Member Profile - Sylvia Bunting

Editor's Note: A longtime collector, Sylvia was one of the first members of IFOB. She is the  membership secretary as well as  the excellent editor of The Bookmark Society News.  As a true friend of bookmarks, Sylvia often connects people seeking to donate or rehome a collection with other collectors in England.  She also arranged to have back issues of the first seven TBS Occasional Papers available for download from our Bibliography page. 

Tell us about yourself – where you are from, your occupation, etc.

I have been retired for a good many years now, but originally I trained as a social worker, having posts in several hospitals and then moving to local authority work.  In the 90’s, after being involved on a voluntary basis all my life, I moved to work full time as CEO for Girls’ Brigade England & Wales, a uniformed voluntary youth organisation.  I now live in York, UK, a walled city with centuries of history.

Sylvia Bunting

How did you start collecting bookmarks?  Do you remember your first bookmark?

Bollans woven bookmark from Sylvia Bunting's collection

In May 1989 I was in London, browsing in Portobello Road antiques market, and found a small Bollans weaving with New Year’s greetings.  On a neighbouring stall was a Bristol board embroidered marker minus its backing ribbon, ‘Forget me not’.  These two totally different items with the same purpose intrigued me, and I began looking for more.  Soon I was hooked.

Bristol board bookmark from Sylvia Bunting's collection

Do you have any favorite types or special emphasis in your collection?

Probably my favourite bookmark medium is printed card, since the information given can shed intriguing light on distant scenes.  I did not know until I bought a Renault Clarital bookmark that in the 30’s Renault produced planes as well as cars, and one of my favourite Day & Son multiple bookmarks told me that with the benefits of Sunlight soap, even a lady of advancing years could manage the weekly wash – a sentiment which helped me understand Victorian domestic life.  Promotional bookmarks are perhaps my favourite, but I also like those from voluntary organisations, and advisory bookmarks for health, home safety and similar topics.

Renault bookmark from Sylvia Bunting's collection

Sunlight Soap bookmark from Sylvia Bunting's collection

What is the most unusual bookmark in your collection?

This is also the oldest bookmark in my collection.  It is a carved piece of bone (scrimshaw work, often produced by the crews of whaling ships).  This bookmark is thought to have been produced during the Napoleonic wars by French prisoners of war incarcerated in one of the prisons on the south coast.  It is known that these prisoners made what handicrafts they could and sold them to local people to raise a little money.  There is no official provenance, but Derek Greengrass, a noted expert on antique ivory, has stated that it is of the right period and the right material, not ivory but bone which the prisoners could have liberated from the meat carcasses supplied to them.  It is clearly the creation of someone who had ample time to give attention to delicate, detailed work. 

Carved bone bookmark, front view, from Sylvia Bunting's collection

Carved bone bookmark, back view, from Sylvia Bunting's collection

How do you acquire your bookmarks?

That depends on the age!  For vintage bookmarks, the best source is antiquarian book dealers, as fine specimens still come to light in old books.  But that is a dwindling supply, and I usually search bookmarks out on ebay.  For modern bookmarks I depend on my friends – there are several who visit local shops and libraries when they are on holiday, and they bring me an envelope full from time to time.  And, of course, there is exchange with fellow collectors, particularly at swapmeets where people bring sales folders and boxes of free swaps.

How many bookmarks do you have?

My database tells me that as of today I have 21,239.  I would never have kept count, but I was fortunate that when I started collecting I had a word processor, so could keep a list of what I acquired.  When computers arrived in the 90s, I transferred the information gradually to an Access database, and am reaping the benefit.
 
Of these, around 7,000 are promotional, which includes 2,500+ from publishers, 1500 from booksellers, 800 from banks and insurance, and 500+ from libraries.  The other two large categories are Advisory (1,450) and not-for-profit Organisations (3,500).

How do you organize, display and store your collection?

My bookmarks are divided into categories according to purpose:

• Advisory (health, safety, lifestyle)
• Commemorative (events such as Empire exhibitions, and people – some famous, some unknown apart from their name on a memorial silk)
• Decorative (everything that doesn’t fit into another category!)
• Educative (systems, hallmarks, Dewey library numbers)
• Greetings (Birthday, Christmas and other occasions)
• Inspirational (texts, uplifting quotations, guidelines from all religions)
• Organisations (not-for-profit; anything geared towards profit comes under promotional.)
• Places (souvenirs of towns, countries, stately homes and boats)
• Promotional (with sub-categories for books, money and transport)​

Most are stored in filing cabinets with shallow drawers, which I have divided up with cardboard partitions.  This gives me the freedom to lift out the ones I want and spread them together on a table to trace their relationship to each other.

