Take five: highlights in the history of bookmarks
THE oldest-known bookmark appeared in 6th-century Egypt, a piece of vellum-lined leather attached to a Coptic codex. However, the humble page holder may be closer to 2,000 years old, according to Asim Maner’s Earliest History of Bookmarks
1. Remnants suggest the first bookmarks may have been used in the 1st century AD
2. Medieval monks often marked pages with cords or strips of leather anchored at the top of their volumes, but students made do with whatever they found, sparking the ire of 14thcentury English priest Richard de Bury: ‘He distributes a multitude of straws, which he inserts to stick out in different places, so that the halm may remind him of what his memory cannot retain’
3. An intricate bookmark anchor is visible in Jan van Eyck’s 15thcentury Madonna of Chancellor Rolin and cords peek out from the books shaping the head of Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s 1566 The Librarian. In 1584, Elizabeth I received a fringed silk bookmark from her printer Christopher Barker
4. The golden age for bookmarks was the 19th century, thanks to industrial production and a wide range of materials, from perforated board to silver. Striking versions were made of silk, woven by Coventry weaver Thomas Stevens into exquisite pictures (not least a portrait of Queen Victoria, below). His Stevengraph bookmarks are highly sought after among collectors
5. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, promotional bookmarks, advertising everything from soaps to pianos, grew popular. A period of decline followed, before bookmarks saw a boom in popularity in the late 20th century