Book corner protectors are a rare find. Today I am showing two different ones.The first I took off a Wanamaker published book. This book was published as part of the Wanamaker's Young People's Library and was published in the 1902-1910 era.
The second book corner protector is the more interesting. It is from an unknown Lee and Shepard book. Thus it was produced before 1905. It looks to me like it was hand stamped. What I mean is that Lee and Shepard probably bought blank protectors and then stamped them individually. On the Lee and Shepard item there is a line that says Pat Mar 26,1895 Worchester, Mass. Therefore the production of this item is narrowed down to the years between 1895-1905.
What intrigues me more about these items is when they were used. Clearly the corner protectors are too cumbersome to have been used with jacketed or boxed books. This must mean that some books that came from the publisher did not have jackets (or boxes). This is contrary to my conjecture that all books of this era originally were boxed or had dust jackets. Indeed there must have been a subset that came with the book corner protectors only.
Hopefully we can learn more about these items and see more examples as time goes on.
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