A Bookmark for My Love

 

QUESTION: I love to read, so I have quite a few bookmarks. Most are newer. But at several recent antique shows, I noticed quite a few older bookmarks, many of them featured hearts in some way. Were they given as Valentine’s gifts? I think I’d like to start a collection of some of these older bookmarks. How collectible are they?

ANSWER: Bookmarks have been around in some form or another for hundreds of years, ever since the first printed book rolled off the press in 1455. What a lot of people don’t know was that bookmarks were popular gifts, especially during Victorian times. And many people gave them as small Valentine gifts.

Over the years, Valentine gifts have taken many forms—cards, chocolates, even bookmarks. But whatever form they have taken, these expressions of love often displayed a heart of some sort.

People often gave bookmarks as gifts and as souvenirs or to commemorate a number of events. The heart shape in bookmarks often served to convey expressions of emotions, religious sentiments, or as a way to advertise products of the day.

Also called bookmarkers, these were important instruments for people to use to keep their place while reading. Surprisingly, a great many bookmarks are in the shape of a heart or contain some kind of heart motif.

At first, they were probably nothing more than a scrap of parchment. But as time went on people used a variety of objects as bookmarks. Eventually, printers created actual bookmarks with the primary purpose of marking a place in a book. Someone presented Queen Elizabeth I of England with a silk fringed bookmarker by Christopher Barker in 1584. 

Bookmarks became more common by the post Industrial Revolution. By the mid-19th century there was a convergence of improved methods in the book binding process and an overall increase in literacy. With improved book printing techniques, books became less expensive to produce, and more available to a lot of people. But no one usually read an entire book in one sitting, so bookmarks became a necessary way to mark the place where the reader stopped. 

Silk bookmarks were the most common from around the 1850s and were primarily intended for use in Bibles and prayer books. During the 1860s in Coventry, England, Thomas Stevens was experimenting with his looms and developed a jacquard technique for manufacturing colored silk pictures. He demonstrated these at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, and the World's Fair Columbia Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Silk bookmarks, generically called "Stevengraphs," are typically 2 by 6 inches long. These machine embroidered silks became so popular that Stevens began producing them with American themes. Other companies also produced these  desirable and highly prized silk bookmarks. They were especially popular with the women in Victorian book clubs. 

Between 1850 and 1900, home-crafted bookmarks of needlework on perforated cards became quite common. Printing techniques dramatically changed from 1860 through 1900 and ushered in the “Era of Lithography." Names such as Currier & Ives and Prang were to the best known associated with lithography and chromolithography. 

Silver bookmarks became quite popular from about 1380. People still give them as gifts today. In addition to silver, bookmarks have also been made in brass, copper, nickel steel and Britannia white metals. With the turn of the century came bookmarks made of aluminum, celluloid and lighter weight paper. The heart motif can be found on bookmarks made of all these materials.

Because the shape of the heart has long been a symbol of love, affection, deeply felt sentiments, caring, concern and earnestness, its easy to see why makers of bookmarks often turned to the heart as a theme.

The intertwined cross, anchor and heart were often meant to represent faith, hope and charity. Was this bookmark a symbolic religious expression of late Victorian or turn of the century sentiments? Or was this possibly the bookmark of a tea captain? Or was it designed to be given by a sailor to his sweetheart or wife as a gift, a gift that would remind the recipient of the giver whenever a book was read? 

While hearts represent love, or positive feelings such as warmth and charity, they also were very useful marketing tools. A celluloid heart bookmark with a surround of blue and green forget-me-nots on the outside border advertised "Cunningham Pianos." 

Embossed aluminum bookmarkers fashioned in the shape of hearts were quite popular during the 20th century, especially for souvenirs. A 1901 heart bookmark with embossing read "Pan American Exposition, 1901, Souvenir" around the raised raging bull symbol. Another example features an embossed aluminum bookmark that bears + the Bunker Hill Monument.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about the "Antiques of Christmas" in the 2021 Holiday Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Stirring Up the Witch’s Brew

 

QUESTION: One of my favorite times of the year is Fall because it brings with it Halloween. And my favorite Halloween motif is the witch—riding her broom through the crisp night sky. For years, I’ve collected all sorts of items having to do with witches. Recently, I visited Salem, Massachusetts, site of the infamous Salem witch trials. The place was just brimming with all sorts of Salem witch souvenirs. I almost went nuts. Can you tell me how witches got to be so popular? And are any of the souvenirs sold in Salem collectible?

ANSWER: Witches haven’t always been a popular fun motif. For centuries, being accused of being a witch often meant death by some horrible means—often being burned at the stake. Superstition ran rampant in past times when science was in its early stages and religion and mysticism ruled.

