Yesterday I travelled to Purley to interview my old colleague from the antiquarian booktrade, Peter T. Scott, about his bookmark collection. Peter has collected bookmarks for over forty years, obeying the shop injunction to remove ephemera from incoming volumes. He has found army badges, a plethora of bus tickets, and even a rasher of bacon between the pages! While conducting the interview I found myself gazing down the barrel of a Vickers machine gun in Peter's den; bookmarks are not his only passion.
Book Marks: Infiltrating the Library System, is an ongoing, annual international distribution of bookmarks made by book artists, curated by the Centre for Fine Print Research at the University of the West of England. The aim is to get more people to appreciate work in the format of the artist's book.
The bookmarks in past series have been made from a variety of media: old library cards, recycled embroidery, papers, photography, digital print, screenprint, laser-cutting, photocopied, folded, cut and sewn. The bookmarks are collated into sets and sent to participating galleries, bookstores and libraries for free distribution.
My contribution will feature quotes from the interview, which will be available as a podcast for the duration of the project. Below, a taster from Peter's collection.
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