Faculty researcher Jenni Grey won a major award at the international Designer Bookbinders competition.
15 Aug 2013
Jenni Grey, Senior Lecturer in Illustration and BookArts, has won a major award in an international bookbinding competition organised by Designer Bookbinders in conjunction with the Bodleian Library. Grey was awarded one of the two Sir Paul Getty Bodleian Bookbinding Prizes and also received an engraved silver medal in the shape of a bone folder (a bookbinding tool), coming second overall.
A limited edition of five hundred copies of a book with a collection of poems in different languages on the theme of water was published and sent out to invited participants; in the end half that number of submissions from thirty countries were received, nevertheless Grey was competing with many other established bookbinders including other Fellows of Designer Bookbinders. The illustrations in the book fell into two distinct groups, some very subtle images and a small collection in a more naïve style. The piece Grey submitted divided the book into two bindings 'Water' and 'Waterborn'. The main binding had clear etched acrylic boards which revealed airbrushed end-papers, and a machine embroidered dupion silk spine, held together with silver wire. The second binding was covered in machine embroidered dupion silk, both bindings were housed in a fold out box.
The exhibition of selected bindings is at the Bodleian Library until the end of July, and then travels to three venues in the USA, the Boston Public Library, Bonhams and Butterfields Gallery in San Francisco, and The Grolier Club in New York. After the exhibition the binding will go to the Getty Collection at the Wormsley Library, Oxfordshire. A catalogue 'Bound for Success' has been published to accompany the exhibition.
This academic year has been busy for Grey, in November she participated in an exhibition of the Lord Sawyer collection of bindings at the House of Lords. In January she gave a lecture at The Artworkers Guild about Basic Design for Bookbinders, this talk was developed into an article for Volume 29 of The New Bookbinder, published this year to coincide with the Bodleian Exhibition. Earlier this year Grey was one of the judges for the Society of Bookbinders National Bookbinding and Artists' Books Competition, and currently she is working on a commission for The Clothworkers Company, one of the twelve great livery companies of the City of London. This is a new venture for them and is not only a prestigious commission, but Grey is in distinguished company as out of the five people initially invited to undertake a commission for The Clothworkers Company, Grey is the only binder not to have received an MBE.
