Bernard Watney Medal

Dr. Bernard Watney was one of the two founders on the International Correspondence of Corkscrew Addicts, known widely as the ICCA.  He also co-authored with Dr. Homer Babbidge the first substantial book on corkscrews in 1981.  This first book, entitled Corkscrews for Collectors became the bible for serious collectors for years to come.  After Dr. Watney’s untimely passing, his widow, Ms. Mavis Watney had agreed to have a wonderful medal to be struck in the memory of her late husband to be awarded to anyone who had made a significant contribution to corkscrew literature or other such endeavour that would promote the knowledge and information on corkscrews – she also funded the medal.

There is a committee of the ICCA whose Honorary Chairperson is Ms. Mavis Watney and the other members come from the ICCA appointed by the Right from among the active Past Rights.  Nominations may be made by anybody from any of the corkscrew clubs or even if one does not belong to one.  The nomination is to be in writing addressed to the Right at the time (see the ICCA Webpage here).  Any one person can only receive one medal no matter how many contributions they might have made in the past or the future, but all such contributions are listed below.  All decisions of the Committee are final.

The Criteria for selecting an award winner are as follows:

Books – Books dedicated to corkscrews or where the corkscrew is prominent but not the whole subject – the book must be in print 
Papers – Papers dedicated to corkscrews which expand the corkscrew knowledge base must be available in print 
Articles – Generally articles that appear in newsletters or published in magazines or on websites would not be eligible unless available as stand-alone documents
Websites – Websites which have significant content of historical  or informational value to the Corkscrew World 
Museums – Museums must be open to the public, corkscrews on display must be shown with information about them and ther must be a reasonable variety of corkscrews 
Other – The committee will consider all nominations for the Bernard Watney Award for outstanding contributions to the World of Corkscrews including but not limited to organization of meetings, exhibitions, presentations, inventions, and extraordinary accomplishments

The list below exists on both Don Bull’s website www.bullworks.net and this website.  Annual updates are made as the medals are awarded.

The first awards were presented in at the 2009 meeting in London, England on Sunday, August 23 by Ms. Watney herself, the years of the awards are shown in the right column.

Here is the list of Medal recipients and what they accomplished to earn their medals – individual’s name is shown once and the rows below represent their other accomplishments – first one is when the medal was awarded, only one medal per person.  The * signifies co-athorship.

Remember: This list will be updated each year as new awards are made.  A similar list can also be found on Don Bull’s website www.bulwworks.net.