20 pairs of bookends have a good time up to date Scottish design and Dundee’s literary heritage

In 1894, two girls newspaper correspondents from Dundee launched into an epic round-the-world journey, throughout which they reported again to readers within the UK about what they noticed. In 2024, Marie Imandt and Bessie Maxwell’s pioneering expedition has impressed a set of distinctive bookends created by 20 Scotland-based designers as a part of the Dundee Design Competition, which opens this weekend.

The Bookends exhibition is one in all a number of occasions going down on the Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc as a part of the fifth version of the Competition, which runs from 23 to 29 September. Curated by Dr Stacey Hunter of Native Heroes, DDF is the largest celebration of latest design in Scotland, with work by over 180 designers being showcased all through the week.

Dundee Design Week : The Bookends exhibition

Inspiration for the Bookends present got here from an exhibit at The McManus artwork gallery in Dundee and from Susan Keracher’s ebook Dundee’s Two Intrepid Girls, which describes the world tour undertaken by Imandt and Maxwell on behalf of their employer, the writer D.C. Thomson. The journalists spent nearly a yr visiting ten nations and travelled over 26,000 miles earlier than returning residence with full of life, illustrated experiences that provided unprecedented insights into Nineteenth-century journey and the standing of girls in numerous cultures.

Marking the one hundred and thirtieth anniversary of this momentous voyage, Hunter invited creatives together with architects, textile designers, ceramicists, jewellers, illustrators and product designers to create bookends to boost consciousness of the ladies’s pioneering exploits whereas celebrating the breadth of latest design expertise in Scotland right this moment. Every designer was given a replica of Keracher’s ebook to reference and the one constraint Hunter included in her transient was that the bookends must be made sustainably and ethically, as a way to assist her goal of creating DDF ‘one of many world’s most sustainable design festivals’.

Hunter defined that the selection of a easy object with a single perform that hyperlinks again to the thought of publishing allowed the designers quite a lot of scope for creativity and private expression, leading to outcomes which can be distinctive and assorted of their approaches to kind and the making course of.

‘A number of the bookends are minimalist, some are maximalist, some are severe, some are humorous and a few are poignant,’ Hunter identified. ‘I like how the designers have woven in tales from the ebook whereas showcasing their personalities and curiosity in materials experimentation.’

A number of of the designers selected to include varieties or supplies that reference locations Imandt and Maxwell visited on their tour, such because the Chinese language graphite pigment utilized by Steven Blench of Fife-based studio Chalk Plaster to color his minimalist bookends. Alistair Byars of Edinburgh-based GRAS architects developed a pair of solid bronze cylinders that evoke the materiality of objects utilized in Japanese tea ceremonies, whereas the natural, lacquered types of artist James Rigler’s ‘International Objects’ remodel the bookshelf right into a vibrant, other-worldly panorama.

Adopting a extra poetic response to the transient, Lindsey Hesketh and Claire Canning of Granite + Smoke collated ten components representing the nations the ladies visited and used two distinct hues to characterize the journalists’ separate personalities. Dundee designer Lauren Morsley crafted vibrant interpretations of the 2 girls from paper clay made with donated copies of The Courier newspaper, whereas Edinburgh-based Jennifer Grey solid the palms of present-day Scottish journalists Eilidh Akilade and Gabriella Bennett, remodeling them into objects that evoke the classical sculptures Imandt and Maxwell described from their travels in Italy.

The exhibition will current the 20 outcomes with none books as a way to focus consideration on their distinctive designs. The show plinths used for the present have been made utilizing salvaged and repurposed supplies from companions together with the V&A Dundee museum as a way to improve the occasion’s sustainable credentials.

Alongside different DDF exhibitions that present a broad overview of latest Scottish design, Hunter hopes the Bookends present will provide an accessible and interesting perception into designers’ artistic processes, in addition to permitting guests to study concerning the inspirational story of the 2 feminine journalists and their connection to Dundee.