Okay, so we all know we’re not supposed to do this to our books (although I suspect we’re probably all guilty of it, spine-breaking be hanged). But what do you use to mark your place? I must confess to grabbing whatever piece of paper is readily at hand–grocery receipts and library checkout slips being frequent culprits. I know I’m not alone; a poll on the InkyGirl blog found that only 42% of her readers used a regular bookmark, 9% copped to dog-earing pages and 6% claimed never to use a bookmark at all, which leaves a whopping 43% using makeshift ‘marks. A discussion on LibraryThing lists some of the most unusual items found in libraries’ returned books, presumably used as bookmarks by the patrons. Among the items listed are beer bottle labels, a pancake, $700 in cash, toilet paper, a thong and plenty of unusual clippings and photos.
I don’t know if they used them or if they just reached for the nearest piece of scrap paper, but Philip and Dr. Rosenbach had a very nice matching set of sterling silver bookmarks made by silversmith Leonore Doskow.
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| Leonore Doskow, bookmarks. 1935-1952. 2004.0058.001&2 . The Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia |
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| Leonore Doskow, bookmark. 1935-1952. 2004.0058.001. The Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia |
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| Leonore Doskow, bookmark. 1935-1952. 2004.0058.002 . The Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia |
Philip also had this very elegant Adler silver bookmark, with cutwork initials.
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| Adler, bookmark. 2004.0059 . The Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia |
I’d love to know the background of this cross-stitched paper bookmark for Dr. R. Was it made for him by a sister, or someone else?
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| Bookmark. 1954.1874. The Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia |
Marianne Moore stuck all kinds of things in her books as a form of filing system, placing clippings and other items that related to the book within its pages as a way to hang onto them and find them again. For preservation purposes we’ve removed these items from the books and placed them into folders, while preserving the record of where they were originally found. These items run to 22 manuscript boxes and compose an entire subseries of the ephemera series of the Moore Papers. Mixed in among them are some more conventional paper bookmarky things and Marianne also had this very nice monogrammed Tiffany silver bookmark (her middle name was Craig)
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| Tiffany & Co., bookmark. 2006.2873.008. The Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia |
So what kind of bookmarker are you? Do you use “real” bookmarks or whatever comes to hand? What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever used as a bookmark?
Kathy Haas is the Associate Curator at The Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia and the primary poster at the Rosen-blog.