Bookmarks

I recent­ly had print­ed a book­mark which dis­plays the cov­ers of all the books in the Pop­py series.

I’m hap­py to give a few to those that want them.  Please send a SASE to:

Avi
PO Box 900
Clark, CO 80428

Here’s a brief his­to­ry of the book­mark plucked from the internet.

“The His­to­ry of the Book­mark” by Sailee Brahme

Research sug­gests that book­marks have accom­pa­nied books since the ori­gin of the codex in the 1st cen­tu­ry AD. The old­est exist­ing book­mark dates from the 6th cen­tu­ry AD and was made of orna­ment­ed leather lined with vel­lum on the back, attached with a leather strap to the cov­er of a Cop­tic codex.

In late medieval ages, between the 13th and the 15th cen­turies, book­marks used in man­u­scripts and incunab­u­la in Euro­pean monas­ter­ies were most­ly made of vel­lum or leather using the rest of the mate­r­i­al which was used to make the book cov­er, but exis­tence of paper book­marks has also been not­ed. Some of them were shaped as a sophis­ti­cat­ed rotat­ing disc made of vel­lum which could indi­cate the page or the col­umn on the page.

The Roy­al Muse­um of Brunei show­cas­es an ivory book­mark made in India which is embell­ished with a geo­met­ri­cal pat­tern of pierced holes dat­ing from the 16th century.

In 1584 Queen Eliz­a­beth was pre­sent­ed with a fringed silk book­mark by Christo­pher Bark­er who had acquired a patent as Queen’s Print­er in 1577.

We are famil­iar with the com­mon type of book­mark which was in use in the eigh­teenth and up to the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. It con­sist­ed of a nar­row silk rib­bon, bound into the book at the top of the spine and just long enough to project below the low­er edge of the page. These types of book­marks are still in use espe­cial­ly in hard­cov­er and ref­er­ence books.

The first detached, and there­fore col­lectible, book­marks began to appear in the 1850s. One of the first ref­er­ences to these is found in Mary Rus­sell Mitford’s Rec­ol­lec­tions of a Lit­er­ary Life (1852).

Most nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry book­marks were intend­ed for use in bibles and prayer books and were made of rib­bon or woven silk. By the 1880s the pro­duc­tion of woven silk mark­ers was declin­ing and print­ed mark­ers made of stiff paper gained momentum.

The great peri­od of book­mark design and the use of lux­u­ri­ant mate­ri­als was dur­ing the Vic­to­ri­an and Edwar­dian eras. The idea that a book­mark be used to keep one’s place and pro­tect one’s book gained mass approval, and book­marks have been pro­duced in a vari­ety of mate­ri­als ever since. Con­tem­po­rary book­marks are made from a vari­ety of mate­r­i­al includ­ing paper, sil­ver, gold, wood, brass, cop­per, ivory, plas­tic, leather, rib­bon, and silk.

With count­less designs and styles avail­able, col­lect­ing book­marks is very pop­u­lar today. The largest col­lec­tion of book­marks belongs to Frank Diven­dal (Nether­lands) with 103,009 dif­fer­ent book­marks from all over the world, as of 8 Feb­ru­ary 2010, which he has been col­lect­ing since 1982.