My adventure with bibliophilately began a long time ago, which I happened to find out several dozen years later. In my youth I tried to connect two passions, that is my "predilection for books" and collecting stamps called philately. After my first philatelic experiences and failures I decided that my love for books had become an important part of my life and gradually took on some features of collecting passion. Therefore a book, and not a stamp, has become my destination - or so I thought, and then my interest for books was more systematized, and my knowledge about them increased with the passage of time. Nevertheless, I have to admit that this knowledge was chaotic and selective. Some kind of arrangement took place as late as 1980s when I was admitted as a member of the Society of the Friends of Books in Cracow.
As it sometimes happens with the collecting passion, once instilled and unfulfilled, it accumulates somewhere inside, only to revive accidentally in an unexpected moment. And so it turns out that such incidents influence fundamentally the choice of action and interests. Many collectors live through the experiences like those; why should I miss them? Philately, in spite of the appearance of coming away from it, had remained deep inside and made me step in philatelist's shops because... I enjoyed looking at stamps.
In 1979, while being in the philatelist's shop for just another time, I experienced something that was a great surprise for me and resulted in creative surprise and influenced the topic of the collection. Namely, I discovered unexpectedly that postage stamps show fragments of books. This was a page and a miniature from a mediaeval prayer book. I bought the stamps for a small sum, not knowing that they would initiate both the change of my attitude toward philately and directing my attention to the possibility of connecting philately and bibliophily. Until today, this series issued by Swedish post office on 17 November 1976 on Christmas, under the title of "Mediaeval Book Paintings" (Mi. 966 - 969) has been the theme of my philatelic collection display, and it reminds me of the beginnings of my "bibliophilately," a subject unnamed and unknown at the time.
Stamps from the mentioned series, printed in little notebooks, describe initials from a Flemish prayer book from ca. 1500, along with a miniature and a page from an Austrian prayer book from the 15th century. Made in the technique of a steel engraving, with a careful graphic design, multicoloured, they were conspicuous and become in those coarse times a great attraction. For me, the more so that it concerned a book.
Intrigued by my "discovery" I began my search, looking in the old collections for the stamps with the book motives. It turned out that I found several stamps of this kind that I hadn't noticed earlier, or rather that hadn't been an object of my interest. It was, for example, a stamp depicting a title page of a book, and also a stamp with a library building. There was even a stamp with a bookplate. These 'findings" intrigued me more and more, and the result of this interest was an idea of a philatelic collection based on a theme of a book and its history, and then, more ambitiously, the role of a book in human civilization.
Even the first attempts at the specification of the range of the collection encountered serious problems. The subject expanded from month to month because there were more and more stamps connected with the subject and those which demanded serious consideration upon a possibility or need of including them in the topic. This was so with the writing, any writing supplies, libraries etc. For if there was a book, there was writing; if there was writing, that meant writing supplies, and also libraries, printers, printing houses. Furthermore, the promotion of a book, people connected with books etc. There arose sub-topics, which for the others were separate topics. Someone suggested that I should turn to one of philatelic clubs interested in thematic philately. I found out that my topic provisionally called "books" was quite popular, but the collectors rather dealt with specific sections. There were collections entitled "print and paper," "print and paper, books and press," "the Bible" and others. Nevertheless, I refused to be discouraged by this information and in defiance of everybody I prepared a display of my modest collection for the meeting of Society of the Friends of Books on 15 December 1987. A lecture richly illustrated with slides and entitled "Bibliophilic Marginalia: Incunabula, Miniatures, Impressors, Typographs and Libraries on Postage Stamps" was heard out and kindly received. Owing to this, bibliophily and philately became complementary for me. Knowledge about books acquired before proved to be helpful in the creation of the idea of collection, and the philatelic material inspired the search and extension of my knowledge about books and stamps. My fears about the size of stamp collection gradually disappeared because philatelic material kept growing if only I analysed it carefully and expanded the topical range of the collection. This was inevitable because there arose some new sub-topics unpredicted before, such as the way of depicting books on postage stamps.
The growing collection of stamps required definition and giving it a name or a title of some kind. Of many various propositions, "bibliophilately" seemed the most appropriate one. Etymology of the word went through two periods. At first, the neologism sprang up as a combination of the words "bibliophile" and "philately." Then, along with the development and expansion of topical range of the collection, I decided that it was more appropriate to derive "bibliophilately" from Greek biblion (also: biblios) meaning a page of writing and later a book, and from the word "philately".
This is how bibliophilately came into existence. Today I use this term to define the creation of topical philatelic collection connected with a book in the broadest sense of the word, i.e. including the history of books, institutions and distinguished people, educational inspirations of a book and its role in the fight against illiteracy, as well as in the promotion of education and knowledge in schools and universities.
In view of considerable amount and variety of the philatelic material I have divided the collection into thirteen (13) sub-topics that can make separate collections, as I noted on the main website.
A cresset is the symbol of bibliophilately. It was invested with symbolical significance by Polish poet Juliusz Słowacki in his poem "My Last Will" written in 1839. A motif of burning oil lamp was introduced in Polish postage stamps issued in 1927 and in the trademark of a meritorious organization named the Society of Popular School established in 1891 in Cracow by Polish poet and community worker Adam Asnyk.