Very early on in H&Co’s history, we were asked to make a bespoke album and slipcase. It was to be used as a family history album, but it’s the reason behind the request which I think is rather special and beautiful.
Our customers husband had recently been diagnosed with dementia. Before his memory really started to fade, His wife wanted to put together a family history album for his son, which she would create using all his old family photos and would come right up to the present day.
With a family tree at the beginning of the album, she carefully laid out all the old photographs on a pieces of 12”x12” card and next to each one wrote who they were. If possible she also wrote a short piece as to where the photos were taken. Her husbands collection of photographs went back two generations, so there was a lot of history to tell just in who was who! He had also served in the RAF and one of his tours was in the far east where as a family they had spent a couple of years. There were photos he had taken from postings all over the world before finally settling in England.
Once the photos were laid on the pages, with the written explanations, they were put into sheet protectors and then put into the screw post album. His photographic family history complete he then presented to his eldest son who now lived in Denmark and who himself had two sons. Because of the language difficulty, this was also a way that he could tell the story of their family to his Grandchildren.
For the next generation of this family this was to be a significant gift from a member of the family who could pass on who and what their history was, before it became too late. It wasn’t too difficult to compile (all the material was pretty much there!) It took a bit of time, but for future generations of the family it was time well spent.
Needless to say the album (and certainly its contents) went down really and we ended up making a second family history album (this time in leather) for his daughter.
See more of our family history bespoke albums and boxes here.
