back of the book.

The contents of the scrapbook date from the end of the 1700s to at least the 1850s, with some items entered at the time of their publication and others culled from older books or periodicals. The compiler seems to have had an interest in fashion, devoting a number of pages to fashion plates, and in many cases cutting out individual figures and carefully combining them in hand-coloured vignettes, as below. This was a common practice of scrapbookers during the period.

Also popular with this compiler was a series of prints depicting  South American people, produced by John Skinner in 1805.

Each individual and caption was delicately cut from the original print and pasted into the scrapbook.

Either the compiler or a family member or friend was an amateur artist, and many pages are filled with humorous  original sketches and visual puns.

The kind of innocuous things you can imagine as the result of parlor games, though that “scotch crab” is kind of freaking me out.

There are lots of engravings of tourist attractions and scenic areas. The borders around these have been hand-painted:

There are quite a lot of these very dull, very badly written,  moralistic poems and vignettes. Was our compiler the Ned Flanders of the 1850s?

Then there are some entries that are more random – things that happened to catch the eye of the compiler. Like our strange wheeled friend above.

Scrapbooks, as well as being entertaining, are a great resource for understanding the viewpoints and leisure pursuits of middle and upper class women during the nineteenth century. I can’t help but wonder what historians of the future would make of the wall behind my desk, covered in postcards, clipped out comic strips, silly notes from colleagues, and the wrappers to French sweets.