Nostalgia - "Glanzbilder"

Last Saturday I wrote about the tradition of the "Poesiealbum". I mentioned "Glanzbilder" (literally "glossy pictures", in English they are called "scraps" or "die cuts") and that we had used some in a gift for a retiring colleague.
What I hadn't mentioned was that I might have bought just a little bit more than we needed, mostly because we wanted some variety and all went overboard, overcome with memories.
Let's talk about "Glanzbilder".

The history of scraps began in the 19th century. At first, they were black and white and had to be cut out by hand.
The invention of color printing in the form of chromolithography in 1837 allowed printing ephemera in high numbers, in good quality and at low cost. Among those ephemera were series of collectible pictures which came with different products for advertisement, could be collected in special albums and were also traded (which is of course still popular today although the pictures changed from being just advertisement articles to stand-alone products over time).

Around 1860, the German company Hagelberg started to print, emboss and die cut sheets with several pictures connected by small strips of paper.
In English, they are called scrap reliefs.
Until 1900, Berlin was the heartland of the scrap production, but there were also many manufacturers in other countries although they often didn't make scraps exclusively.
Scraps were used in scrapbooking, I have to admit I never knew where the name came from because it's not something I have ever done myself. In Germany, but also in other German or Dutch speaking countries, they were also used for "Poesiealben".

Subjects were often sentimental and romantic, angels, kittens, puppies, birds, flowers, butterflies, holiday themes, children, and much more.
They were colorful, embossed for more depth, and of course there were those with glitter which we loved best, but which were also more expensive.

Scraps are not self-adhesive like stickers, by the way. They had to be glued into an album.
There was also a different way, though, as I found out thanks to a post by a Swedish blogger. She shared scrap albums with sticky leaves you could put your scraps on and then protect with a plastic cover (there's a video showing that).
Scraps are still popular today, thanks to a wave of nostalgia, even if it's a bit kitschy. There are only two big companies left, one in Germany which actually only started in 1948 and markets them worldwide, one in England which also makes paper masks and vintage-inspired cards.
They may not turn up in the old-fashioned poetry album anymore, but they are still collected and used in crafts such as scrapbooking, collages, decoupage or card-making.

Interesting is also that the co-owner of the German company has gone (still goes?) to rest homes to set up small exhibitions and talk about scraps.
The stories and the visual impact are supposed to awaken memories in people and make them think about positive experiences in their lives.

I gave some of my pictures away which will probably find their way into friendship books, the successors of the poetry album, but I also kept some although I have no idea yet what I'm going to do with them.
Actually I thought about starting another poetry album, but that would mean having to send the album around as most of my friends don't live in my town and for me that sounds like too much of a hassle for them.
So I guess I'm just going to look at them every, now and then ... and remind myself that I still haven't found my Poesiealbum"! 😆

Sources (Englisch and German):

1. Die Geschichte der Glanzbilder-Produktion. On: Ernst Freihoff - Glanzbilder - Reliefs / Glanzbilder Historie (in German)
2. Scrap Reliefs Collection. On: Mamelok Papercraft3. Peter Kolakowski: Glanzbilder. On: DW (Deutsche Welle), November 19, 2009 (in German)
4. Glanzbilder - heile Welt auf Papier gebannt. In: Mindener Tageblatt, December 22, 2012 (via Wayback Machine, in German)
5. Hanna Andersson: Collectible vintage Scrap die-cuts | Glanzbilder or Bokmärken. On: Studio iHanna, July 27, 2020 (with a video)
6. Scrapbooking and the origin of scrap relief. On: Fantastik, January 11, 2024