HomeMcNicol-Dean Award Honour Board

The McNicol Dean Trophy

The McNicol Dean Award is the Queensland Bookbinders' Guild’s annual competition, celebrating the art and craft of bookbinding. Open to all members, the award encourages participants to explore both the construction and design aspects of their work, pushing creative and technical boundaries.

Award Categories

Traditional Binding: Showcase your precision and craftsmanship with a classically inspired approach.

Artist Books: Let your imagination take center stage with unique, boundary-pushing designs that challenge conventional book forms.

Why Enter?

This competition isn’t just about creating beautiful books—it’s a chance to develop your skills, receive feedback from experienced judges, and connect with a vibrant community of bookbinding enthusiasts. The McNicol Dean Award is presented in April, offering participants a moment in the spotlight and the chance to learn from constructive critique.

2026 Competition Details

The text for 2026 is "The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book" by Eva Greene Fuller. The typeset has a lot of very fun illustrations, creating a very light-hearted text for the competition this year.

The judge for both categories this year will be Daniel Ibbott. Daniel is the proprietor of Books and Boxes at Salisbury and a very accomplished bookbinder.

We encourage members of all skill levels to enter. Anyone who has completed the beginner's course has the skills to create a book that can perform well at this competition.

TRADITIONAL BINDING

This year we have clarified a few items for the judging of the Traditional Category. You will find the full rules on the entry form but a few things to be aware of:

1. All books need to have a Title, either on the spine or the front cover. TRemember that the title doesn't need to be done in hot foil. There are a million ways to get a title on a book cover. Have a look at some of the entries from earlier years with printed covers. There's a lot of ways to get this done.

2. A box, while encouraged, will not form part of the overall marking. Of course every nice book should come with an appropriate box. The Judges may even comment on the boxes which is always very helpful. They will not however form part of the judging.

We also want to encourage people of all skill levels to join. First of all a very well made book in the style of the beginner course would certainly have won in certain years. A book doesn't need to be in leather with gold all over it to win. Winning aside though it is a great opportunity to get some feedback from a world class bookbinder. Daniel will comment on each book and provide really constructive feedback to help you continue on with your journey. So please, no matter how experienced or inexperienced we would encourage you to enter a book.

Entry Form - 2026 McNicol Dean Comp Traditional

Judge: Daniel Ibbot

Artist Books Category

The Guild is keen to see more Artist Books in the competition, not judged in with the traditional binding but in a separate group of entries. The Artist Books should use the supplied text as the basis for their work, but interpretations, technique and materials will all be up to you. These do not have to use any traditional techniques but might be informed by them, or re-interpreted.

The criteria will only be:

use of the text (The Up-to-date Sandwich Book), formatted or re-created as you wish;
a title on the outside in some form;
a box can be supplied but would not be required, though it may be assessed as part of the whole work.

Entry Form - 2026 McNicol Dean Comp Artist Form

Judge: Daniel Ibbot