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ROWLING (J.K.) Harry Potter & Philosopher's Stone, SPECIALLY BOUND COPY, EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED BY THOMAS TAYLOR, Bloomsbury, 1999 image 1
ROWLING (J.K.) Harry Potter & Philosopher's Stone, SPECIALLY BOUND COPY, EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED BY THOMAS TAYLOR, Bloomsbury, 1999 image 2
Lot 175

ROWLING (J.K.)
Harry Potter & Philosopher's Stone, SPECIALLY BOUND COPY, EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED BY THOMAS TAYLOR, Bloomsbury, 1999

15 June 2016, 14:00 BST
London, Knightsbridge

£1,000 - £2,000

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ROWLING (J.K.)

Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone, first printing of the deluxe edition, with full number line from 10 to 1 on copyright page, EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED BY THOMAS TAYLOR, with frontispiece and 11 inserted plates, SPECIALLY BOUND in full blue goatskin by Nesta Rendall Davies, covers and spine dotted with small gold stars surrounding a swirling pattern of green and red calf onlays intertwined with gold thread tipped with a read bead, edges blue, blue goatskin doublures with part of the design repeated, housed in velvet-lined black goatskin-backed cloth box, gilt lettered spine with stars, 8vo, Bloomsbury, 1999

Footnotes

A FINE DESIGNER BINDING BY NESTA RENDALL DAVIES, WITH EXTRA ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE ORIGINAL HARRY POTTER ARTIST. The 12 inserted plates are taken from specially commissioned original watercolours produced in 2001-2002 by Thomas Taylor. They include a frontispiece and a version of the famous cover illustration Taylor supplied for the first edition of The Philosopher's Stone, his first commission and the only Harry Potter illustration he had published. Taylor had attended Norwich School of Art and Anglia Polytechnic University, graduating in 1995 with an illustration degree, but was working in a Cambridge bookshop when Bloomsbury approached him:

Naturally I was quite excited. My first illustration job... There was an incomplete manuscript to read, roughs to do, and then the painting. The final image — a faint pencil sketch, painted with concentrated watercolour (Doc Martins, I think) and then outlined with a black Karisma pencil — took two days, and all things considered I was quite pleased with it. I think I delivered it by hand... It was a bit nerve-wracking, but fortunately — since it was the cover art for a first book by an unknown author — probably no one would notice if I made a mess of it. Thing is though, that author's name was J. K. Rowling. And, er... people did notice (Thomas Taylor website).

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