Design Bindings of the Booker Prize 2020 – Rachel Ward-Sale – Bookish Talk #7

This episode of our Bookish Talk is a bit unusual because we have a guest. Rachel Ward-Sale is an award-winning bookbinder with many years of experience and the current president of the Designer Bookbinders. However, this podcast is dedicated to her design binding made for one of the six books included in the Short List of the Booker Prize this year.

In the video, Rachel Ward-Sale showed some of her experiments with materials and designed she went through before she made the final binding of This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga.

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00:00 – Beginning
01:05 – On the definition of design binding
03:04 – The process of creating the design binding for This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga
03:40 – Finding the imagery for the cover
04:10 – Tests with different designs
05:11 – First leather test
05:43 – Paper mockup of the cover
07:09 – Leather sample cover
07:21 – Endpapers
07:33 – Colors for the edges
07:37 – Elements of the book’s box
08:34 – Connection with the Arts and Crafts tradition
10:04 – What happens to the design binding made for the Booker Prize after it’s made?
11:52 – How much time did it take to create the binding?
12:28 – Isn’t it sad to part with the book?
12:57 – Playing around with designs
15:15 – Referencing earlier works
16:30 – Layers and layers of patterns and leather

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