ST. JOHN’S, NL – Boulder Books is honoured to receive the 2021 Atlantic Canada Craft Award for Excellence in Product Design for its Saltwater Knits series of Newfoundland and Labrador heritage knitting books. In 24 years of presenting these awards, this is the first time a publisher has received this distinction. The award is sponsored by Crafts Alliance Atlantic.
The three books—Saltwater Mittens, Saltwater Classics, and Saltwater Gifts—have become bestsellers in the crafts category in Canada and the United States. This has been achieved in large part due to the efforts of authors Christine LeGrow and Shirley Scott, who are dedicated to preserving and enhancing traditional knitting patterns from Newfoundland and Labrador.
“We wanted to design these books in a way that is aesthetically pleasing while also being easy to navigate and use for knitters,” said Boulder Books president Gavin Will. “That we were successful is due to the focus of the authors and to our graphic designers who brought Christine and Shirley’s vision from concept to reality.”
Graphic designer Tanya St. Amand, who lives in Toronto, created Saltwater Mittens in 2018 and Saltwater Gifts, which was released in 2020. Todd Manning of Torbay, Newfoundland and Labrador, designed Saltwater Classics in 2019.
Boulder Books is a trade book publisher based in Portugal Cove-St. Philip’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. Its titles are distributed in Canada by Fitzhenry and Whiteside, and in the United States by Firefly Books. In 2020, Boulder signed a European distribution deal with Search Press of the United Kingdom for the Saltwater Knits series.