As you may very well know, I have tons of old photos of my maternal great grandaunt Saima because her husband Emil was an amateur photographer. The paternal side of my family is much less documented. When I got this beautiful antique family album it had some cabinet photos and some loose photos slipped between the pages, and my father could only name less than a handful of the people featured. Many people have a definite Rantakari look about them (or at least they have noses big enough to be family), but they no longer have names for us remaining.

The most familiar faces are now hanging on the gallery wall in our hallway, and even fewer photos remain in the album. The album is so worn and tattered the photos remaining barely stay in place, and I've gotten permission to repurpose the album should I want to. The album itself apparently isn't a family treasure, so it remains to be seen whether or not the loose pages will find their way into a mixed media project of mine. For the time being it can stay as it is.

These sisters were photographed by Tyyne Böök in Helsinki. I'm always happy to see female photographers' names in these cabinet photos. A little detective work revealed that Tyyne had her own photography studio from 1913-1926, and also owned a women's lingerie and embroidery shop.

A serious Mr. with better posture than his descendants.

As a bookbinder I naturally appreciate the structural aspects of this piece even now that it's falling apart. The velvet spine and corners have lost their nap almost entirely, the cover has also began to flake off, bits fall out if the album is opened, and the clasp is lost. But I imagine this once was a very fine album altogether, back when most people in it still had names.