Booksellers just never know what they will find inside a used book. Some things are inevitable – just several weeks ago I spent 5 minutes divesting a set of books of dried flowers and leaves. Mostly there are scraps of paper used as bookmarks. They too, get the Heave-ho. Alas, this bookseller has never found banknotes tucked inside a book – darn.
But I have found valuable items lodged in volumes. Last year, I purchased a “rare” South Shore, Nova Scotia village history. Got home and discovered tucked in near the rear of the book, a pamphlet history of the village printed decades before the purchased book – and it was “very rare”. Inside a 1606 Breeches Bible was a sewn notebook used by a clergyman, by the looks of it, as a calendar, with months and days noted but no year – again darn. But I can’t read German anyway.
A dealer has to decide whether to throw away these incidentals, leave them in the book – especially if they are tied into the book in some way, or stash the items away in a drawer somewhere. That is where I went to get the material for today’s musing – my stash of bookmarks or interesting things used as book marks.
And here are three Toronto dealers and a Vancouver dealer bookmarks.
And some American dealer bookmarks.
Publishers sometimes print up bookmarks to market current or forthcoming publications. Here are two examples from Harper in New York. Note that the folder 1886 bookmark has a listing of recent offerings on the verso.
Assurance companies thought it useful to advertise via bookmarks as well. Here are two samples from a British company and one from South Africa.
The next four photos are for distinct individual items.
The first example was not printed to be used as a bookmark, but thousands of people used them as bookmarks, myself included. If a reader of this musing does not know what it is, go ask someone with white hair.
This next item is from a Scottish service club which may have provided the book that it was found in – would like to think so.
Some booklovers had their own personal bookmarks. I am sure that there are many readers that use their business cards as bookmarks. (I use both my Raven & Gryphon Fine Books and my Halifax Global Inc. cards). This practice is declining as is the printing of such objects. Surely, no body uses their mobile device as a bookmark.
These things cannot compare to the unique, handcrafted bookmark that is illustrated below.
And now for my personal favourite. This came out of a book published in 1925 and I think that this bookmark would be from the same timeframe. I keep this one on my desk in the book room.
