This Diamond-Encrusted, First-Edition Copy of 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' Is Going for $1.5 Million USD
At the ABAA New York International Antiquarian Book Fair this week.
Inside the 64th annual ABAA New York International Antiquarian Book Fair (NYIABF) at the Park Avenue Armory, one of the world’s “leading gatherings of the rare book tribe,” a signed, first-edition copy of Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, encrusted with 1,000 white diamonds and handworked in goatskin, sits pretty in a boxed birdcage. The rebound book, crafted by English bookbinder Kate Holland to honor the centenary of Capote’s birth, is filled with rarely-seen photomontages by Davide Attie — and it has a double-take-worthy price tag of $1.5 million USD,
“I have loved this story for decades, and I wanted to create a really special custom binding of a first edition copy,” Paul Suntup, who worked on the project and specializes in rebinding first-edition books for Dragon Rebound, told Forbes. “At the heart of the project is the desire to honor the work, and at the same time, to put the spotlight on the craft of contemporary fine bookbinding.”
The book, published in 1958, follows New York socialite Holly Golightly as she navigates 1950s Manhattan on the hunt for a rich, older man. Attie’s novella-inspired images, which were deemed too provocative to run in Harper’s Bazaar at the time of publishing, appear in Holland’s copy in their entirety.
“When you say you’re a bookbinder, people think you’re doing the very sort of traditional, Victorian British gentleman’s library look,” Holland told Vogue. “But the purpose of this project really is to get contemporary bookbinding out there as something that you can commission, collect, enjoy.”
See the rare first-edition copy of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, on view at the NYIABF through April 7, in the gallery above.
