IFPDA Foundation Book Award | IFPDA Foundation

The IFPDA Foundation Book Award

The IFPDA Book Award was founded in 2004 to highlight and promote published books, articles, or catalogues on fine prints. This annual award honors excellence in research, scholarship, and the discussion of new ideas in the field of fine prints. The award provides one outstanding recipient and publication with a prize of $3,000, and represents another milestone for the organization. As a result, the winner will receive acclaim from one of the most recognizable bodies in the print world.

The jury limits its consideration to books published during the prior year. Each submission will be vetted by members of the jury, who have been selected according to their expertise in that particular field or specialty. They will consider the use of original ideas, fresh research and individual interpretations. The jury will review the submissions and the award will be announced at the Collectors and Curators Breakfast during the IFPDA Print Fair in October.

Applications for the IFPDA Foundation Book Award are now closed.

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2023 Winner

Paper Knives Paper Crowns: Political Prints in the Dutch Republic

Maureen Warren et. al.

Krannert Art Museum

This volume explores the satirical visual strategies that early modern Netherlandish printmakers—such as Joan Blaeu, Romeyn de Hooghe, Willem Jacobsz and Claes Jansz Visscher—used to memorialize historical events, lionize (or demonize) domestic and international leaders, and instigate collective action.

While some of their prints employ visual puns that even the illiterate could enjoy, others were captioned in Latin, French or Dutch, prompting educated elites across Europe to consider the relationship between text and image in earnest. Published for an exhibit at Krannert Art Museum, Paper Knives, Paper Crowns provides a chronological arc and thematic overview of Netherlandish political prints, addressing multiple types of printmaking as well as the medium’s relationship to other art forms, engaging with art historical scholarship and studies of early modern political history and theory in the process.