Bookbinding Competitions. Why should you enter them?

Everyone should enter bookbinding competitions. Such an innocuous statement and yet one that can raise ire, excitement, or even anxiety. Bookbinding competitions are held all over the world. There's the Society of Bookbinders International Bookbinding Competition, The Royal Sydney Show Arts and Craft fair (three bookbinding categories this year supported by the NSW guild), the Samford Show has two bookbinding categories this year, and most importantly (to us) is the McNicol Dean Competition held by QBG.

Each competition has its own rules and requirements. These can sometimes be well documented or not documented at all and the title of the category is all you have to go off. The main two categories or rather types of competitions is Artist books and Traditional Styles of Bookbinding. These two categories can contain further subcategories, for example the traditional category could have a case binding section and a fine binding or letterpress section.

Artist books are not my strong suit. I have made very few and am not very good at it. The judge for this years Artist Book section is Lee Bratt. We are very lucky to have her as a guest judge this year and she has given us a great guide to artist books (located here). In addition she gave what I have been told was a very interesting talk at the artist book group. Regretfully we only have 2 entries this year for the Artist Book competition.

The traditional category though is the one that I enter as regularly as possible. Judging for the McNicol Dean trophy has been done recently by Fred Pohlmann, a master bookbinder with over 60 years experience. Prior to Fred taking on the role the competition was judged by June McNicol and Fay Dean. This years trophy is especially important with the passing of Fay Dean and on the judging night there will be special tribute to her.

So after all that, why should you enter? The first reason: Feedback from a master bookbinder. The judging includes great feedback from the judges usually. The opportunity to get feedback and suggestions from binders with the experience of Fred and Gundy is rare to access and entering the competition provides you with exactly that. Each year I strive to fix whatever items Fred mentions; not only the points raised about my own book, but the comments on all the other entries provide valuable insight.

The second reason to enter: Promotion of the guild and the craft of Bookbinding. This one is a little less personal to you and more for the advancement of the craft of bookbinding. The competition gives us a chance to showcase the abilities of the members and the high quality of books that they are all able to produce, from people who have only done the beginners course, right through to people with decades of experience.

This range of experience brings me to the third reason: To get people making books. Too often I will do a course or workshop and a lot of the people in them haven't practiced their skills since doing the beginners course. Buying the set text and entering the competition gives you motivation to get a book on the workbench and at least have a go at completing one. We try and get the set text out as early as possible so you should have close to a year to finish your book (though inevitably I am doing tooling a week out from due date, no matter how early I start).

So that's why you should enter. Before I go though I want to share a few tips for entering competitions. Now I am not an expert on the subject, I just like competition and have entered some, so take that into consideration here. There are a few common themes I see in entries that seem to recur regularly:

1. Don't try an entirely new style of bookbinding for the competition. If you haven't done a full leather fine binding, then don't make your competition book your first one. 

2. You don't need to have a full leather fine binding, with gold leaf tooling and gold edges etc. The winning entry many times is a more simple book with little to no tooling. This years Sydney show is a really good example of this. I entered a full blue Harmatan goat letterpress binding with elaborate decoration and edge colouring. I came second which was a result I was ecstatic about. The winner however had a book that was quarter leather (so just the spine) one raised bands. No gold tooling with only very subtle blind tooling on either side of the bands. The cover was a decorative piece of marbled paper with a paper label. Obviously the quality of the binding was higher without tooling mistakes to take away from it and give her the win.

3. Get the book done early. Start as early as you can in the year. I do most of my binding at about 8:30pm. After I've put my son to bed I try and get one step done on whatever book I'm working on. This could be 5 mins, or 30 mins but I get one step done. You would be surprised how much you can get done doing it this way. It also means that if there is a problem say with the printing on the text, or you made a mistake, then there is still plenty of time for this to be rectified before it's due.

4. You don't need to have years of experience to enter. It doesn't even matter about winning. If you have done the beginner course then you have the skills required to be able to enter the competition. Please don't let the other books discourage you. 


There you have it. The guilds presentation, along with Pizza's and some drinks will be held on May 13th this year. It would be great to have as many members attend as possible. If you can, please register here(free) so that we have an idea of numbers.

It would be great to see everyone there and for many more books next year to appear in the competition.