Best DIY Bookmark Ideas

A bookmark is a thin marker, commonly made of card, leather, or fabric, used to keep the reader's place in a book and to enable the reader to return to it with ease. Other frequently used materials for bookmarks are paper, metals like silver and brass, silk, wood, cord (sewing), and plastic. Many bookmarks can be clipped on a page with the aid of a page flap.

The history of bookmarks is intimately connected with the development of the book itself. New results in research on the history of bookmarks revealed indications that bookmarks have accompanied books for about 2000 years already, since the first emergence of the codex the new form of books in the 1st century AD. According to these new results, the oldest existing bookmark dates from the 6th century AD and it is made of ornamented leather lined with vellum on the back and was attached with a leather strap to the cover of a Coptic codex. It was found near Sakkara, Egypt, under the ruins of the monastery of Apa Jeremiah (see picture on the left).

As the first printed books were quite rare and valuable, it was determined early on that something was needed to mark one is place in a book without causing it is pages any harm. Some of the earliest bookmarks were used at the end of the sixteenth century, and Queen Elizabeth I was one of the first to own one.