Booker Foundation launches competition to name trophy

The Booker Prize Foundation (BPF) has launched a competition to give the golden Booker Prize trophy a name.

Designed by Jan Pieńkowski in 1969, the statuette had been out of use for decades. Pieńkowski, best known as the author of much-loved children’s books such as Haunted House (Walker) and as the illustrator of the Meg and Mog series, died in February 2022. The statuette was reinstated in his honour and awarded to the winner of the Booker Prize 2022, Shehan Karunatilaka. However, the trophy has never had a name—and now it is up to the public to choose one.

Entrants are invited to draw inspiration from the history of the Booker Prize and to put forward ideas for the coveted trophy’s official title. From these suggestions, a judging panel will select a shortlist of six names, then ask the public to pick the final name via the Booker Prizes website. 

Inspired by an art deco lamp Pieńkowski found in a junk shop in Portobello Market in west London, the first statuette was pewter-coloured and stood two feet tall. It was awarded to P H Newby, whose wife disliked the colour and spray-painted it gold, unwittingly altering the future of its design.

A compact, 10-inch version of Pieńkowski’s trophy was created in 1973 by artist Patricia Turner. This was handed out for several years until it was replaced by leather-bound copies of an author’s winning book, followed by a perspex panel which was awarded to winners up until last year. 

In 2022, Newby’s original trophy was tracked down, scanned and 3D-printed by Adam Lowe’s Madrid-based Factum Foundation, a not-for-profit that used cutting-edge photogrammetry technology to reinstate the female figure for the 2022 awards. She now stands 38cm (15in) high and is cast in brass. This will be the trophy that Booker Prize winners receive.

Gaby Wood, director of the Booker Prize Foundation, said: “We’re incredibly grateful to our partners, the Folio Society and Montegrappa, for donating such elegant and luxurious prizes—and grateful in advance to members of the public for joining us in this venture to give the Booker Prize trophy a name.

“She will, we hope, come to stand not only for the triumph of a single winner but for the aims of the Booker Prize Foundation as a whole: to change lives and expand minds through the pleasures of reading. Once she has a name she can be a beacon, lighting the way to the world’s best literature. We’d like readers everywhere to be part of that.”

The judging panel will consist of Karunatilaka, Margaret Busby, Britain’s first black female publisher and chair of the Booker Prize 2022 judges, Gabriel Schenk, Newby’s grandson, David Walser, partner of and frequent collaborator with Pieńkowski, and Wood.

The winner of the competition will receive a collector’s edition of Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate), the Booker Prize-winning novel by the late Hilary Mantel, and a Montegrappa Zero Fountain Pen with a 14k solid gold, gold-plated nib.