Tutors design bespoke bound books for Booker Prize 2024
Four Tutors from the West Dean Books Department have been involved in the highly prestigious 2024 Booker Prize for Fiction bookbinding competition. This runs alongside the Booker shortlist of six books, and each binder was given one title to design and bind with the Booker winner receiving the bound copy of their book.
As Fellows from the Designer Bookbinders Society, FdA Books and Bindings Lecturers Kate Holland, Mark Cockram and Nicky Oliver, Graduate Diploma Conservation Studies Lecturer Glenn Bartley were all selected to design and bind one of the shortlisted books.
The one-of-a-kind books were designed and made between the shortlist announcement and winner ceremony. Each book was the result of around 150 hours of dedicated work and the process, involving at least 25 distinct stages, including the decoration of the edges of the pages and the final lettering, would normally take up to four months. This year it took around two.
On Tuesday 12 November 2024 at a winner ceremony in Old Billingsgate London, it was announced that Orbital by Samantha Harvey, designed by Glenn Malkin, had won the prize.
Congratulations to the shortlisted designers, and winner, on producing such beautiful editions!
Books Subject Leader, Victoria Stevens, commented, "It is hugely beneficial to have so many great designers and crafts people on our teaching staff in Books. Their involvement in the Booker Prize is both a testimony to their status in the profession and an incredible inspiration to the students."
Glenn Bartley, Head of the Royal Bindery and Visiting Lecturer on the Graduate Diploma Conservation Studies programme, added, "It was a great evening...the authors loved their books."
