Designer bookends by Stefanie Ying Lin Cheong – All photos by Reuben Paris, courtesy of Dundee Design Festival 2024.
Design – To mark ten years of Dundee’s designation as a UNESCO City of Design, the Dundee Design Festival – September 23-29 – commissioned humble bookends to twenty Scotland-based designers. Nick Ross, Juli Bolaños-Durman, James Rigler, and others were inspired by Dundee’s pioneering journalists Marie Imandt and Bessie Maxwell, believed to be the world’s first female foreign correspondents, who explored the world 130 years ago.
Design by Juli Bolaños-Durman.
Imandt and Maxwell travelled before female emancipation when women were not allowed to study at universities. From here, the designers reflected the writers’ adventurous spirit and impact on women’s equality. Indeed, the pieces are based on their keen eye for textures, details, materiality, the colours and landscapes encountered, as well as the cultural differences the writers discovered, including women’s roles in society in the 1890s.
Stacey Hunter curated the project and upcoming exhibition at Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc, during the Dundee Design Festival, Scotland’s national celebration of design. “The bookend as a design object is a delightful concept. At once humble, functional and decorative, it is highly personal,” Hunter told Archipanic.
Design by Lauren Morsley.
Named Stories, Rocks, Colours, Markers, Stefanie Yin Lin Cheong‘s bookends are made of found Scottish rocks coated with natural and man-made pigments. “I have used ten pigments connected to the places Bessie and Marie travelled to as a coating material for small cairn sculptures,” the designer told Archipanic. The Ten Shores designs by Lindsey Hesketh and Claire Canning of Granite + Smoke are composed of ten interlocked elements, each representing a different country the journalists explored.
Design by Granite + Smoke.
The Possibilities of Enjoyment pieces by Juli Bolaños-Durman speak to the writers’ observations of women from other countries and cultures while pondering what it meant to be a woman in a world built by men. “The bookends are a call to fight for everyone’s equality,” explains the designer.
Design by James Rigler.
Lauren Morsley’s Wonder design features two recycled newspaper couriers made of paper clay from joint compound and wood glue. Foreign Objects by James Rigler captures the vibrancy and moments of wonder encountered on their travels. “My bookshelf is imbued with a curious, seductive monumentality,” the designer explains.
A Materials Library for Scotland bookends by Adam Johnston reflected the importance of a materials library for designers. “Just like books on a shelf, each chosen material has a story to tell. From clay sourced from the last brickworks in Scotland to Britain’s only true marble, Scotland’s material landscape is portrayed like a neatly stacked set of paperbacks designed to sit next to their printed counterparts discreetly,” Adam Johnston told Archipanic.
Design by Adam Johnston.
“The Artefact #14 bookends are a continuation of a project ‘of mine, which looks at Scotland’s historical and contemporary connection with sandstone.” Explains Nick Ross. Numbered like archaeological discoveries, the pieces nod to ancient Pictish stones and the symbols they reference. “As someone who has moved away from Scotland, I wanted to create something referencing an idea of ‘Home’ rather than travel. An inverted response to the journeys of Marie Imandt and Bessie Maxwell.”
Design by Nick Ross.
All photos are by Reuben Paris, courtesy of Dundee Design Festival.
Design by Stefanie Ying Lin Cheong.
Design by Juli Bolaños-Durman.
Design by Granite + Smoke.
