Today marks the start of the 64th annual ABAA New York International Antiquarian Book Fair, and while many sought-after collectibles will be showcased at the four-day expo, only one volume really doubles down on the concept of literary treasure: A signed first-edition copy of Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s has been rebound to feature one thousand white diamonds—totaling nearly 30 carats—and one showstopping two-carat emerald-cut sapphire in the shade of, well, Tiffany blue.
On view at the Park Avenue Armory, the book’s design was conceived by Somerset, England–based bookbinder Kate Holland, who has earned prestige status in her niche field as a fellow of Designer Bookbinders and a regular binder to winners of the Booker Prize.
Holland’s geometric creation was no ode to Audrey Hepburn. “I really wanted to avoid the silhouette with the cigarette holder, which seems to be on the front of every poster and paperback,” she says. “I wanted to steer away from the film and very much go back to the original text, which struck me as a love letter to New York.”
The novella, published in October of 1958, follows party-girl protagonist Holly Golightly as she wends her way through ’50s New York, living paycheck to paycheck—which is to say, on money given to her by the “super rat” men she spends time with. Blake Edwards’s 1961 film adaptation—a romantic drama starring starring Hepburn—deviates rather considerably from Capote’s gorgeously gruff prose.
“For us here [in Somerset], we have this idea that the streets of London are paved with gold, but for Holly, the streets of New York were set with diamonds—that was my jumping-off point,” she says. Etched into the book’s jet black cover is a grid evoking Upper Manhattan, a few of its streets embedded with silver bands of pavé-set diamonds sourced by London jewelers Bentley Skinner. (The Art Deco motifs of Tiffany Co.’s Fifth Avenue flagship were another inspiration.) Meanwhile, the spine of the book reveals a flash of silver foil lettering, and the pages gleam with silver gilt edges.
But wait, there’s more! Such a book needs a way to be displayed—especially given its $1.5 million price tag. For that, Holland continued to mine Capote’s words for inspiration. “I thought, Well, what you really need is a birdcage,” she says, “because there’s a birdcage in the book that’s a metaphor for female emancipation, sexual freedom, and escaping domesticity.” The idea was sparked in conversation with the book’s current owner, Paul Suntup of Dragon Rebound Editions, who had originally sought Holland out to mark the centennial of Capote’s birth. (The author—recently portrayed in Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Capote vs. The Swans—was born on September 30, 1924.)
Holland would enlist artisan Jade Pinnell to produce a glass plinth for the book to rest upon within its birdcage crafted by Dom Parish. (When I speak to Holland, she’s just booked a first-class ticket for the birdcage to travel with her to New York for the fair.) Parish would also make a trunk to be sold alongside the book.
Between its covers await more treasures: This copy of Breakfast at Tiffany’s includes rarely seen photomontages created by David Attie, a protégé of Alexey Brodovitch (the renowned art director of Harper’s Bazaar from 1934 to 1958), in 1956. Deemed too racy for Bazaar in the buttoned-up 1950s, Attie’s evocative and layered prints never ran; only one was later published in Esquire. Now, prints of the complete set will come with Holland’s book. (Pictured in one image? A nude woman viewed through the attenuated bars of—yes—a birdcage.)
It all makes for a supremely luxurious literary experience—something that more and more people are looking for, Holland suggests.
“There’s a golden age that we’re entering for the book,” she says, “I like to think that William Morris led the Arts and Crafts movement against the Industrial Revolution, and now there’s very much a revolution with the craft movement—the antithesis of the digital revolution. People want a relationship with the person who’s made it, to see their fingerprints on it…but hopefully not too many fingerprints.”
As for who will end up with her latest project, Holland can’t be sure—but she’d like to see it in an Art Deco apartment in New York, even if it’s only photographed there. She does cite one burgeoning community, however, that could produce a buyer: “People who are in tech are really interested in books—the best kinds of books that you can buy,” she says. The irony isn’t lost on her for a moment. “You’d imagine the tech industry would want to have the newest gadget, but actually they want the finest books.” (It’s no coincidence that another of the world’s preeminent book-arts fairs takes place in San Francisco.)
It’s also not lost on Holland that Capote’s story is easily accessible to its many fans via Kindle or library book. Her idea, though, is to make an object that could seem ubiquitous feel interesting and special again. “When you say you’re a bookbinder, people think you’re doing the very sort of traditional, Victorian British gentleman’s library look,” she says. “But the purpose of this project really is to get contemporary bookbinding out there as something that you can commission, collect, enjoy.”