Though hunting down witches had been going on for centuries, it really got a kick start in 11th-century Europe when accusations of witchcraft fell upon anyone who did any sort of perceived evil deed. This was especially true of persons, usually women, who made herbal medicines and recipes for spells to cure the sick. 

The Puritans came to the New World to escape persecution and ended up being more intolerant than anyone. They brought with them all the superstitions they had lived with in their home countries. And that included their belief in witchcraft.

Salem was a depressing place in 1692. Neighbors bickered continuously over boundary lines and politics. The strict demands of Calvinism allowed no frivolity and little joy. Work lasted six days a week and on the seventh, people spent their day listening to dire warnings of Satan's nearness by harsh, punitive ministers. One of the most evil of temptations was sexuality. Fear and repression filled the Puritans daily lives. The settlers feared attacks by Indians and had only recently recovering from a smallpox epidemic. Any activities that stimulated mental or physical excitement were deemed sinful. So it’s easy to see how a group of teenage girls with an excess of energy and pent up emotion, coming in direct conflict with severe repression, could become obsessed with their own wild imaginings, and sexual fantasies.

But scientists and historians now believe that the hysterical girls were victims of either a poisonous fungus found in the bread made and eaten in the settlement or from hallucinations they suffered from the hemp they chewed to make it pliable for making rope. But the stage had long ago been set for the tragedy that was to befall those girls. Historians believe that over 9 million people, nearly all of them women, were the victims of witch hunts and burnings for five previous centuries.

In Europe, witch hunting was a profitable business. Local nobles, bishops. judges, magistrates and others all received a share of the wealth created from the picked pockets and stolen property of arrested citizens. Local government officials charged victims for the ropes that bound them and the wood that burned them. It wasn’t much different in Salem. Those who were jailed had to pay the jailer for food and the chains that held therm. Officials confiscated personal property to pay increasing debts. Some people who were later released fought for years to reclaim their stolen property.

Though original artifacts from this time period are rare, memorabilia such as Jonathan Corwin's trunk, accused Mary Hollingsworth English's sampler, Philip English's chair, cane and bottle and John Proctor's brass sundial do exist. There are also 552 documents related to the trials, known collectively as "The Salem Witchcraft Papers," including arrest warrants, examinations and death warrants. Also in this collection are the witch pins, claimed by the accusers to have been used by the "witches" to torment their victims. 

Victorians of the latter part of the 19th century loved to travel. And visitors wanted to take home souvenirs of their journeys, either natural or manmade. Daniel Low, the owner of a gift and silver shop in Salem, decided that the town could benefit from the types of souvenir pieces he had seen during trips to Europe. He first created a silver spoon with a witch design, complete with a broom and the word “Salem.” Low marked it "D Low Sterling" and a circle D for Durgin Silversmiths on the reverse side. Its popularity soon encouraged him to create another. As his spoons began selling wildly,  the witch image quickly became Salem's symbol. Low was the first to make souvenirs for tourists in the U.S.

Low patented his witch design on Jan. 13, 1891. The second spoon pattern, introduced in 1893, was much more ornate, having in its design a witch on a crescent moon, a cat, the three pins, the date of 1692, a hemp rope and a handle of a witch's broom. The design twines around the back of the spoon and shows the frayed end of the rope.

The success of these spoons was so enormous they began a souvenir craze across the country. Low then began a line of items for the Witch City trade that would he imitated by towns and cities across the United States, Canada, and Europe. He offered quality sterling silver souvenir items that included tea strainers, bookmarks, perfume bottles, matchsafes and dishes. Soon tourists insisted on more items at a moderate price. 

Other companies jumped an the souvenir bandwagon, creating items of china, glass, pottery and celluloid. Souvenir manufacturers presented dishes, sewing equipment, household implements, dresser items, and jewelry, for sale to eager tourists. 

Photography had come into its own by the last decades of the 19th century and postcards became a popular souvenir item. Tourists snapped them up. In fact, Jonathan Corwin's home where the trials took place, called the Witch House, has been pictured on postcards so often over the years, that postcards eventually documented changes in the site. So many publishers and printers have produced cards of this structure that prices are low because they are so common. They usually range between $1 and $6.

A variety of Salem witch souvenirs, including pins, spoons, plates, sheet music, and postcards sell for $40 or so at auctions. Spoons can sell for $150 or more, depending on their condition. 

While most people are familiar with the Salem witch trials, few know that the Salem witch memorabilia associated with the trials helped to launch the American souvenir industry.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about the Sears Catalogue and the items sold in it in "Sears' Book of Bargains" in the 2021 Fall Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.