Audrey Amiss: photograph albums and scrapbooks

Collage and scrap material and photographs pasted into photograph albums and scrapbooks, created by Audrey Amiss between the years 1977 to 2013.

Earlier volumes take the form of photograph albums. Some contain primarily photographs, others have been used more as scrapbooks and contain newspaper and magazine cuttings as well as other ephemera.

Later scrapbooks contain mainly food packaging, and associated everyday ephemera (eg, envelopes, lettters, newspaper and magazine cuttings, and packaging from household goods). Pasted items are often annotated with Audrey's commentary and some contextual information (eg, where and when the item was purchased, associations to the design, and how it tasted). The extent of these annotations is variable.

Entries are also annotated with Audrey's numbering system (which appears to be generally sequential over the course of a day), and often with the date and location of purchase. In some scrapbooks, Audrey Amiss has noted that they are "continued from the previous volume", or "continue to the next volume". Where this is the case, this has been detailed in the item level description.

Volumes are described according to their content and not by their physical format. For example, some photo album formats do not contain any photographs at all, but have instead been used as scrapbooks; these would be given the title "Scrapbook".

Around 1995-1997 Audrey started using more conventional scrapbooks and more ephemera and cuttings from newspapers and magazines, rather than photographs.

1960s-2013

234 volumes

Scrapbooks, account books and record books have been assigned numbers by a relative of Audrey Amiss following her death. These numbers were assigned according to where the material was stored in Audrey's flat. These numbers are captured in the 'Previous Numbers' field. Some volumes were not numbered; please also see previous numbers field.

Dates for these materials have either been provided by Audrey Amiss, or have been estimated based on the material within a volume. Where an estimate has been used, this is given in the form of a 'circa' date, and should be taken as an estimated figure. When Audrey has dated volumes herself, these are the dates used within the catalogue. From around the mid 1990s, Audrey tends to provide dates over a range of two to three dates, for example "27/28 April 2004 - 15/16 May 2004". These dates have been captured in the title field, and the earliest and latest possible start date have been added to the date field (eg, 27/04/2004-16/05/2004). All item level descriptions specify whether the date has been provided by the cataloguer or follows Audrey's dating system.

Limited information is available on where these volumes were originally stored in Audrey's flat. As such, much of the original organisation of the collection has not been retained in the catalogue, which has been rearranged chronologically by record type.

Audrey Amiss' family numbered the volumes in the collection before donating the items to Wellcome Library. This may be indicative of the order in which the materials were encountered in the flat and has been captured in the catalogue for each relevant item level record (see "previous number" field).

The scrapbooks are a combination of different sizes and formats, with materials stuck into photo albums, as well as spiral bound notebooks, notebooks, sketch pads, and more traditional scrapbook volumes. Food items and ephemera have been pasted into the volumes using sellotape or glue; some items have since come loose and some pages are stuck together. Although food packaging appears to have been washed before being stuck in, sometimes there is food residue or dirt.