Bookmark (book)

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  • Forgotten Bookmarks - A selection from the Düsseldorf Central Library
  • Forgotten bookmarks. A selection from the Düsseldorf City Library, 2018 (1) .jpg
  • Forgotten bookmarks. A selection from the Düsseldorf City Library, 2018 (6) .jpg

A bookmark (in Switzerland bookmarks ) serves as a marker in a book, to the point where the reader has paused to find faster. Bookmarks are mostly flat objects, often made of paper or the book attached fabric strips ( bookmark ). There are also ornate bookmarks made of various other materials, such as metal, wood or textile, that serve the same purpose. Some readers use bent side corners, so-called dog - ears , as markings.

History and Development

Book with ribbon bookmark

The earliest surviving bookmark dates from the 6th century and was found in a Coptic binding in Saqqara, Egypt. It is a bookmark made of leather and decorated with ornaments, which was attached to the cover of the book with a leather strip. Remnants of such leather strips in other Coptic codices suggest that the use of bookmarks has been in use since the 1st century. Other leather bookmarks attached to the book strap date from the 7th to the 11th centuries. On Carolingian book covers from the 8th to 12th centuries, cords or leather straps attached to the spine of the book served as bookmarks. In the 14th and 15th centuries, monks in European monasteries used bookmarks in the form of reading wheels, bookmarks and bookmarks. These were made individually and exclusively for this purpose in both monastic and secular bookbinding workshops. In the Renaissance, woven silk ribbons, twisted cords and textile strips were used as bookmarks, which in many cases were provided with a knot or button made of wood, bone or brass and thus secured against slipping between the pages of the book. The bookmark flourished in the 19th century when the manufacture of embroidered bookmarks became very fashionable among Victorian women. In 1862 Thomas Stevens began in Coventry, England, with the machine production of bookmarks woven from silk, which were decorated with colorful and detailed pictures and which were sold with great success in Europe and the USA by the end of the century. At the end of the 19th century, the bookmark was discovered as an inexpensive advertising medium for various industries and, like advertising brochures or collector's pictures, was mass-produced. The mass production of bookmarks was particularly favored by the onset of industrialization and its technical possibilities. Due to their simple nature, bookmarks are also a popular handicraft object.

use

A bookmark is primarily used as an insertion marker to quickly find the page in a book or magazine on which you have paused reading. So z. For example, the library deadlines (which remind you of the book's return date) can also be used as bookmarks.

to form

Insertion bookmarks
The insert bookmarks form the largest group of bookmark types . They are inserted between the book pages so that they protrude from the top of the book. The most common material is paper or cardboard . If a tassel or ribbon is also attached to the bookmark , the side is marked by the tassels or ribbons hanging out from below. Also integral with the upper spine Lesebändchen which hang from the lower carrying section, belong to the group of the insert bookmarks.
Reading girl
Only a few of the reading wheels have survived today. They are individually manufactured and very individual in their design and technology. The special thing about the reading wheel is that, with the help of a wheel written on, not only the page but also the text column could be noted. The few remaining reading wheels are now in the possession of a museum or library.
Bookmarks
The bookmarks (also called " tabs ") are placed on the side to be marked and were used purely for a specific purpose as early as the late Middle Ages. At that time made of paper or parchment , bookmarks have been made from other materials since the middle of the 19th century, predominantly from metals such as brass or silver, and decorative purposes were increasingly placed in their production.
Blattweiser
The page markers are usually used when several pages of a book are to be noted systematically and permanently, such as when dividing chapters or to quickly find the individual biblical books in study Bibles and other Bible editions . Glued to the corresponding book pages, they protrude a little beyond the front cut of the book. They can be made of paper, cardboard, leather, fabric or parchment and be labeled. A design as a bead is also possible. Missing books are all provided with page markers. In a modified form, Blattweiser can also be found in the form of dividers to help organize and register files .

  • Blattweiser

  • Blattweiser in spherical shape

Triangle bookmarks
The triangular bookmarks have been known since the beginning of the 20th century. Similar to the bookmark, they are placed over the upper corner of the book page to be noted. They are mostly made of metal or cardboard.
Temple bookmarks
The ironing bookmarks have only caught on in recent years. In the form of a walking stick , they are placed between the pages to be noted in such a way that the bracket on the upper part of the bookmark hangs over the head cut or the spine of the book.
Book rider
Buchreiter ( Aufstecklesezeichen , engl. Page Holder ) are staples made of metal, which were only suitable for fixed scrolls. Similar to bookmarks, they could function as page and column indicators on the top cut and as line indicators on the front cut . The two jaws are fixed with a ring.

