Background:

On graduating from Glasgow School of Art with a degree in Fine Art (Sculpture) in 1980, Tom trained as a diesinker and engraver with a London-based firm before going on to set up his own diesinking business in Scotland in 1994.

Tom began training as a bookbinder in 2004 at the Glasgow College of Building and Printing. Thereafter, he enjoyed a string of competition successes including the student prize in the National Library of Scotland’s Soutar Competition in 2006 and the overall top prize in the same competition just one year later. There were also prize-winning bindings in the 2009, 2011 and 2013 Society of Bookbinders Competitions and in the Designer Bookbinders (DB) Competitions of 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2013.

His greatest successes to date are winning the DB Mansfield Medal in 2012 and 2013. He was elected Fellow of Designer Bookbinders in 2014.  Tom was commissioned to bind one of the Man Booker shortlisted books in 2014, 2017, 2019, 2021 and 2023.  In 2017 & 2022 he was a ‘Distinguished Silver Prize Winner’ at the 3rd and 4th  Designer Bookbinders International Competition, an event held every 4 years.