I am so very grateful and indeed honoured to receive these bookmarks and have them in my collection. It has been a joy to receive them and fossick through them.
I asked Robyn if she could tell me a bit more background about her mother's bookmark collection and her bookmark collecting. She replied:
I had a bit of a chat to my sister regarding what she remembers of mum’s bookmark collection. Apparently mum began by asking people (family and friends) to bring her home a bookmark from their travels. I think she also exchanged some bookmarks with others. She spent a lot of time on her own in her mid-life as her 3 children were interstate and/or travelling and my dad also travelled frequently for work. Mum also had a number of overseas penfriends who she wrote to for quite a long period of time until her health and memory deteriorated. As she moved states within Australia several times (due to dad’s work), she often found it hard to make friends, and writing to penfriends and collecting bookmarks was a way of having contact with others. She was also a great ‘journaller’ and compiled a year long diary for each of her 8 grandchildren for the year of their birth, with daily news, newspaper clippings, current prices of everyday things, politics and funny snippets.
What a lovely story, including about the journals Robyn's mother compiled for her grandchildren. Delightful and so touching.
I did not actually count the bookmarks but there are about 200, perhaps more. There are vintage and more recent bookmarks across several categories: bookshops, libraries, museums, publishers, organisations, products, etc. There are card, plastic, leather, cloth, metal and even a pottery bookmark. The majority are commercial bookmarks but some are handmade, handcrafted. I will feature some of my favourites on this blog in the coming months. With Robyn's permission, I am offering the duplicates up through my duplicate bookmarks website and will also donate some duplicates to the IFOB bookmark raffle in February 2019.