Friendship Books of the 1500s

While looking for collage materials for my recent piece Intertwined, I came across something I’d never heard of before: friendship books, or albums amicorum, from the 1500s. They were small, hand-bound books people shared with friends, who would fill the pages with poems, drawings, notes, and even pressed flowers.

I love how these books were layered with personal symbols, memories, and bits of beauty meant to be kept and shared. In a way, they feel like the first collages, pieces of texture, language, and affection coming together to tell a story about friendship and time.

It’s a reminder that the instinct to collect, create, and hold on to meaning through what we find and who we meet has always been there.