General > What Was Your First Bookmark?
The bookmark that inspired me to start collecting is a paper promotional piece from the 1920's. It was promoting an all girl jazz band in Paris, and has a beautiful graphic of a girl playing a saxophone. I found it an an antique mall, and I think I payed US $5. It represents a lot of the reasons I collect bookmarks - a piece of history, a snippet of culture, and a beautiful graphic.
Alan
Date: 6th May 1989. Place: Portobello Road market, London. On one bric-a-brac stall were two bookmarks, a hand-embroidered bristol board marker saying simply 'forget me not' and a silk woven Bollans 'Happy New Year'. I was fascinated and hooked by these reminders of other people's lives, and promptly bought both for £3.50 (about $2.20). I have not looked back since.
Sylvia Bunting
One of my friends made a hand tooled leather bookmark for me as a high school graduation present. It had "peace" and "love" on it with the Peace sign in the "o". It was a strangely appropriate reflection of where I lived (West Texas where tooled leather was still high fashion) and a sign of the times (the 1960s). Although it was the first and still one of my most treasured bookmarks, the one that made me a collector was from Blackwell's. I found it inside a book donated to the library where I worked. The connection to books and publishers, the interesting graphics, and the promise of finding a surprise inside a book were all reasons to begin a collection.
Laine
I don't know which bookmark was the first one which I possessed, however, I know the first bookmark I designed. It was the very first Mirage Bookmark made of steel and I designed it by making a manual drawing using indian ink on parchment paper. It is called Viking World and it is a wild combination of many different Viking handicraft and stone carving motifs which impressed me so much. It was the year 1998 and I produced this bookmark to test it as a merchandise in a bookstore in Basel. Viking World was a success and it stood 11 years in production and was taken out of the product line not before 2009. My wife and my daughters still think it is the very personal and most impressive bookmark I ever designed. You can see the bookmark here. - Asim Maner - Mirage Bookmark
Mirage Bookmark
Oh one of my first bookmarks (of several purchased at the same venue) was at the Ephemera Society's show in London around 1986. I was with my (now) husband, the bookseller, who wanted to look for old postcards and I needed something to look at, too. So as a librarian and archivist who had previously picked up many free bookmarks, I started looking for old ones at the paper show. One of these is a miniature, die cut, British mailbox. So cute. I still have it, along with several others I got that day. It's been downhill (collecting) since.
Lois Densky-Wolff
One of my sisters went to study to the Santiago de Compostela's University. When she came home every weekend or every month, she gave a bookmark from the Follas Novas Bookshop, the most famous bookshop in that city. I kept these bookmarks for years and I can say I had a little collection. although I was not a self-aware bookmark's collector. One of my friends began to collecting bookmarks and I gave the majority of these bookmarks to her, but anyway I still keep in my collection three or four bookmarks of these years.
Anyway, my first important bookmark - the bookmark that really started my collection - was an used bookmark I found at a café. I think it is the bookmark I have more special affection. One day I will show it in my website. It shows a quite cute landscape image and on the back you can read a little thought from its last owner about a plane crossing the horizon.
Natalia Crespo
I had an English pen-pal when I was a child. She sent me a red leather bookmark with a peacock enbossed in gold. I was smitten and have been collecting every since. My sister, her children and friends know what to give me as a present.
Sue (Canada)
I mean what was the first bookmark that inspired you to begin collecting? And do you still have it?
For me, it was a chunk of golden brown hair marking a chapter in a late nineteenth-century book. I suppose some people would be grossed out. I was enthralled. That book, opened to that page, is the highlight of a portion of my collection that is displayed in a felt-lined drawer in an antique coffee table. It will stay with its book as long as I own it because it has obviously been there already for a long time (there is a faint imprint of it on the page where it has sat for so long).