Going Global: Maple Treehouse (Singapore)

Mark Twain (known as the Father of American Literature) was a lifelong creator and keeper of scrapbooks. As an avid scrapbooker, he was tired of hand gluing his life into books and figured his fellow scrapbookers felt the same way. So, he came up with the idea of printing thin strips of glue on the pages to make updates neat and easy to do. In 1872, he patented his “self-pasting” scrapbook and after acquiring the patent, Twain successfully marketed and sold the invention. An 1885 St. Louis Post-Dispatch article claimed that Twain's scrapbook made him USD $50,000 compared to USD$200,000 for all of his other books combined. It would be his only invention that ever made money. Ever since, there has been renewed interest in scrapbooking and, today, it has acquired a newer shade with the introduction of digital technology. We spoke to the founder of Maple Treehouse, Sylvia Koh on scrapbooking made easy.