How much would you be willing to spend on a platinum ring? And how much would you sell it for, if it’s the one you wear on your ring finger…?” So went an ad for platinum jewellery, almost a decade ago. The tagline was something like this: the most precious things in life don’t come with price tags attached.
If you are one of those obsessed with books, you might want to re-interpret the ad: how much would you be willing to spend on a book that contains rare pieces of poetry and art? And for how much would you sell that book for if it’s signed by the artist you’d die for…?
Probably, the ad was right. The best things in life can’t really be valued by bar codes. Nevertheless, they do come with price tags—and no mean ones at that. Rare books, like any other sacrosanct object of art, come with their own little haloes and, sometimes, with their own not-so-little stands, too.
Hold your breath—Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Through The last Himalayan Kingdom, which holds the world record for being the largest book at 5 ft x 7 ft, weighs 150 pounds and was priced at $15,000 (Rs 7 lakh) and had a limited run of 100 copies. Interestingly, it was only offered to donors who made a tax-deductible gift to support education in the world’s special places, and was produced on demand for each of them.
The book—if that’s what this monumental work of art can be called—contains arresting pictures of Bhutan and comes with its own custom-built aluminium stand.
The publisher of the book is a non-profit educational charity called Friendly Planet, founded by Hawley, to support educational efforts in Bhutan and Cambodia.
“The King of Bhutan has seen it. I personally gave him a copy of the small edition,” Hawley says. “There are at least three big copies in Bhutan, one in the National Library, one at Sherubtse College, among others. It is a well-known project,” he adds. Though not for sale now, you can buy smaller editions and ‘read’ versions on Amazon.com.
However, if you do want to buy a rare book—with a stand, too—you need not go very far. Timeless—The Art Book Studio, at South Extension in New Delhi, proudly displays Modern Art—Revolution and Painting, a “wooden hardback covered in pale leather, hand finished and punched warm with silver” that measures a little over 100cm x 70cm when open, and weighs 32 kg. Sitting grandly on its own book-rest made of lacquered wood, it would surely dazzle you. And not just because it’s priced at a cool Rs 4.5 lakh.
The book, published by Art Media Italia in 2002, describes its own purpose to be the presentation of a “virtual art gallery” analysing modern art through the cultural and political revolutions of two centuries, “that changed mankind’s position in the world and consequently also its vision of art.”
Raavi Sabharwal, the owner of the store, tells you how he got 12 copies, out of 1,000 that have been published. He has sold five.
“I was at the Frankfurt book fair in Germany in 2009, when I first saw it. As I requested to meet the publisher, the organiser pointed a finger over my back and said ‘there he comes,’” recounts Sabharwal. “When I turned, I came face to face with the man and asked him how many copies were left. He said he had 12. I offered to buy all of those. Hearing this, the man turned to his companions and exclaimed, ‘see, you thought I was crazy!’”
Sabharwal has other such tales to tell, but he cannot divulge the names of the buyers. “People who buy such books are art lovers and book lovers. They could also be collectors. One man who bought this took it as a gift for his friend who is an artist,” he says.
There are several factors that make these books command the handsome amounts they do. “First, they are limited edition books. That alone makes them much pricier,” says Sabharwal.
“Then there is the size of these works, the quality of their prints and pages, and of course, their value as an object of rare beauty,” he adds.
Anuj Bahri Malhotra, CEO or Delhi’s most famous bookstore, Bahrisons Booksellers, has an important point to make. “You really cannot say what it is that makes a book expensive, or even which book is the most expensive of all. For instance, if a book is out of print, and I am willing to pay any amount to get it, how expensive does that make it?” Which means, ultimately, that it’s the precious factor, that human longing for all things beautiful and rare, which comes into play here.
To behold other such royalty, you can go to the Vadehra Art Gallery bookstore in Defence Colony. It houses some enchanting volumes of MF Husain’s reproductions, with prices ranging from Rs 25,000 toRs 45,000. The former is for Poetry To Be Seen, a 2-ft- high treasure trove of charcoal paintings by Hussain, accompanied by poetry that interprets them, or vice versa. As you turn the cover, you come face to face with a homage by Mulk Raj Anand: “Let the ‘poetry to be seen’ and the ‘poetry to be read’ here excite the imagination of those who have so far looked but not seen.”
Pradeep, store manager of the Vadehra book store, informs that in the past six months, they have sold two copies of this limited edition book (100 copies) published by Cinema Ghar, ‘Museum of Art and Cinema’, Hyderabad, in 2006. The last page of the book leads to this description: each sheet is hand-printed with silk screens and signed by Husain.Then there is Husain for Rs 30,000, a first edition publication by Tata Steel, also a reproduction of his works — designed, conceived and with a foreword by the maestro himself — handwritten, signed Bombay, 1981.
The foreword describes the journey of art from the caveman’s abode to the briefcase of the multinational conglomerate… “Poor ‘MONA LISA’ once abducted from Italy by the/ French general is now being raped at every/ street corner. Growth of ‘art consciousness’ galore…”Interestingly, the book has, on its back cover, a postscript, again handwritten, declaring “any resemblance to any of my paintings in this book is coincidental,” because “reproduction is not a true replica of the original.” Therefore, the book is “a joint effort of printer and painter”.
There are other books, such as those published by Timeless, priced at pretty much the higher end of the spectrum. Panorama of India and Ladakh, priced at Rs 30,000 each, and a book in the pipeline, titled Taj Mahal, with photographs by Raghu Rai and text by Usha Rai, to be priced at about Rs 25,000 when published.With this book, says Sabharwal, “you would be able to take the Taj with you.” Flipping through the book is a visual delight. Instead of the usual pictures, you have distant views of the Taj with people’s experiences of it. One, for instance, shows tourists at the Agra Fort gazing happily into their digital cameras after having taken a picture of the Monument of Love. Another, a very old one, has a steam engine chugging away with the Taj in the background…
But we have only been talking about contemporary books here. If you want real literary-artistic opulence, then you need to head towards the antiques section. First- edition works such as The Gutenberg Bible—the first book printed with moveable type or the Codex Leicester—a 72- page notebook containing the scientific writings and sketches of Leonardo da Vinci, belong to the category that are not really sold; they go under the hammer. The list includes Birds of America by John James Audobon that has life- size sketches of birds, and measures 3 ft x 2 ft.
The Codex was purchased by Bill Gates in 1994 in an auction. Handwritten by Leonardo in his characteristic mirror-writing, the book is put on public display once a year in a different city around the world.Birds of America, The Codex Leicester and The Gutenberg Bible have been bought at $11 million, $30.8 million and $35 million, respectively. Now, that’s definitely something to be said for the most precious things and their price tags.
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