Each plate is numbered and signed by Baskin. Bound by Gray Parrot with marbled covers.

Nevertheless, as explained in the letter quoted below, this edition has a complete hand coloured suite of the plates laid in a chemise and placed in a drop-back box.

The provenance of this copy is from Colin Franklin's to Joshua Heller to Diane Blumberg (in 1991) and back to Joshua Heller to Jack Ginsberg (in 2008).

A copy of the letter from Colin Franklin dated 29 April 1991 to Joshua Heller is included and a compliment slip from Joshua Heller to Diane Blumberg is attached: "Colin Franklin has kindly faxed me a letter of explanation how your special copy of Baskin's Icones has come about. I hope that his warm and complete explanation will be a nice enhancement to be laid into your copy of this marvelous work. With kind regards and thanks, Josh."

The typed letter on his letterhead from Colin Franklin to Johua Heller:

29 April 1991

Dear Jos,

You asked for an explanation of the way in which my copy of the Icones was 'special'. That I cn very easily provide.

Leonar Baskin and I are old friends; he was the greatest influence in my book life, from the time we first met, several years before I became a bookseller, through a memorable night at his home in Northampton Massachusetts when he as Professor of Art at Smith College. He and I understand the need for special copies, which is largely a French habit. Whenever I have bought his books, he has made them very special indeed! Thus I have in my possession several of his large and splendid Cave Birds, 'additionally adorned' (to quote his own phrase) by him with water-colour drawings, and by Ted Hughes with new manuscript poems. I have a copy of his Mokomaki, with extra suites including one printed on vellum - certainly not allowed for in the colophon. The custom I lean from French bibliophiles over the last century and more is that the colophon forms only part of the story: French collectors have always liked their copies to be unusual or unique in whatever way could be managed. Thus they would be bound with correspondence from the author or illustrator, with a few rejected proofs, with sketches and scribbles, matter of that sort.

The particular copy of Icones which you had from me was created by private arrangement with Leonard Baskin, and he made a complete additional suite for me with hand-colouring, very interesting and attractive to compare with the book itself as published. This was prepared in sewn sheets, and the whole ensemble boxed by his binder Gray Parrot. I was very satisfied with the way he had prepared it and no additional attention was needed from any binder or box maker here.

Leonard Baskin invited me, as I think you know, to write a long essay for the Catalogue of his Retrospective Exhibition which is to tour various centres in the United States from next February. I wrote about 8,000 words, staying in his house for a fortnight last year in order to do so and mentioned in the course of that essay that the Icones was welcomed immediately upon publication, as his masterpiece. I think that if someone has chosen to possess this in his library, he will own a very fine object indeed.

Best wishes,

Yours,