On-Marking-Books

Bookstore Bookmarks Then and Now

by

Laine Farley

26a

Among my antique bookmarks are a very few from bookstores and I rarely see them on offer. In contrast, I have at least 500 modern bookstore bookmarks. Why have so few older bookmarks survived when they are so commonly found tucked away, forgotten and preserved inside books from the last decades? Were there simply fewer bookstores between 1868 and 1940 when the frequency of bookstore bookmarks increases in my collection? Or were they among the least interesting ephemera and therefore not considered worth saving? The few examples I have now seem charming both for their illustrations and for their text. It is true that many modern bookstore bookmarks are simple and inexpensively produced, serving a utilitarian purpose as a modest thanks to the customer and a small reminder to the reader to return for the next book. The likelihood of their survival for the future is slim, but others have charm, personality and distinctiveness that make them worthy of keeping.

Assuming that my few older examples are representative of their era, a comparison of styles with their modern counterparts reveals quite a change in the approach to bookstore advertising on bookmarks.

While there are several modern examples of chain bookstores that are large in size and number, it could hardly be said that bookstores have ever been mega-stores in the sense of selling a wide range of merchandise—with the possible exception of Amazon. But one thing that bookstores of an older era have in common with modern ones is offering a creative mix of related items. Most frequently mentioned are other paper goods such as greeting cards and stationery, as seen in the older examples from Hester, Hughes and Wilcox, followed by gift items. A number of modern bookstores are purveyors of not just any old gifts; they offer “ostentatious gifts” along with art prints such as the Raven Book Shop, La Canada, CA, or “swank gifts” from Il Literature in Los Angeles. Perhaps the equivalent claim from an earlier time is Hughes’ promise of having the “latest novelties always on hand” and Wilcox’s proclamation of being an “importer of fancy goods.”

26b

Books and antiques are natural partners such as Bristol Antiques and Books in Bellingham, WA or the Book Mark in Boerne, TX that featured antiques, used books and ephemera. I found several lovely bookmarks there along with an old postcard with a photo of my great grandfather’s store, truly a serendipitous experience.

Other felicitous combinations are bookstores that double as art or photography galleries such as Point Reyes Books in Point Reyes, CA, the Banff Book and Art Den in Alberta, Canada, and the appropriately named Book Gallery in Sandpoint, ID. Hughes also sold pictures and picture frames as did H. M. Zook’s store in Chester, PA.  Zook’s bookmark is almost identical to Hughes, suggesting that this was a stock design.

26c

A less obvious combination is Hester’s offering of musical instruments although music and reading were perhaps favorite pastimes of his genteel patrons. Even more of a stretch is the thought of selling wallpaper and window shades. Were these all items that appealed to women? Hughes also sold wallpaper so maybe there was some obvious connection that is foreign to modern habits. The most curious combination of items from modern bookstores is from the Witch’s Brew in Graegle, CA. It offers framing and photography but also skirts for golf and tennis, baskets and dry cleaning. Maybe this range of merchandise reflects the reality of small towns where retailers fill the gaps in the absence of larger specialty stores. It’s amusing that Hughes claimed to be a “monumental book store” in Sidney, OH.

Modern bookstores have expanded into a range of services that often help date them. Rather than musical instruments, it became fairly common for bookstores to sell music as more compact formats such as cassettes and CDs came on the scene. It is also possible to date bookstores that feature coffee shops, starting in the 1990s and those with Internet access or cafes in the 2000s. Others offer variations on the coffee bar theme with a tea room and theatre tickets (Earthling Bookshop, Santa Barbara) or a wine bar (Page One Bookstore, Albuquerque, NM). One of my favorite coffee shop/music/bookstore bookmarks from Off the Beaten Path in Steamboat Springs, CO invites us to “Have breakfast with Hemingway; lunch with Steinbeck; relax with your cappuccino and listen to Vivaldi or, perhaps, Madame Butterfly.”

More logical pairings come with specialty bookstores that offer related items such as Sagrada Sacred Arts in Oakland, CA, featuring spiritual books combined with candles, rosaries, meditation bells and vestments. Mrs. Dalloway’s in Oakland, CA pairs books on gardening with “plants in artistic containers,” vases, original art, and botanical prints and cards.

26d

The image on Mrs. Dalloway’s provides a comparison to those found on older bookmarks. The favorite Victorian images of flowers or lovely ladies appear with books on all of the older bookmarks, yet it is surprisingly unusual to find these same themes in modern bookmarks, at least with similar styles. Mrs. Dalloway’s vignette of book, plant and tea cup is the closest I could find to the style of older bookmarks.

Now the most common images do include books and they appear in every form imaginable—stacked horizontally and vertically, open or closed, stylized almost beyond recognition and they may even be flying over rooftops as in the example from City Lights in San Francisco.

26e

Another striking representation of books is the “city of books” theme from Powell’s in Portland. One example cleverly arranges book spines to look like skyscrapers towering over small buses and streetlamps.  This example is a moodier depiction of the city of books at night with authors’ names in neon. Images of bookstores themselves, the quainter the better, are also common and probably deserve a separate column to explore all the variations.

26f

Lovely ladies, a favorite Victorian design element, are surprisingly rare on modern bookstore bookmarks. Coastside Books in Half Moon Bay, CA featured a romantic image of a woman reading a book in a dreamy landscape. Stacey’s Professional Bookstore in San Francisco showcased a woman in a large plumed hat in sepia tones, one of a series featuring people in eighteenth-century dress.  Both of these examples evoke an older time period rather than depicting women in a modern setting. It seems that lovely ladies are no longer a successful advertising image for selling books.

