I don’t know if I’ve ever been in a Frank Lloyd Wright building. The only possibility is the Guggenheim Museum in New York. I know I walked past that one, but I can’t remember if I went inside.
Anyway, this is the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio building in Oak Park, Illinois. I have a friend who’s an architect who visited it and he picked me up a bookmark. Which, as you know, is the next best thing to being there.
Book: Modern Architecture by Alan Colquhoun
I figured I had to celebrate my one-hundredth bookmark post with something special. So a couple of weeks ago some friends of mine came back from a trip to Newfoundland. Knowing that my last dog was a Newf named Kylie (here she is in a snowstorm), in addition to picking me up a bookmark they also brought this little cutie back. So say hello to Kylie Too!
My one and only trip to the UK occurred in 1976. We visited a lot of castles, which is something you do a lot over there if you’re a tourist. That and go for walks in the countryside. Anything to escape the cities. I don’t know what things are like now, but back then urban Britain was almost unimaginably bleak.
But I digress. I was just starting to collect bookmarks back then and in most of the castles we visited you could get these leather bookmarks with pictures on them. I doubt they still sell them in the gift shops. I’m told that most places don’t sell bookmarks anymore, but that’s a story for another post.
Anyway, on that trip I picked up a lot of bookmarks like this that I’ll be showcasing here. This one is from Alnwick Castle in Northumberland. It’s one of the nicer (and more intact) castles and they film a lot of movies there. Fifty years later I honestly can’t remember much about it, but I still have the bookmark.
Book: King John and the Road to Magna Carta by Stephen Church
In my previous post of a bookmark from Costa Rica I had to admit that I not only didn’t know where Costa Rica was, I also wasn’t sure where I got the bookmark. Well, I know where it is now (because I looked it up), and I know where this bookmark came from. I have a friend who brought it back from her vacation! And what a treat it is, with a picture of a sloth, a creature that is not just native to Costa Rica but also my spirit animal.
According to a slip included in the sleeve this one came in, it’s made from recycled banana fiber paper that was 100% handcrafted in Costa Rica by artisan Bernald Rojas Rojas. The ribbons, in case you were wondering, are the colours of the Costa Rican flag.
I’ll bet you had no idea before following this blog that the world of bookmarks could be so educational, various, and exciting!
Book: The History of Latin America: Collision of Cultures by Marshall C. Eakin
How’s that for a clickbait title! But it’s not really clickbait. This bookmark comes from the Prado Museum in Spain and shows a detail from Goya’s painting Las mozas del cántaro. Which, when I looked it up online, is officially translated as Women carrying Pitchers.
But that’s not what the bookmark calls it. On the back, a picture of which I’ve included in case you don’t believe me, the painting is called Cantareras and is translated as The girls with the jugs. This made me wonder if that’s what “cantareras” really means, so I tossed it into the Internet’s translation machine and got “singing bowls.” I figured this couldn’t be right so I asked a fellow who knows Spanish for some help. And he only thought “cantarera” might be a kind of mushroom. So who knows what’s going on?
Anyway, here are some girls with jugs for everyone to enjoy.
Book: Goya by Robert Hughes
Who was the Man in the Iron Mask? Historians have suggested various candidates. According to the story by Alexandre Dumas he was Philippe Bourbon, the twin brother of Louis XIV. But most people today know he was really Leonardo DiCaprio, in this 1998 movie.
Thirty years ago there used to be a lot of bookmarks you could pick up for free that were promotional items for new books and movies. You rarely see them anymore. Which is one of the things that make them such great collectibles.
Book: King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV by Philip Mansel
I must have got this papyrus bookmark from the same place as the one I had in an earlier post. I’m just not sure where that was, only I don’t think it was Egypt. Oh well.
Book: A History of Ancient Egypt: From the Great Pyramid to the Fall of the Middle Kingdom by John Romer
Yes the poem is set in the Yukon and the bookmark is from Alaska, but close enough!
Book: The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service
No, I’m not sure what a moose has to do with Montreal. Bookmarks can be random like that.
Book: Montreal Stories by Clarke Blaise
Alex Good 
