A Very Early Pinterest

The vintage Christmas card I found last week came out of this old scrapbook. Before I put this on eBay, I had to share with you what marveled me and how we are still doing this with Pinterest.
The collector of these prints from old copies of The Studio Magazine had a passion for striking and attractive images, cut them out and pasted them in this scrapbook. They are not arranged in by any genre, style or theme.

The images are varied, some landscape, some illustrations, some are graphic, some portraits. And it is not a scrapbook of a family or mementos. I don't know who this belonged to or what was their need to collect the visual ideas. It could have been an early editor, or an artist who collected these images of prints, drawings and and sketches for ideas. The Studio first published in 1893 was an illustrated fine arts and decorative magazine. It had an influence on the tastes and culture of the period.

A novel of the 20's So Disdained, captures the nature of the magazine and the influence it had on British people at the time:

"Lord Arner had in his library all the bound volumes of Studio since the beginning. When he was worried or upset over anything he used to go in there and sit down beside the fire, and turn these volumes over slowly. When he came to a picture that he liked he would sit staring at it for a long time without moving. He liked water-colour reproductions best, I think, and especially garden sketches, water colours of herbaceous borders, and paintings with delicate, bright colours. Sometimes he would pass the heavy volume across when he found a drawing that he particularly admired."

Doesn't that sound like us with Pinterest? except it is not heavy volumes, it is sharing across blogs.