This bookmark is from the Montreal Nicholas Hoare bookstore, which opened in 1971 and closed in 2012 due to the usual reasons (per the CBC: “high rent and pressure from online and big box retailers”). Plus the owner was looking to retire. The Ottawa store closed at the same time. The Toronto Nicholas Hoare stayed open for another year.
Book: Noise by Russell Smith
That looks like more than a shiver of sharks! Some friends picked this up for me when they visited North Captiva Island about ten years ago.
Book: Big Pacific by Rebecca Tansley
The Canadian Encyclopedia was the brainchild of publisher Mel Hurtig, and the first edition came out in 1985. The bookmark on the left is a promotion for it, and pictured is the original 1985 edition, which came in three handsome volumes. My father was one of the original subscribers so that’s how we came to have a copy. It sold out its initial run right away, and a second edition was published in 1988. The bookmark on the right is for a single-volume 2000 edition.
I thought it was an excellent resource and I’m glad I’ve held on to it over the years. I don’t think it’s published as a print edition anymore, having moved online.
Book: The Canadian Encyclopedia
An osprey in action, grabbing a fish. In French their name is balbuzard pêcheur, but they are not buzzards.
This brass bookmark comes from Cornovia Designs in Helston, Cornwall. Which is a place I’ve never been so I’m not sure where I got it.
Book: Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen
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
