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1890s German Manuscript Notebook / Scrapbook - Household Hints, Leipzig and Berlin Business Notes
Original handwritten notebook with pasted period newspaper clippings, Germany, circa mid-to-late 1890s
An original small handwritten notebook or commonplace-book/scrapbook, inscribed on the front cover in period cursive with the name \"J.A. Grossmann\" (partly legible). The book combines pasted German-language newspaper clippings in Fraktur type with handwritten entries in the same hand throughout its roughly 60 pages.
The pasted clippings include practical household hints - restretching cane chair seats, cleaning lacquered objects, removing fruit and red-wine stains, removing ink and rust stains from laundry, rat-extermination methods, gilding plaster figures with copper bronze powder, sealing floor joints, and cleaning pampas-grass bouquets - along with advertisements and miscellany, including one referencing a \"Katalog für 1896\" (1896 catalog) from a Berlin art-photography publisher, which anchors the notebook\'s compilation to the mid-to-late 1890s, and another recounting the construction history of the Gotthard Tunnel (built 1872-1880).
The handwritten pages include what appear to be personal shopping, order, or business reference notes naming real period German firms and publishers, including F.E.C. Leuckart (the noted Leipzig music publishing house), R. Jaffé & Co. (Berlin), Pflaume & Blossberg (Leipzig, electrical goods), and Jancke & Cie (Stuttgart, art dealer), along with a small hand-drawn decorative pen flourish on one page.
This is a unique, one-of-a-kind manuscript item - no directly comparable item exists for a sold-price comparison. It offers genuine interest to collectors of German-American ephemera, 19th-century domestic economy and household-hint literature, and manuscript/autograph material with period commercial advertising content.
Size: approximately 6.5 x 4.5 inches, stitched booklet, approx. 60 pages
Condition: age toning, staining, edge wear and some separation at the spine/stitching, a few small tears and chips; pages remain legible and mostly intact - please review all photographs for exact condition and contents
Packed flat in rigid mailer. Calculated USPS shipping.