Two animals make many appearances on bookstore bookmarks—owls, symbolizing wisdom, and cats, symbolizing curiosity, perhaps. Images of cats appearing to read open books are common as in bookmarks for Alhambra Bookstore, Alhambra, CA and Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino, CA. Carytown Books in Richmond, VA has a black cat on a rooftop reading a book against the backdrop of moon and stars. With a bit of humor, Twice Sold Tales in Seattle displays a cool cat with sunglasses lying on an open book, and Cheshire Cat Books in Sausalito, CA offers “service with a smile” and a cat with an appropriately toothy smile lying atop a book. Great Expectations Bookstore at Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco features a cat in a box of books with “Summer of Love” in the background and the slogan, “Thousands of Books/Hundreds of T-Shirts/ One Cat.” The Book Store in Yreka, CA also had a resident cat named Pages who appeared on their bookmark on a stack of books with candlestick and hour glass. Two special favorites are the Gotham Book Mart in New York with a Gorey-esqe cat in a striped shirt holding a book and a balloon, and Le Dilettante in Paris that uses distinctive images of a black cat sleeping on an open book with tail curled elegantly around the corner.

26g

Minerva’s Owl Bookshop in San Francisco of course used an owl that had a stylized Native American look. Walden Pond Books in Oakland, CA used owls at least twice on bookmarks and in both cases the owls were reading. Two bookstores that were very far apart used owls and quotes that were very similar. Evelyn DeMille Books in Calgary, Canada had two owls with an open book and quill pen with the unattributed quote, “A home without books is like a room without windows,” a quote that is close to one from Horace Mann. In Austin, TX, Robinson’s Books featured several owls on a branch with the species identified as Ural Owl Syrnium Uraliense. The bookmark also has a quote from Cicero, “A room without books is as a body without a soul.” The Cicero quote appears on at least three other bookmarks I have, including one from Amazon.

In fact, quotes are another very common element on modern bookstore bookmarks. Mrs. Dalloway’s wins the trifecta (common images, merchandise paired with book specialties, and quotes) with a quote from the Virginia Woolf novel that inspired the bookstore’s name. It’s surprising not to see quotes on older bookstore bookmarks, since quotes were very commonly used on gift bookmarks of the period. In my collection, I have bookstore bookmarks with quotes from Dorothy Parker, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Ray Bradbury, Groucho Marx, George Bernard Shaw, Harper Lee, Barbara Tuchman, Henry Longfellow, and Erasmus. The most surprising one is from Bruce Springsteen on a bookmark from Printer’s Inc. in Palo Alto. Apparently, the bookstore had a series of bookmarks with quotes. I have another with a Robert Frost quote identified as #31 in the series, one from Santayana that was #17, and Mr. Springsteen was #16 with this quote: “I can’t say that I’m sorry for the things that we done, at least for a while, sir, me and her we had us some fun. “

This has been just a cursory look at how bookstores use bookmarks to advertise, then and now. If other collectors or bookstore owners have more examples of antique bookstore bookmarks, I would be interested to see if these patterns hold or if other comparisons could be made. Sadly, most of the modern examples I cited are no longer in existence. Soon these bits of ephemera will be all that remains to express the personalities and design styles of bookstores in recent decades.

Bookmark specifications: Hughes Book Store
Dimensions: 2" x 7"
Material: Paper
Manufacturer: Hughes Book Store, Sidney, OH
Date:  1890s?
Acquired: eBay

Bookmark specifications: W. J. Wilcox Bookseller, Stationer, News Dealer
Dimensions: 2 1/8" x 4 7/8"
Material: Paper
Manufacturer: Frank Vernon, New York, NY
Date:  1882
Acquired: eBay

Bookmark specifications: D. G. Hester Bookseller
Dimensions: 1 3/4” x 5 7/8"
Material: Paper
Manufacturer: D. G. Hester, Alliance, OH
Date:  1890s?
Acquired: eBay

Bookmark specifications: Mrs. Dalloway's Literary and Garden Arts
Dimensions: 2 1/4" x  8"
Material: Paper
Manufacturer: Mrs. Dalloway’s, Berkeley, CA
Date:  2000s?
Acquired: Bookmark Bookstore, Oakland, CA, found in donated books

Bookmark specifications: 30th Anniversary: A Literary Meetingplace Since 1953
Dimensions: 2 5/8" x 7 1/8"
Material: Paper
Manufacturer: City Lights Booksellers and Publishers, San Francisco, CA
Date:  1983
Acquired: Bookmark Bookstore, Oakland, CA, found in donated books

Bookmark specifications: Powell’s City of Books
Dimensions: 2 1/8" x 7 1/2"
Material: Paper
Manufacturer: Powell’s, Portland, OR
Date:  2006
Acquired: A friend who visited Powell’s

Bookmark specifications: Le Dilettante
Dimensions: 2 3/8" x 7"
Material: Paper
Manufacturer: Le Dilettante, Paris, France
Date:  2000s?
Acquired: another bookmark collector in an exchange

 

Laine Farley is a digital librarian who misses being around the look, feel and smell of real books.  Her collection of over 3,000 bookmarks began with a serendipitous find while reviewing books donated to the library. Fortunately, her complementary collection of articles and books about bookmarks provides an excuse for her to get back to libraries and try her hand at writing about bookmarks. Contact Laine.

 


 

 
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