It ticks a few boxes for me:
it has a favourite quote of mine on the front,
it has a small painting of a bird on it, and
it has a handwritten inscription on the back.
It looks to be an early commercial bookmark rather than a handmade one.
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), the author of the quote on the bookmark, was a British essayist, historian, and philosopher from the Scottish Lowlands. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature, and philosophy. The full quote is: “In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time: the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.” - Thomas Carlyle, from his influential Hero as Man of Letters lecture, the fifth in a series of six lectures presented in 1840 on heroes and hero worship. |
"Folks are many, friends are few. Would there were some more like you."
Perhaps the inscriber gave the bookmark to their friend as a birthday gift, either it alone or perhaps inside a book also given as a gift. Who knows really but I am enjoying thinking about it!