Storage cabinet for Sylvia Bunting's collection

I display very little of my collection, partly because I have never found a reliable way of mounting them in frames without spoiling the bookmark.  When speaking to voluntary groups about bookmark collecting, I choose a few interesting ones and put them into plastic pages in a loose-leaf binder, and project images via powerpoint.  I am working towards photographing every bookmark – a slow job, but I am more than halfway there.  I suppose the best place to see my bookmarks, along with those of other collectors, is in our journal, The Bookmark Society News.

Bookmarks from Sylvia Bunting's collection in storage cabinet drawers

Your work with The Bookmark Society is such a significant contribution to promoting bookmarks. Tell us about your experience editing TBS News.  How do you select articles?​

I have been fortunate that just as I took over editing, computers developed to the point where it was possible to present coloured images of reasonable quality.  This has been one of the big progressions – we started with mainly black and white, but have moved on to the point where most pages now include some colour.  After all, what collectors want most is to see the bookmarks.  People are pleased to see something they own, grateful to see something they don’t yet have, and absolutely delighted when they can tell me of a bookmark they own which is not in the public listing.

Articles come from members.  Some are offered, and we have several members in different countries who are regular contributors, on subjects ranging from petrol to Red Riding Hood.  Also, when people write to me they often mention a quirk of their collection, and I can then bounce back and ask if they will put something together for the journal.  Members with special interests sometimes put together listings of a particular subject, such as Colin Williamson and Tauchnitz.

TBS News, March 2018

We have had a few mini-series; one called In a Flap which featured unusual page flaps.  The most memorable was a flap shaped like a toilet seat.  We are currently running a Hand Made series, which has featured Bristol board, eucalyptus leaves and original paintings.  We also have a regular swaplist prepared by one member who puts in an enormous amount of work behind the scenes, listing and despatching the bookmarks.

TBS News, July 2021

One feature which has developed slowly but steadily is the Letters Page, where members can ask a question (is this the largest bookmark ever known?) or showcase an interesting bookmark they have just found (had you heard of the Nebra Sky Disk in Germany?).  Sometimes this starts as a private letter to me, but I then ask permission to publish it.  So far I don’t think anyone has stopped writing to me on that account, but I sometimes wonder if they feel it is rather hazardous. 

There is normally space for me to add one or two articles, featuring sets or themes from my own collection.  In each issue I try to have a balance of modern and vintage bookmarks, and to cover a range of interests.  When lockdown began we had an article on bookmarks featuring all the things we could no longer do (theatres, travel, sport…) which evoked a few responses from people who found their collections were a good jumping-off point for happy reminiscence.

Once or twice a year a larger theme emerges and becomes an occasional paper in its own right.  I usually have time to advertise the theme and invite scans from other people’s collections, and in this way we have covered drinks (3 papers – people consume a lot of drink one way and another), chocolate, World War I and calendars. {Note that a list of Occasional Papers is on our Bibliography page, plus pdfs of the first seven issues]

Occasional Paper on Soft Drinks, The Bookmark Society

For me, editing the journal brings life to my own collection, and is an excellent springboard for ongoing discussion with other members.

What do you enjoy about IFOB?  Anything you would like to see IFOB do in the future?

I think IFOB is an excellent way of bringing together collectors who could otherwise be quite isolated, and it is very good to have an ongoing presence on the web.

Do you have any plans to celebrate World Bookmark Day next time?

I am saving bookmarks to contribute to the prize for the raffle.

Do you collect anything else?

It would be difficult to find time or space for a further collection, but my husband collects model railways.  This is a very helpful as we each have an understanding of a collector’s mindset.

Do you have any advice for those who are just beginning to collect?

If at all possible, keep a record of each bookmark you acquire.  You may think you will remember everything, but you won’t!  Useful bits of information are the date you obtained it, the cost, and the person/organisation from whom it came.  Other details depend on your particular interests – e.g. is it bilingual, does it feature a lighthouse, is it made of a particular material?
 
And never turn anything away.  The friend who brings you a commonplace bookmark today may turn up with something rare next month, once they have grasped your consuming interest in these apparently trivial items.

Selection of Olympics bookmarks from Sylvia Bunting's collection