Past hopes for the future

As part of the 2024 Dundee Design Festival, alongside 20 other makers, we were invited to produce a set of bookends.

The commisson was a reaction to the book Dundee’s Two Intrepid Ladies.

In 1894, two women newspaper correspondents from Dundee, Marie Imandt and Bessie Maxwell embarked on an epic round-the-world trip, during which they reported back to readers about what they saw.

The commission was a celebration of 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.

I found the book to be very of it’s time, with an attitude reflecting the hight of colonialism. In response I wanted to employ the idea of monument. And reflect how this can be transient and brittle.