Arcana:

(VISIONAIRE). Gan, Stephen, James Kaliardos & Cecilia Dean, Editors. New York: Visionaire Publishing, 1996. First Edition 1/2500. 4to. Loose Plates in a Portfolio. Fashion Quarterly. Very Good -/No Jacket - As Issued. Individual illustrated sheets laid into an embossed gold paper-over-boards portfolio, profusely illustrated in monochrome and duotone. Designed by Gregory Foley and Florentino J. Pamintuan. Published in an edition of two thousand, five hundred copies, this is the seventeenth installment of everyone's favorite long-running luxe fashion quarterly, Visionaire. "For some time we had imagined a gilded issue-heavily embellished, incredibly ornate. "Gold" gave us the perfect opportunity to go for baroque. The cover of the issue was hologrammed, embossed, and foil stamped, all on an already solid-gold background. Up until this point, it was one of the most extravagant and delirious issues we had ever created. There were seven pages of Philip Taaffe's gold stars foil stamped onto vellum, which ran an average of a dollar per page - a slight extravagance considering we had at least another fifty pages to fill. Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin's fashion photographs featured gold-foil stamping on top of four-color prints - crazy in theory but even more so in practice, when sometimes the only foil-stamped element was the stud earring in the model's ear! Cecilia tracked down OrigamiUSA, who folded a gold-paper goldfish for each issue, and Todd Oldham contributed actual gilded-metal halos. Such frivolities came thanks to this issue's sponsor, the Japanese department store Beams". A handsome unnumbered hors commerce example of this uncommon issue marked "Display Copy" by the publisher showing a small scrape and a torn corner joint to the gold portfolio along with some light overall wear and handling to the box and contents. It has been priced accordingly. Inventory Number: 018295