The House that Glue Built

New York: Frederick A Stokes Company, 1905. First Edition. Original printed glazed boards.. Very good; rebacked in maroon cloth; modest soiling to the covers; title page loose - perforations separated.. Oblong 4to, [17] leaves (title page and 8 are of the empty rooms of the house - unfurnished - and 8 which have numbered illustrations of furnishings, utensils, and people to be cut out and glued into the blank rooms. The 8 leaves with furnishings etc. (and the title page) have a line of perforations parallel to the gutter to facilitate their removal.

The end of the line for a tradition that Martin Engelbrecht's publishing firm was associated with in the mid-eighteenth century. Known by the appellation of "Klebealbum" - a vogue in the late eighteenth century in South Germany, particularly Augsburg, for creating scrapbooks depicting homes, their contents, and the family life therein by parents for the edification of their children - and often based on the printed illustrations churned out by Engelbrecht's workshop along with others (e.g., H Vleck in Amsterdam, Renner in Nürnberg, Iversen in Copenhagen) into the nineteenth century (Stetten, Geschichte ..., 1779, p. 398 refers to Engelbrecht and the fact that the, " ... illuminierten ... Aussschneidebilder sehr guten Abgang fanden."). The true Klebealbum was a scrapbook, assembled by a pre-adolescent child. The handful of examples that survive are usually organized as a "tour" through a residence where each room is decorated with applied illustrations (hence the name). The commercial exploitation of the idea (offered here) is the end of any original thought that underlay the creation of such records. All of the original decorative pieces are still in their color printed punch-out forms. The background room settings in the Williams' book offered here follow a typical Arts & Crafts styling popular at the time. See G Haindl, Die Kunst zu Wohnen: Ein Augsburger Klebealbum des 18 Jahrhunderts; see Thieme/Becker X, 533-534 for Martin and Christopher Engelbrecht; see Buijnsters, Papertoys Speelprenten en papieren speelgoed in Nederland.