17 March – 30 June 2025
This exhibition showcases a collection assembled over many years by noted textile designer Gloria Finn Dale (1922–2013) and integrated into the library of William Zachs in 2008. Originating as an exhibition in 2019, and reassembled in 2025 at the Blackie House Library and Museum on the occasion of the publication of a new catalogue, the array of material includes a wide variety of albums, scrapbooks, love tokens, decorated boxes, pin cushions, Valentine and Christmas cards, photographs, jewellery, craft supplies, portrait miniatures, and much more.
While a thread of sorrow weaves its way through a fair number of the items, others are rather more cheerful. The friendship albums, sometimes called ‘alba amicorum’, are at the heart of the Dale collection.
Initially, these albums and other objects seem to be united by their appealing aesthetic and their evident rarity, even ephemerality. Looking at each one more closely, what also unites them is an aura of intimacy. These are mostly private objects, often dedicated to personal use, or created as gifts, and then carefully preserved.
Because the subjects of this exhibition would have carried in them personal feelings, memories, and stories, we have called these items ‘sentimentalia’. From a silver Victorian baby’s rattle to a needlework bookmark, these items often embody private rather than public memories. A sewing needle commemorating the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838 and a mother-of-pearl-inlaid photograph album with an image of the royal residence Osborne House on the Isle of Wight combine elements of the private and public.
Some – the friendship albums, scrapbooks, and love tokens – commemorate close needlework skills. Sketches and paintings by gifted (and slightly less gifted) artists fill many scrapbooks and albums. Other items exemplify craft skills no longer common today: ‘pointillist’ relief images made by pricking paper with a needle; paper cut-outs; woven locks of hair. Some of the value and interest of these items comes from the human effort and joy involved in making them.
Occasionally we can identify the makers behind these items; most of the time, their names are lost. While crafts were used in service of relationships, they could also be pursued for their own sake. Making a beaded cover for a scrapbook could be an act of love, but it could also be a hobby. This exhibition gives us a glimpse of some ways people in what might be called the long nineteenth century spent their leisure time.
Scrapbooks and albums were made to be opened and enjoyed – on slow, rainy, solitary days, on dark winter evenings, or in a quiet moment. Beaded or embroidered bookbindings, cross-stitched bookmarks, sketches, calligraphic displays, handpainted cards: these items provided entertainment for their creators, as well as their recipients. The painted cards for the ‘Game of the Bride’ suggest not only evenings playing with friends, but also quiet afternoons with a watercolour set in anticipation of the social encounter. Scrapbooking itself was a creative hobby. But scrapbooks often reveal owners’ interests, values, and even their sense of humour.
Overall, ‘Remember me’ opens our eyes to an era very different from our own – but one whose inhabitants often had sentiments and motivations recognizable to us, if sometimes expressed in different ways. The items on display recall forgotten events and antiquated crafts; they retell old jokes; and they reanimate the daily lives and treasured possessions of private individuals. They do so with a sentimental, indeed very real, poignancy. In all, we see here how people remembered their friends and loved ones. We, in turn, remember them and those we once knew and still love.
