Vilija Jocienė - Librarian Who Makes Bookmarks

Editor's Note: Vilija has been a great contributor and supporter of IFOB and now we can see why.  Her creativity and love of bookmarks is evident in these examples and her story about making bookmarks.

​The history of the bookmarks is long and very interesting. They emerged along with the written words and performed their mission not only in the books as we are accustomed to seeing them, but also in the scrolls.

​In my life, bookmarks have come along with my workplace in the library. I have been living among books for more than thirty years and somehow by accident, bookmarks kept popping up. I gave them to the kids when they first came to the library, to the readers just so that they wouldn‘t fold the pages of the book. Until they were as plentiful as they are now, I gradually started making them myself, from paper, from postcards, from old magazine covers, and it so interested me that I still make them. 

​And since I really like handicrafts, I am learning new technologies. The bookmarks are also very diverse: painted on fabric, from gift ribbons, metal, with natural dried flowers, with silk tassels and pendants. Beaded pendants, holiday shells, burnt glass pendants or clay molded with fragrant oils. (After all, the very first scripture is about scents, when the scent plant was wrapped in a piece of material for fear of forgetting important events). 

But no matter how sophisticated they may be, they all carry out the same mission - giving the work being read even more charm, helping us to remember where we read and returning to the story being read, and increasingly bookmarks are becoming works of art.

​Vilija Jocienė
Telšių r. Lithuania