Here's the unedited description from the auction house (retrieved today, Oct 2 2018):
Rare 1963 original ink drawing with added personal photograph on the promotion proof sheet for the first edition of "Where The Wild Things Are", signed and illustrated by Maurice Sendak.
Original colored photograph was taken during The Childrens Book Confrence, University of Utah, Park City, Utah-1960 of Sendak with Morton Schindel (of Western Woods) and possibly Tomi Ungerer.
Original ink sketch and inscription by Sendak of Indian boy with feather inscribed and signed twice by Maurice Sendak.
*Photograph reveals a feather on each of the artist's heads.
The photograph of a young Morton Schindel (Weston Woods). Maurice Sendak and (believed to be) Tomi Ungerer.
Why each figure has a feather standing in their hair is unknown, but mimicked in Sendak's ink drawing of an Indian also with a single feather.
This proof sheet for WILD THINGS comes from the original first printing of the book (1963) as Sendak would have wanted to show off his latest project to Morton Schindel (Weston Woods).
Note the slight off registry along the bottom edge of the Wild Things image which was one of the initial problems Harper & Row had in printing the earliest known copies.
Here's an enlarged look at that end of the framed item:
And here's a blow up of the photo:
Fascinating, isn't it? If a scholar of Sendak's work finds additional information about this, I'd love to see it! What was Sendak thinking? What do you think about it?
