In the Drawer: French Letter Blocks

Within John's studio drawers are stacks of 19th-century scrapbooks.

With advances in color printing in the second half of the nineteenth century, a wide variety of illustrations became available, ranging from animals and flowers to humorous caricatures.

A vintage-style wooden alphabet block set arranged on a dark wood surface, with a hand holding one block showing the letter A in pink with black outlining.

Publishers began selling albums with decorative covers designed for pasting items such as advertising trade cards, calling cards, and decorative paper. Some of these books mixed personal journal entries, hand-drawn sketches, watercolors, and scraps of printed material. These books were literally books of scraps.

Ark

$165.00

Blue Room

$225.00

Bits (p 117)

$195.00

5 Dogs

$115.00

Browse the full Scrapbook Series

In the Drawer

Our "In the Drawer" series, takes you inside John Derian's studio drawers to uncover his collection of 18th and 19th-century collection of books, ephemera, artifacts, and more.

As a life-long collector, John shares his favorite discoveries, offering the stories behind each unique item and how he has brought them back to life today.

Open them all here ›