If you’ve ever read a physical copy of a book, there is a good chance you used something as a bookmark. If not an actual bookmark, most likely a sticky note, receipt, possibly a piece of napkin, or whatever else was nearby that you could squash in between the pages. An article by librarians in Washington list some rather unlikely items they’ve found between the pages. Fake eyelashes, utility bills, $100 banknotes, ticket stubs… the list goes on.

One of the things I liked to do when visiting book fairs when I was young was to collect as many bookmarks as possible. Publishers would leave them in their stalls for everyone to grab, as a marketing swag. Some of them would simply be a copy of a book’s cover, but sometimes you would also come across interesting designs.

Even today, when you go on a marketplace like etsy, you can find thousands of custom-made bookmarks. Pretty much anything you’re looking for can be found, from usual suspects like cats and dogs and flowers, to bookmarks inspired by specific books. You can find them in different materials like wood, aluminum, paper, and leather.

There is a company in Italy that makes really special bookmarks, called Silverleaf. As the name suggests, they work with silver, and their creations go beyond anything I have ever seen. Take a look at this bookmark designed after The Little Prince.

Silverleaf goes back to 1983, and they are based in Udine, in northeast Italy, close to the border with Slovenia. When producing these bookmarks, they don’t use any mechanical or computerized processes. Everything is made by hand, all the way down to the finest detail. That does not come cheap, though. This “Woman in the Snow” bookmark, for example, will cost you €1.220.

Even though they might be out of reach for most of us at this price range, it’s great to see local artisans continuing with more traditional methods of working with silver, and producing such unique items. Even the colors are produced without the use of any dyes or other coloring substances. They achieve these colors by calibrating the metal oxidation.

You can find many more examples on their website, silverleaf.it. All images on this page are Copyright © 2010-2024 Silverleaf by Massimo Moreale.