BOOKMARKS 🔖📚

Bookmarks have a rich social history.

I have gathered a lot over the years, and also managed to lose a fair few. The leather one below is quite special. My partner and I walked the Thames path when we were living in England in the 1990s. We began where the river bubbles to the surface in a Gloucestershire field and ended at the majestic Thames Barrier in London, where we bought the souvenir bookmark.

Here are two cardboard ones from the Library of NSW. They produce bookmarks to publicize their many exhibitions. I can’t resist them, especially as they are free.

Writers use them to promote their books. I had this one printed with a title on either side. That was in my productive days before I started wasting my time blogging . 😨

Here is a great one for children from London’s Wellcome Trust gift shop. It has a ruler on one side and lenticular figures on the other; which means they appear to perform actions.

There is a clip style of bookmark as well. My photo is terrible, but it’s a little silver rabbit.

But back to social history. Here is a great cartoon published at the outbreak of WWII.

Readers use some bizarre items as makeshift bookmarks. The following piece appeared in the Brisbane Telegraph in 1929.

The bookseller who found in a book a ₤5 note which apparently some opulent person had been using as a bookmark can by no means claim a unique experience.

What is surely the classic instance of this kind fell to the lot of a London bookseller recently. Glancing through some volumes purchased from a professor he came across the backbone of a herring! The former owner had evidently combined study with breakfast.

Well that puts a new slant on the spine of a book! (sorry) 😂

Be very careful when you borrow books from libraries and use unorthodox bookmarks;

Sydney – Tuesday. A diamond pendant valued at £65 was found in a volume borrowed from the Literary Institute at Lithgow. It had been used as a bookmark by its owner, a woman, to whom it was eventually returned. (Glen Innes Examiner, Jan. 12 1937)

ONLY IN OZ!

From the Swan Express, July 30 1926

In the snake infested sugarcane fields district of Maroochy (Queensland) the other day, a bushwife had an unenviable experience with a snake. Sitting down in a squatter’s chair on the verandah in the afternoon with the intention of reading, she fell asleep with the book lying open on her lap. On awakening she was horrified to find that a five-foot brown snake lay across the open pages, with his head resting across her shoulder. Fortunately, petrified with fear, she remained perfectly still until after what seemed to be an aeon of time, the snake slithered to the ground and made off into the nearby bush.

BOOKMARKS JUST FOR FUN

My friend sent me this ‘coffee spill’ bookmark as part of a cautionary tale about not sitting coffee on my computer.  I love that it shows how a small container of fluid can create a veritable flood!

WHOOSH! 😨

OK Mandy, I get the point!

My associate Editor Des made some unique bookmarks using old envelopes. I’ll let him tell the story.

OK, well I used pinking shears to cut off the corners

Then I decorated them with stickers;

I put the big one on Pauline’s book that she’s been reading before she goes to sleep. I hope she likes it.

This smaller one is for my own book. Well, an editor has to keep his skills up. Every apostrophe must in the right spot. Pauline would be so shocked at that swear word. but let’s be honest apostrophes are tricky little blighters. 😅

FOOTNOTE – Desmond, the pinking shears were not such a good idea, because the frilly edge gets caught on the page…..just saying. Please don’t take offence, but these might be better.