Book-cover illustrator Takashi Kitami brings gold- and silver-leaf prints to Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi
Illustrator Takashi Kitami, whose work has appeared on more than 1,000 book covers, is selling new gold- and silver-leaf giclée prints at Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi through 29 September, with the artist himself due to appear in store.
Art Print Japan Co., Ltd. is selling new gold- and silver-leaf giclée prints by illustrator Takashi Kitami at Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi's sixth-floor Art Frame & Solutions section from 9 to 29 September (the final day closes at 5pm), according to the company's own announcement. The prints use gold-leaf and silver-powder techniques and are priced from ¥121,000 to ¥143,000, and Kitami is scheduled to appear in the store during the run.
Kitami, a 1976 graduate of Musashino Art University, has illustrated more than 1,000 book covers and jackets over his career, including for novelists Jiro Akagawa (on the long-running Mikeneko Holmes mystery series), Riku Onda, Yasumi Tsuhara and Mitsuki Tsujimura, and has received Japan's Sanrio Art Award (1988) and the Bratislava Illustrations Biennial's Golden Apple prize (1997), according to the release; his new works carry the fantasy-inflected motifs (stars, moons, unicorns) that have become his signature.
Pairing the sale with an in-store appearance is the more valuable half of the bet: for a book-jacket artist whose name readers know from a spine rather than a byline, meeting buyers in person is what converts recognition of the work into willingness to pay six figures for a framed print of it.