The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2024
Kongerigets Stamsteder: Carlsberg Foundation's Bodega Bible of 120 brown pubs
Nineteen local photographers and writers portray their own pubs as 120 of the kingdom's wildest brown pubs are compiled into an oversized Bodega Bible.
Carlsberg Foundation
What it had to solve
The client, the Carlsberg Foundation, backed a tribute to the brown pubs of Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Greenland — a world of local characters, stories and photographs that had never been collected in one book.
How it works
Kongerigets Stamsteder — 'the kingdom's favourite haunts' — is a tribute to the brown pubs of Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Greenland. The book is deliberately called a 'Bodega Bible', treating the humble neighbourhood pub like a grand subject.
The reporting is as local as the subject. A team of nineteen photographers and writers, each rooted in their own region, portrayed their own local pubs, collecting anecdotes and photos from 120 of the wildest pubs across the three territories. Their material was compiled into a large, decorative coffee-table book, an object meant to be kept and shown rather than skimmed once.
The result is a single collected record of a kingdom's pub culture, authored by the people who live in those places. D&AD recorded the book in its 2024 annual under Book Design; the archive carries no sales or print-run figures, so the case rests on the editorial idea itself.
Why it lands
- Nineteen local authors portraying their own pubs reach stories and details no outside photographer on a single shoot could capture.
- Naming the book a 'Bodega Bible' and giving it the size and finish of a decorative keepsake tells readers the pub is heritage, not embarrassment.
- Spanning Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Greenland turns one neighbourhood subject into a kingdom-wide cultural document.
- Commissioning it through the Carlsberg Foundation — the brewer's foundation rather than the beer brand — keeps the book a tribute instead of an advertisement.
What it did
The book turned scattered local folklore into one collected record of the kingdom's pub life, giving the brown pub the physical scale of a keepsake. D&AD recorded it in its 2024 annual under Book Design; no sales or print-run figures accompany the entry, so the case stands on the editorial idea.
What you can take
Document an overlooked local institution with locals, not tourists: nineteen authors portraying their own pubs gather stories an outsider never reaches; the keepsake format signals the places matter.
Since then
The book entered the D&AD 2024 annual under Book Design, where it is documented with the project's credits. The archive records no print-run or sales figures, so this entry claims none; the transferable idea is that an institution everyone takes for granted can be reframed as heritage by commissioning local storytellers and giving the result the physical weight of a keepsake.
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