International Friends of Bookmarks
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  • Gallery
    • Gallery Page 3 - New Year's
    • Gallery Page 4 - Bookmarks on Bookmarks
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      • Reprints of the 1928 Amsterdam Olympic Games Bookmarks
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      • Traditional Costumes of Countries - A bookmark Series by Rowohlt Verlag
      • Charting the Course of Celluloid Bookmarks
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Cutout advertising bookmark from 1930s published by the Italian insurance company Compagnia Assicurazione di Milano
      
​Welcome to our Homepage
International  Friends of Bookmarks (IFOB) is a community of bookmark lovers with members all over the world who are interested in bookmarks, such as passionate readers, bookmark collectors, librarians, illustrators, blog editors, product designers, bookshop owners, bookmark producers, and others. Read more about us & our mission and join us here.
What's New
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Member News
313 total members from 43 countries; ​141 on the Swap page; updated 18 November 2023
🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇭🇰 🇮🇳 🇮🇩 🇮🇪 🇮🇱 🇮🇹 🇯🇵 🇰🇷 🇲🇴 🇲🇾 🇲🇽 🇦🇺 🇦🇹 🇧🇪 🇧🇷 🇨🇦 🇨🇱 🇨🇳 🇨🇴 🇩🇰 🇫🇮 🇳🇱 🇳🇿 
For information on membership benefits and to become a member, fill out the form at the bottom of the About page.  
Newsletter #24 sent 3 October 2023  Contact us if you didn't receive it. 

World Bookmark Day Latest News
Celebrated on 25 February  🔖 📖 📚 
 the EIGHTH annual World Bookmark Day (WOBODA) will be celebrated in 2024.  Go to the Woboda page see examples of activities and submit your entries and examples now!  16 November 2023​
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Printable bookmark designs: see examples from previous years in the gallery.   (go to Woboda page to download). Submit yours any time for 2024.
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Debrah Gai Lewis, Australia
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Debrah Gai Lewis, Australia
Raffle donations welcome for 2024.  Total 350 as of 22 November 2023
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100 Australian and International bookmarks. Mix of publisher, bookstore, library, book awards, and other bookmarks, including a few vintage gems. From Debrah Gai Lewis, Australia
Prize donations welcome for 2024.

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Bookmark in the shape of Melusina and book cover showing a scene from the big annual fair "Schueberfouer" by Gaby Dondlinger

Featured in Workshop
Featured in Quotes
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Pullout bookmarks to make, illustrating children´s safety education in former East Germany (DDR) submitted by Helga Moghaddam, 28 April 2023
 Member Debrah Gai Lewis has created a section on Bookmark Quotes and Bookmark Allusions on her Mark My Place web site.  The allusions were inspired by member Frank X. Roberts' chapter on "Is There a Bookmark in This Text" from his book St. Augustine’s Finger: Medieval Bookmarks and Related Topics.  7 April 2021
Featured Bookmark Producer
Featured Link
Featured in IFOB Publications
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An interview of the founder of Papilionaceous pure silk bookmarks by Lauren Roberts from 2008 has been discovered and added. February 2023
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See the range of bookmarks issued for the 1933/1934 Chicago World's Fair from Bill O's collection. 7 April 2021
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Charting the Course of Celluloid Bookmarks by Laine Farley 20 October 2020; updated 13 March 2021
Featured in Reading Room
A History of Collecting Bookmarks - by Allison C. Meier, in Fine Books and Collections, Autumn 2023

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Meier summarizes a brief history of bookmarks and quotes several collectors on their interests and reasons for collecting, including several IFOB members. She concludes: "A bookmark may last longer than the read itself, moving into other books, roving to new libraries, and hiding within the pages until maybe decades later it falls out again into the hand of a new reader, offering a trace of who held this book before." 20 September 2023
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Stuart Hudson's collection focusing on bookstores; photo by Hannah Hudson
Japanese Antique Bookmarks

Toshio Toyoshima has published a book on antique or vintage Japanese bookmarks from the Meiji period to around the 1950s. Japanese antique bookmarks, which have been little known until now, have a unique view of the world that is quite different from that of the West. 26 Jun 2023
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"Japanese Antique Bookmarks“ 『ニッポンのアンティークしおり』 by Toshio Toyoshima 豊嶋利雄


Bibliographies
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The Bookmark Society has provided pdf copies of the first 7 Occasional Papers on our Bibliography page. 14 August 2020
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Georg Hartong's Bibliography updated 24 March 2023, and his index of TBS News updated 24 September 2023.
Latest Blog Post
Member Profile 7 July 2023: ​Asim Maner Award Winner 2023 - Vilija Jocienė
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Featured Gallery
A new gallery called Bookmarks Speak was inspired by Gintautas Deksnys to surround bookmarks with complementary images and provide a title that suggests the message carried by the bookmark.  Very creative!  22 November 2022
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I exchange paths between us and the stars from Gintautas Deksnys
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Life in a circle from Gintautas Deksnys
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Can you feel it - Spring from Gintautas Deksnys

The Owl Gallery has new bookmarks 28 April 2023
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From Gintautas Deksnys, Lithuania, carved wooden owl from the Philippines 28 April 2023
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Helga Moghaddam, Germany, made this bookmark out of the book cover “Ökonokomik, Humorous sides of economics, by Arno Sölter”. 7 April 2023
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Helga found in the book, attached as a personal bookmark this lovely owl, dedicated to Arno Sölter´s friends, colleagues and readers. 7 April 2023

The Countries Gallery has seven handmade bookmarks from Uganda contributed by Helga Moghaddam 5 May 2023.  She sent seven hand painted leather bookmarks from Uganda and two from Kenya. 27 July 2023
The Bookmarks on Bookmarks Gallery has 4 new examples of humorous bookmarks featuring a stack of books with bookmarks peeking out, presided over by bookworms, a mouse and a turtle, all by Antioch Publishing from Laine Farley 27 February 2023
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Hand painted leather gazelle from Kenya from Helga Moghaddam
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Handmade bookmark from Uganda of giraffes from Helga Moghaddam
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Massai figures on fig tree bark bookmark from Helga Moghaddam
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Another cartoonish design with a bookworm on a stack of books from Laine Farley

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  • Home
    • News from 2019
  • About
    • Member News
    • Contact
    • Site Map
  • Blog
  • Bookmark Swap
    • Raffle
  • WOBODA
    • WOBODA 2023 >
      • WOBODA 2022
      • WOBODA 2021 >
        • WOBODA 2020
        • WOBODA 2019 >
          • WOBODA 2018
          • WOBODA 2017
          • Wobo on World Tour 2016
  • Gallery
    • Gallery Page 3 - New Year's
    • Gallery Page 4 - Bookmarks on Bookmarks
    • Gallery Page 5 - Care of Books
    • Gallery Page 6 - Owls
    • Gallery Page 7 - Woboda Bookmarks
    • Gallery Page 8 - Countries
    • Gallery Page 9 - Bookmarks Speak
  • Library
    • Reading Room
    • Book Reviews
    • Bookmark Quotes
    • IFOB Publications >
      • Earliest History of Bookmarks
      • Diamond Registration Marks on British Bookmarks
      • World Literature Classics
      • Holiday Haunts Bookmarks of the Great Western Railway
      • Reprints of the 1928 Amsterdam Olympic Games Bookmarks
      • Fascinating Bookmarks
      • Traditional Costumes of Countries - A bookmark Series by Rowohlt Verlag
      • Charting the Course of Celluloid Bookmarks
  • Bibliographies
  • Workshop
  • Events
  • Links
  • Bookmark Producers