The British Book Design & Production Awards have recognised printers from China and Italy while awarding the Book of the Year, the champion of champions, to an edition of medieval poem Beowulf that was printed in the UK using letterpress.
The printer was Nomad Letterpress with Ludlow Bookbinders finishing the title. The judges concluded that “this book is a timely reminder of the importance and beauty of hand printed works”,
It was not the only appearance on the winners’ podium for letterpress as Hand & Eye won the Best British Book category for an edition of Paul Coehlo’s The Alchemist, which combined letterpress text pages with digital illustrations printed by Hampton Printing. Ludlow Bookbinders finished the short run of the £2,450 book. The same combination gave Ludlow Bookbinders the Fine Binding award for Frozen Hell, retailing at £2,950. Hand & Eye had a busy year having seven nominations in all, one more than Nomad Letterpress and the same number as Hampton Printing.
However, British printers rarely featured in the mainstream categories as winners with the exception of Self Published Books, a category won by Call of the Warrior, about Barry and Eddie Hearn and printed by Empress Litho. It sells at a more reasonable £69.50.
Otherwise the categories were collected by overseas printers, showing that publishers continue to prefer Chinese printers over those closer to home. C&C Offset from China received seven nominations winning twice and 1010 featured four times, winning twice.
Other winning printers came from Italy (OGM, Conti Tipocolor and LEGO), Slovenia (Neografia), India (Replica), Czech Republic (PBTisk) and Belgium (Graphius). Chinese printers won two other categories and achieved countless nominations. Gomer Press from Wales achieved five nominations but none of those won sections. Other UK winners left with nominations only included Short Run Press, Taylor Brothers, Northend, Calverts, CPI, Geoff Neal and Colourpoint while Empress was nominated a further three times.
The book of the night, in line with the theme Bound, handed out to all attendees was a three-part affair, one perfect bound volume about the winner, a second in a wider format for the winners of each category and a third, wider still for the nominations. The book was printed by Northend and perfect bound with the three volumes sewn together, by Diamond Print Services, which was otherwise not listed despite binding a number of the nominated books, the organisers having decided to drop the separate listing of finishing companies.
