Going to work is never a bind for Stephen Conway.

He loves his unusual job designing traditional book covers and restoring collectors' items.

And last night he scooped four awards at a prestigious bookbinding competition.

Mr Conway, 40, of Horton Bank Top, Bradford, won the Folio Society First Prize for the set book The Jubilee Years; joint First Designer Bookbinders Prize for Open Choice Book (Shakespeare's Poems and Sonnets); Designer Bookbinders Silver Medal for best book in the competition (Shakespeare's Poems and Sonnets) and the Friends of the British Library prize for his Painted Book.

The annual national 1998 Bookbinding Awards were presented last night at the British Library, which will host an exhibition of entries in this year's competition from today until January 28.

"It's a real honour. There are not so many bookbinders around nowadays. It's like an art form and a commission can take anything up to 12 months," he said.

Mr Conway does do some repair work on old bindings but his real interest is in creating his own designs.

"You have to read the book and get to know the author and what it's about so that you design is relevant. It's not just a question of putting a bunch of grapes on it because it's a book about wine," he said.

Mr Conway, a former pupil of Cardinal Hindsley Grammar School in Tong (now the Yorkshire Martyrs' School), started bookbinding at the age of 16 and set up his own business in 1985. Originally he worked from Dean Clough in Halifax but moved to Cheapside, Bradford, two years ago.

"I was interested in art at school and I was reasonable at drawing and painting," said Mr Conway.

"I did my apprenticeship for a firm in Halifax at a time when they were just starting to fade. I was lucky because I got right the tail end of traditional bookbinding. It was just changing over from hand binding to machine binding."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.