Ainsworth Schoolchildren at Play

At some point in her life, Minnie Rossow Harms got ahold of a big wallpaper sample book and repurposed it as a scrapbook. Using her own homemade paste — a mixture of water and flour — she covered over the wallpaper sheets with photographs, articles cut out of newspapers, airline tickets from visits to her far-away adult children, even her own sketches of houses where she'd lived during her long lifetime. What she didn't paste down she just stuffed between the pages.

She has preserved some wonderful things in there. Unfortunately, between the wet paste causing the photos, etc. to warp, and the overstuffing causing the wallpaper book as a whole to curve, it has become very difficult to reproduce those things for blog postings!

Here is one attempt. Minnie cut this photo of children on the W.G. Haan school playground from an issue of the Gary Post-Tribune (leaving off the date).


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of E.H.

I took a photo of the photo, indoors in poor lighting. Someday I hope to have another go at that scrapbook in better lighting.