The IFPDA Foundation provides various grants and awards throughout the year, benefiting many deserving institutions and organizations. Currently, the foundation offers Foundation Grants, the Book Award, Curatorial Internship grants, the Richard Hamilton Acquisition Prize, and the Jordan Schnitzer Award for Excellence in Printmaking.

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 open through June 1, 2023.

Click here for the Guidelines

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2022 Winner

Aquatint: From Its Origins to Goya

Rena M. Hoisington

Princeton Architectural Press

Driven by a growing interest in collecting and multiplying drawings, artists and amateurs in the eighteenth century sought a new technique capable of replicating the subtlety of ink, wash, and watercolor. They devised an innovative and versatile new medium—aquatint—which would spread in use across Europe within a few decades, its distinctive dark tones making possible a remarkable variety of ingenious imagery.

In this illuminating book, Rena M. Hoisington traces how the aquatint technique flourished as a cross-cultural and cosmopolitan phenomenon that contributed to the rise of art publishing, connoisseurship, leisure travel, drawing instruction, and the popularity of neoclassicism. She offers new insights into sophisticated experiments by artists such as Francisco Goya, Maria Catharina Prestel, Paul Sandby, and Jean-Baptiste Le Prince. Marvelously illustrated with rare works from the National Gallery of Art’s collection of early aquatints, this engaging book provides a fresh look at how printmaking contributed to a vibrant exchange of information and ideas in Europe during the Enlightenment.

2022 Winner

Hokusai. Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji

Andreas Marks

Taschen

In this XXL edition discover Katsushika Hokusai s seminal 36 Views of Mount Fuji an artifact of art history and masterpiece of woodblock practice Gathering the finest impressions from institutions and collections worldwide in the complete set of 46 plates alongside 114 color variations and carefully produced with Japanese binding this visual delight transports us to the heart of 19th century Japan.

2022 Honorable Mention

Hokusai: The Great Picture Book of Everything

Timothy Clark

The British Museum Press

Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) is considered by many to be Japan’s greatest artist. During his seventy-year career, he produced a considerable oeuvre of some 3,000 color prints, illustrations for over 200 books, hundreds of drawings, and over 1,000 paintings. This exciting collection of 103 exquisite small drawings were made for an unpublished book called The Great Picture Book of Everything – featuring wide-ranging subjects from depictions of religious, mythological, historical, and literary figures to animals, birds, flowers, and other natural phenomena, as well as landscapes. They are dominated by subjects that relate to ancient China and India, also Southeast and Central Asia. Many subjects found in the collection are not found in previous Hokusai works, including fascinating imaginings of the origin of human culture in ancient China.