Bookmarks (free) Collections?

[Extollager]

I'm wondering if other Chronsfolk collect free bookmarks. These would often be publicity for books or would be bookmarks that bookstore customers are given with their purchases. Occasionally other outfits give away bookmarks; the American Library Association would be an example. I'd like to restrict this thread to bookmarks that are given away. Someone else might want to start a thread for bookmarks that one buys.

It seems to me that independent bookstore bookmarks are often attractively designed.

I've been collecting them for about 40 years. However, a quick Google search is making me wonder if very many people have this interest. I've never run across anyone who also collected and who wanted to trade with me, for example.

 

[The Judge]

No collection, as I only keep the freebie ones if I like the design, which mostly I don't. I've never had one from a book shop that's worth keeping. I had a nice freebie one I picked up at a Con that was an advert for a book, a Catherine Fisher I think, but that's gone walkabout. Otherwise I've one each from a couple of mail order book companies, and one from an Austrian hotel we stayed at a few years ago.

(I have started collecting bought ones, though I don't yet have enough to allow me to choose an appropriate bookmark for every book I'm reading, which is my aim. My best match so far was when I read Girl with a Pearl Earring about Vermeer and I had a bookmark I'd bought in Amsterdam with images of Delft tiles.)

 

[Extollager]

One like this, is one of my prizes:


Found in a book from the stacks of the main library at the University of Illinois, as I recall. It seems to be a little over 100 years old:

http://www.collecticus.co.uk/searcheditem.aspx?l=104392

Another one that I like is publicity for Grant Uden's Dictionary of Chivalry, a book lavishly illustrated by the late, great Pauline Baynes. The bookmark uses black and white art from the book. A third one I'll mention is for Penguin Classics. It unfolds to become a sheet listing all of the then-available Penguin Classics. This was as of the early 1970s or so. A much-travelled friend has sent me bookmarks from places far from North Dakota, such as Nicosia, Cyprus, and Nairobi, Kenya.

Here's one I don't happen to have, but that shows the attractive calligraphy one sees sometimes in bookmarks from independent booksellers:

 

[Extollager]

Maybe one day I'll run across one of these in some castoff book:

 

[Ray McCarthy]

my wife used to cross stitch Celtic knotwork ones.

 

[Bick]

You get a free bookmark whenever you buy a book from Book Depository - though they are not exactly collectors items, they are sometimes nicely designed. They are designed by readers who submit them for selection and the best ones are printed and sent out.

 

[Extollager]

One of my favorite bookmarks, and one of the oldest in my collection, is here:

Penguin Classics -- The Original Series

The posting right after that one shows the unfolded bookmark, with a list of the titles then available in the Penguin Classics.

 

[Extollager]

Here's probably the first bookmark I saved. It seems this was given away at my school library circa 1969. I'd like to think that I recognized Pauline Baynes's name as illustrator of Tolkien and of Lewis's Narnian books.View attachment 23244 View attachment 23245

 

[Extollager]

And here are some bookmarks from my collection that range around the world a bit (unlike their owner), thanks to friends. These were all giveaways, so far as I know. I ask friends not to buy bookmarks for me (but occasionally someone does). The oldest one in these batches is, I think, the Looking Glass Bookstore one, from a long-gone bookstore in Portland, Oregon. It would probably be from the late 1970s or 1980.

 

[Extollager]

Here's a bookmark that may appeal to Tolkien readers, just received from a contact in the Seattle area.

I'd be interested in such a thing, if there were a good article, or monograph, on businesses with Tolkienian names... how many were book stores, or bakeries, or farms, or bed-and-breakfast businesses, or jewelry and handcrafts stores, etc.; and the chronological element would be interesting.

 

[marmalade]

Wow, these all look great. I suppose I do collect bookmarks, but in the same way as I collect calling cards and other such. More as a trail of breadcrumbs leading back to all the places I've been, people I've met and books I've read. I also occasionally make my own bookmarks; if it's someone's birthday I tend to give them a bookmark 'card' instead of an actual card which one inevitably ends up throwing away or stowing in a dusty box in the attic.

Anyway I didn't realize there were such gems floating around, I'll definitely keep an eye out for them.

 

[The Judge]

Having said I've never had a bookmark card worth keeping, lo and behold I got one yesterday which I love -- from Stanfords, a specialist travel and maps bookshop:



This one is part 7 of a map of the world from 1920, and the 6 other parts can be collected, to form the whole map.

 

[Extollager]

Just activating this thread in case anyone's copped some nice bookmarks since May of last year....

 

[Extollager]

There's an international organization for bookmark fanciers.

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