20 pairs of bookends celebrate contemporary Scottish design and Dundee’s literary heritage

In 1894, two women newspaper correspondents from Dundee embarked on an epic round-the-world trip, during which they reported back to readers in the UK about what they saw. In 2024, Marie Imandt and Bessie Maxwell’s pioneering expedition has inspired a collection of unique bookends created by 20 Scotland-based designers as part of the Dundee Design Festival, which opens this weekend.

The Bookends exhibition is one of several events taking place at the Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc as part of the fifth edition of the Festival, which runs from 23 to 29 September. Curated by Dr Stacey Hunter of Local Heroes, DDF is the biggest celebration of contemporary design in Scotland, with work by over 180 designers being showcased throughout the week.

Dundee Design Week : The Bookends exhibition

Inspiration for the Bookends show came from an exhibit at The McManus art gallery in Dundee and from Susan Keracher’s book Dundee’s Two Intrepid Ladies, which describes the world tour undertaken by Imandt and Maxwell on behalf of their employer, the publisher D.C. Thomson. The journalists spent almost a year visiting ten countries and travelled over 26,000 miles before returning home with lively, illustrated reports that offered unprecedented insights into 19th-century travel and the status of women in different cultures.

Marking the 130th anniversary of this momentous voyage, Hunter invited creatives including architects, textile designers, ceramicists, jewellers, illustrators and product designers to create bookends to raise awareness of the women’s pioneering exploits while celebrating the breadth of contemporary design talent in Scotland today. Each designer was given a copy of Keracher’s book to reference and the only constraint Hunter included in her brief was that the bookends should be made sustainably and ethically, in order to support her objective of making DDF 'one of the world’s most sustainable design festivals'.

Hunter explained that the choice of a simple object with a single function that links back to the idea of publishing allowed the designers a great deal of scope for creativity and personal expression, resulting in outcomes that are unique and varied in their approaches to form and the making process.

'Some of the bookends are minimalist, some are maximalist, some are serious, some are humorous and some are poignant,' Hunter pointed out. 'I love how the designers have woven in stories from the book while showcasing their personalities and interest in material experimentation.'

Several of the designers chose to incorporate forms or materials that reference places Imandt and Maxwell visited on their tour, such as the Chinese graphite pigment used by Steven Blench of Fife-based studio Chalk Plaster to colour his minimalist bookends. Alistair Byars of Edinburgh-based GRAS architects developed a pair of cast bronze cylinders that evoke the materiality of objects used in Japanese tea ceremonies, while the organic, lacquered forms of artist James Rigler’s ‘Foreign Objects’ transform the bookshelf into a vibrant, other-worldly landscape.

Adopting a more poetic response to the brief, Lindsey Hesketh and Claire Canning of Granite + Smoke collated ten elements representing the countries the women visited and used two distinct hues to represent the journalists’ separate personalities. Dundee designer Lauren Morsley crafted colourful interpretations of the two women from paper clay made with donated copies of The Courier newspaper, while Edinburgh-based Jennifer Gray cast the hands of present-day Scottish journalists Eilidh Akilade and Gabriella Bennett, transforming them into objects that evoke the classical sculptures Imandt and Maxwell described from their travels in Italy.

The exhibition will present the 20 outcomes without any books in order to focus attention on their unique designs. The display plinths used for the show were made using salvaged and repurposed materials from partners including the V&A Dundee museum in order to enhance the event’s sustainable credentials.

Alongside other DDF exhibitions that provide a broad overview of contemporary Scottish design, Hunter hopes the Bookends show will offer an accessible and engaging insight into designers’ creative processes, as well as allowing visitors to learn about the inspirational story of the two female journalists and their connection to Dundee.

'There is something for everyone in this selection of functional, decorative and highly personal bookends,' the curator pointed out. 'Visitors can really get up close to view the beautiful textures or reflections of the materials and hopefully they’ll be inspired to go off and make something themselves after seeing what our designers have come up with.'

dundeedesignfestival.com