The Fourth Helen Warren DeGolyer Competition for American Bookbinding 2006

Bridwell Library’s triennial bookbinding competition is named for Helen Warren DeGolyer (1926–1995), a well-known supporter of the arts and education in Dallas, as well as a skilled devotee of design bookbinding. Following her testamentary wishes, her brother, Joseph Warren, and her children, Everett Lee DeGolyer and Edith DeGolyer, established in 1996 an endowment to support a triennial bookbinding competition, exhibition, and conference on the contemporary book arts to be held at Bridwell Library.

The competition challenges bookbinders to submit their proposals for a specific book held by Bridwell Library, as well as a recent example of their work. While the DeGolyer Award winner receives a commission to bind the book according to his or her proposal, the jury also selects award winners for excellence in fine binding and artistic design. The judges for this year’s competition include

Stuart Brockman, Design Bookbinder, Brockman Bookbinders, Oxford England

Valerie Hotchkiss, PhD, Head of Rare Books and Special Collections Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, Former J. S. Bridwell Endowed Librarian

Jamie Kamph, Bookbinder, 2003 Winner of the DeGolyer Prize Competition, Lambertville, New Jersey

Steven A. Nash, Director of the Nasher Sculpture Garden, Dallas, Texas

Peter David Verheyen, Conservator, Syracuse University Library, Founder of the Book Arts Web, Syracuse, New York

Eric Marshall White, PhD, Curator of Special Collections, Bridwell Library, Dallas, Texas

Joseph Warren, Representative of the DeGolyer Family, Dallas, Texas

We also owe much to the DeGolyer Advisory Board. Over the past three years board members Mirjam Foot, Colin Franklin, Jamie Kamph, Pamela Leutz, J. Franklin Mowery, and Jan Sobota have provided invaluable expertise, advise, and assistance. Ms. Leutz has been especially helpful in promoting the events on local, state, and national levels.

Ficciones

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986). Ficciones. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones Dos Amigos, 1987. Illustrated by Gabriela Aberastury, Julio Pagnao, Mirta Ripoll, Raúl Russo, and Alicia Scavino. 26 x 33.5 cm, 184 pp., Bridwell Library Special Collections.

The book for the fourth triennial competition is Jorge Luis Borges's Ficciones, printed in a limited edition of forty-two at the Argentine fine press Ediciones Dos Amigos. First published in 1944, Ficciones includes seventeen short prose pieces designed to challenge a reader's presuppositions and complacency. Largely because of this work, Borges is considered one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.