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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.


2025 Competition Details


Set Text: War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells


Judges:


Traditional Binding: Fred Pohlmann


Artist Books: Lee Bratt


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. To help with this we are dedicating bindery days to practicing tooling. Come along and practice on leather or bookcloth! Remember 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 the runner-up from last year or 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.


I 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. Fred 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 - 2025 McNicol Dean Comp Traditional


Judge: Fred Pohlmann

 



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 which will be commented on by a Queensland Artist Books maker, Lee Bratt, and which will each receive comments and a small award. 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.

 

Lee Bratt is an awarded (more detail) artist book-maker and former member of the Canberra Guild of Craft Bookbinders. A short biography, with some links, is below.

 

The criteria will only be:


  • use of the text (War of the Worlds), 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 - 2025 McNicol Dean Comp Artist Form

 

Judge: Lee Bratt


Some Notes from Lee:


In 2016 I did a weekend workshop conducted by the Canberra Guild, this was the first time I made a book successfully, not an artists’ book, one with blank pages, book cloth covers and stitched traditionally. From there I started to learn other ways to bind, learnt the important rules and then I discovered artists’ books. Books that contained my work not blank pages, books with different formats, folded differently, no stitching, covers not required, I could do whatever I liked within certain rules, paper grain being an example.

 

I have bound pre-printed text for exhibitions many years ago but not as artists’ books, at the time I did not consider doing anything else except binding the text, the covers and boxes were where I displayed my style. The story would be different today.

 

How do you turn pre-printed text into an artists’ book? Only you can decide, what can you do with a text block other than stitching, does the story being told by the author need to be preserved or maybe there is a way to keep the text pristine, not bound but presented differently.

 

If you use Instagram, search for labratt9. I have started posting images of my books.

 

And below are 2 websites with artists’ book that you may find interesting.

 

Tim Ely: https://aplanetarycollage.com/collecting-timothy-elys-work-2/

Uses images over text in this series of books.

 

Shanna Leino: https://www.shannaleino.com/book-work-gallery-1

Interesting formats and covers that are out of the ordinary.


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McNicol Dean