Asim Maner Award Winners 2025 - Domènec Martinez Muñoz and Montserrat Casaponsa

Editor's note:  Montserrat nominated Domènec for the award, providing information on his long history of researching and sharing bookmarks.  When we made the award to him, he requested that we also honor Montserrat, saying that the collection and their activities wouldn't be the same without her contributions.  So, the judges agreed to make the award to both, and as their answers indicate, they truly have a partnership centered around promoting bookmarks.  In the answers below, D: indicates his responses and M: identifies her responses. They sent their answers in Spanish which have been translated using Google. 

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

D: I'm 70 years old and from Catalonia, currently retired. Montse is my partner.

M: I'm from Catalonia, an Autonomous Community of Spain. My city is small with just under 70,000 inhabitants. It's called Girona and has a lot of history. We have it all: to the east, the Mediterranean Sea with a beautiful coastline called the Costa Brava, and to the north, the Pyrenees mountain range that separates us from France.
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I'm 67 years old and currently retired, but I've dedicated many years to extracurricular education. I'm an outdoor activities director, a children's sports coach, and a basketball coach, among other things...

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

D: I started after finding the bookmark for Umberto Eco's novel "The Name of the Rose." I wanted to have a bookmark for every book I read.
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M: I started collecting bookmarks by chance. I've always been a big reader, and after an operation that kept me at home for months, barely able to walk, I realized I had a few bookmarks in a drawer. I thought I could collect them, and I mentioned it to my friends, asking them if they had any at home and weren't using them to give them to me. So, after a few months, I already had quite a pile. Then a couple of collectors from my city introduced me (I thought I was the only weirdo who collected them), and that's how I started to change. I started going to Barcelona to the meetings, and the collection gradually grew.
I don't remember my first bookmark because there were several.

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

D: I especially like the early 20th-century Art Nouveau or Modernist bookmarks.

M: I have several favorites in the collection, but one is very simple. It was made to raise money for the Sarajevo library, which was destroyed during the Bosnian War.

This one is also a religious bookmark that was probably made as a complement to the book, Volume II of the Letters of Saint Teresa of Avila, according to what can be read on the bookmark. We can date it to 1752.

4. What is the most unusual bookmark in your collection?

D. & M: Well, in the collection we have all kinds of bookmarks, the most original you can imagine. We have some with holes of different sizes that are spaghetti portion measurers, others with a built-in magnifying glass, others made of paper made from elephant dung, etc.

5. How do you acquire your bookmarks?

D. & M: From donations from people who have stopped collecting, from gifts from friends' trips, but above all from exchanges either by mail or at the many collecting gatherings held in Catalonia.

6. How many bookmarks do you have (an estimate)?

D. & M: We don't currently have a tally, but a rough estimate is 300,000, considering we have 900 albums with an average of 45 index pages and an average of 5 bookmarks per page. We have the rest in display cases, sideboards, drawers, and filing boxes.

7. How do you organize, display and store your collection?

D. & M: We organize our albums by paper albums, by themes we like, publishers, religious, museums, sports, comics, etc. Then we also organize them by continent, and then by country.

We have several glass display cases where we display our most valuable pieces, like Coventry silk and others. We also have organizing drawers for silver, gold, wood, etc. We try to keep the most beautiful ones visible so we can enjoy them and not leave them in a box.

8. What has been your experience in using the IFOB Swap List, if any?

D. & M: Yes, we've had several contacts with collectors on the IFOB list, but we've always been the ones who contacted them to arrange exchanges. Some have been and continue to be very positive, but with others we've only done one exchange. We like to have bookmarks from all over the world, but since we have so many, we prefer specific themes from a specific country, which are sometimes difficult to find.

9. What do you enjoy about IFOB?  Is there anything you would like to see IFOB do in the future?

D: I especially like the articles on the history of bookmarks, as it's a topic I research and am passionate about.

M: I like that IFOB promotes bookmarks worldwide.
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I would like them to encourage collectors to make duplicate albums so they can make more equitable exchanges. We don't mind the 1-for-1, but we do care about knowing what we're getting in return.

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

D.& M: Yes, we'll continue asking friends to make a bookmark for this day. We'll try to hold an exhibition at a library or community center. Of course, we'll hold a mega-meeting where we'll give away bookmarks, and we'll hold a talk at a library or school with young people.

11. Do you collect anything else?

M: Yes, I collect GRAMOPHONE NEEDLE BOXES. This collection belonged to Domènec, but he wasn't very interested in it. I liked it and became interested in it. From the 10 he had, we've now grown to over 50 different ones. I'm not very active with this collection, since I only find them at antique markets and only buy them at a reasonable price... I don't trade, and I don't have duplicates.

12. Is there anything else you would like to share?

D.& M: We'd like to say that collecting has helped us make many friends. To begin with, we met through collecting bookmarks at a difficult time in our lives. We've had great friends who are no longer with us, but we still remember them fondly, and we have many others with whom we remain in touch. We always say we're a big family and we help each other. The exchanges allow us to stay in touch physically and enjoy a good day, since we almost always end them with a good meal.

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

D: Don't get overwhelmed and choose a main topic. Also, know that collecting is about sharing knowledge and friendship.
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M: I'm not much for giving advice, since now when I see someone starting to collect, they do the same thing I did when I started: grab everything that came my way, regardless of the topic. I think it would be better to start with the topics you like the most, but I'm aware that there are so many attractive (I don't like to say pretty) bookmarks that you can't refuse.

14. As winners of the Asim Maner Award, tell us more about what you have done to promote bookmarks for World Bookmark Day or in general.

D: I've been researching the history of the bookmark for years, publishing numerous articles on the subject in libraries, as well as hosting numerous book exhibitions.

Note: From Montserrat's nomination, the most recent is "an exhibition titled "Art and bookmarks." It is an exhibition where you can see paintings from the Middle Ages to the present day where bookmarks appear in the books in the painting, all types of bookmarks since it has been seen that not only paper or parchment were used."

M: I limit myself to offering opinions or proposing activities, such as exchange meetings, exhibitions, talks, etc.

I manage the blog (Mondopunts MON de Montse, DO de Domènec y Punts, which means bookmark in Catalan), email, and postal exchanges, and I help set up bookmark exhibitions.
I've been collecting for over 25 years (20 alongside Domènec), and we've done a variety of activities in different parts of Spain.

We've organized national meetings in several Spanish capitals to bring together collector friends, who have as many opportunities as we do in Catalonia, where, as I've already mentioned, we're very active. These Spanish capitals are Catalonia (Girona and Tarragona), Castilla León (Salamanca), Cantabria (Santander), Madrid, Castilla la Mancha (Toledo), and Asturias (Gijón). We're planning to hold more if our health allows...