materials

Bookmark Koch's bookstore, Königsberg i. Pr., Before 1944

Just like the shape, the material also varies. To this day, paper or cardboard is the most widely used material for bookmarks. Using various printing techniques, such as woodcut or copperplate engraving , paper has been used as a material for bookmarks since the 13th century. But it is by no means binding. In addition to paper, textile fabrics are the oldest materials used for bookmarks. Starting from the Stevens company in Coventry in England in the mid-19th century, silk bookmarks were first produced with image weaving . From 1880 “Stevengraphs” was also used generally as a term for woven silk bookmarks and since then has been referring to the production method of machine picture weaving. From then on, woven silk bookmarks spread from England to the European continent, but at the turn of the century they were increasingly replaced by the cheaper paper bookmarks. Metals have also been used as a material for bookmarks since the late 19th century. Since then, they have offered a variety of shapes that are difficult to achieve with other materials. Mostly silver, brass, tin and silver-plated or gold-plated metal were used. Usually they are made as bookmarks, consisting of a "head" and a "bracket". Due to their elaborate design, they were initially not mass-produced items like paper bookmarks and mostly accompanied the reader over a longer period of time. Today, however, they are also mass-produced due to technical possibilities. Other natural materials used to make bookmarks were wood, horn, bone, ivory, mother-of-pearl, and leather. However, due to the more complex processing, these were not used that often and are nowadays rather rare. As a synthetic or semi-synthetic material, plastic has also been used to make bookmarks since the end of the 19th century.

Design and technology

There are hardly any limits to the design. The economy of scarcity during the world wars is reflected here as well as the general design and aesthetic ideas of the respective time of origin. However, certain features such as company logos, contact information and images of the advertised products keep recurring. The process of letterpress printing for paper bookmarks, which was common until the middle of the 20th century, has now been largely replaced by offset printing.

Advertising bookmarks

Advertising bookmarks for the drug Peremesin against motion sickness

At the end of the 19th century, trade and industry recognized the possibility of commercial use of the bookmark as an advertising medium in addition to its purely functional use as a bookmark. These form the largest bookmark sector to this day and have a dual function. They serve as marking and advertising. The publishers of advertising bookmarks include almost all industries that use bookmarks as an inexpensive long-term advertising tool. The companies attach great importance to an attractive design and high recognition value . This was achieved primarily through the development of entire bookmark series, which, similar to the collective pictures , were used to create close customer loyalty to articles of a company. A particularly successful example of this process were the bookmarks with images of traditional costumes and traditional costumes that were added to the rororo volumes in the 1950s (pocket books from Rowohlt Verlag ). Publishers , bookstores , second-hand bookshops and mail order companies like to add bookmarks to books or orders to promote new releases and available titles.

literature

  • Lexicon of the entire book system , Vol. IV, 2nd ed., 1995, pp. 500–501 (bibliography)
  • E.-Günther Rehse: Bookmarks . Itzehoe 1994. ISBN 3-88013-473-1
  • Hans Heid: 100 bookmarks of the historical library of the city of Rastatt . Rastatt 2001. ISBN 3-923082-37-1
  • Klaus Flemming: In dialogue with the book. Bookmarks . (Bookmarks as art objects). In: Clams. Annual journal for literature and graphics. No. 38. Viersen 1999. ISSN  0085-3593
  • Karl Heinz Steinbeißer: Collect bookmarks. History and shapes of bookmarks from six centuries. From reading wheel to modern bookmark . Ingolstadt 2006. ISBN 3-00-017649-7

Web links

Commons : Bookmarks  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Asim Maner: Earliest History of Bookmarks . History of Ancient and Medieval Bookmarks (0-1500 AD). Ed .: International Friends of Bookmarks. Publ., No. 1 , 2016, p. 12 .
  2. ^ JA Szirmai: The Archeology of Medieval Bookbinding . Ashgate, 1999, ISBN 978-0-85967-904-6 , pp. 300 .
  3. ↑ Asim Maner: Earliest History of Bookmarks - History of Ancient and Medieval Bookmarks , 2016, IFOB Publ. 1, www.ifobookmarks.org/ifob-publications.html
  4. ↑ Glossary on late medieval book illumination and book production
  5. ↑ Example of a glued-on sheet guide, cpg20, University of Heidelberg
  6. ↑ Udo Jobst: Rare Anglo-Saxon bookmarks or just historical tweezers? , in: Wolfenbütteler Notizen zur Buchgeschichte , H. 2, Jg. 36 (2011), pp. 109–117.