Messages in Bottles

You've probably come across them yourself - those little messages, notes and cryptic clues from times past. Perhaps you knew what yours meant. I wish I were as lucky as you. Most of us have no clue what ours mean, as I surely have no clue why they hell anyone would put a tiny watercoloured cardboard rectangle in a book of Pliny's letters. I'm talking here about a real nut case.

But to explain. Wherever you go in second hand bookshops and flea markets, you find books that have notes or other things shoved in between the pages. A note would be easy to decipher. Unfortunately a lot of things get used that aren't so readable. This page is to post pictures of the funny little objects that get used as bookmarks and which have baffled me. I attach a romantic kind of notion to these things, as if they were heralds from some mysterious past owner or little messages that have been washed up on the beach of time but which the beachcombers didn't get because god was angry at him for making me move my towel you stupid bum I don't care how much your detectorcostimnotpayingdamagesitsnotmyfaulttheyrenotwaterproof.

So please, if you know what any of these objects are, what they're from or what they depict, please let me know. I'm also interested in what you've found, so if you email me a picture I'll post it on this page.

A B&W photograph I found on page 62 of Cox's A Grammar and Commentary on the International Language Esperanto (1907). I have no clue where the house is or when the photo was taken, but people I've asked reckon it's from the 40s or 50s. The book was bought at a market in Chatswood in late 2006, so the house might be in Australia.

This cryptic little bastard was found in The Selected Letters of the Younger Pliny (ed. Merrill, 1927). It's a small cardboard rectangle that's been hand-coloured and seems to refer to the book it was found in. The sides are irregular, so I wonder if it's been cut out of something larger. I bought the book in Melbourne in 2005, so maybe an insane Melbourne classicist put it there.

How could this not be my favourite discovery? I was in Krakow in later September 2006 when I spotted these posted along the street. It's a full A4 page covered in esoteric symbols. I only had time for a cursory glance at the time, then on my return it got buried under a mountain of other crap. Most of the text is one repeating sentence, but the underlined section has some slight variations. My Polish probably isn't up to scratch to crack this, so if anyone has any clues I'd love to hear from you.

I just recently got a copy of Cato to St. Jerome - Selections from the First 600 Years of Latin Prose (ed. Gould & Whiteley, 1950). Not only was the book in smashing condition, it also had a plastic covering with a little card slipped into the inside of the front cover plastic. I'm not sure why Christians would want to mark this book, seeing as the extracts from St. Jerome only take up 6 or so pages. Maybe Jesus also gets a mention in the Pliny extracts, but I haven't looked at that bit yet. Does anyone know who the "Christian Brothers" are or why they'd want to put bits of card inside books?