Unique Scrapbook and Postcard Diary, with Photographs and Original Artwork

United States, 1895-1897. Green cloth over flexible boards, "Photographs" stamped in gilt on upper board; 4to; approx. pp. 50, with over 100 mounted postcard-format entries, usually two per page, on both the recto and the verso. Wonderful! Easily one of the nicest albums of this kind that we have had the pleasure of cataloguing. This unique album contains more than 100 dated "diary entries" (out of chronological sequence), each one a hand-made postcard featuring original artwork (including watercolors, pencil sketches, ink drawings, both naive and accomplished), a photograph, a cyanotype, or an image cut from an unknown source (such as a newspaper or magazine). The postcards are created by numerous contributors, and their rich variety is difficult to capture, except to say that they run the gamut of human capability (the sketch artist offers an anthropomorphic chicken, the watercolor painter a peaceful landscape) and personality (sentimental, humorous, sweet, thoughtful). A short list gives you an idea: happy puppies (photograph), ladies in big dresses wading in the surf (photograph), a Rorsarch test (ink, of course), kite (ink drawing), plant specimen, baseball joke (pencil cartoon), a little bird (feather collage), 8 bars of music (ink), Jamaica Plain (cyanotype), bull fight (photograph), boats (photograph), a family portrait in the Adirondacks (photograph). Our compiler must have enlisted far-flung friends for contributions, as images and references hail from Perugia, Brooklyn, Boston, Zermatt Valley, Philadelphia, Avignon, and Arizona.