Original Illustrations of Charlotte's Web

The original illustrations of the classic children's book Charlotte's Web was seen by no one, until now. The book's illustrator Garth Williams kept most of his illustrations for his own, personal collection. When Williams first starting doing illustrations in the 1940s, he would send the original drawings to the publisher, they would get used and then sent back. He kept his returned art during his lifetime. After his death, the family carefully preserved his oeuvre, securing it in a bank vault.
Now the Williams estate is making the art available to collectors for the first time. On Oct 15, 42 of the original Garth Williams illustrations for Charlotte’s Web were put up at a New York auction. All of them were sold off fetching a combined total of $780,245.
Published in 1952, Charlotte’s Web was named the best-selling children’s paperback of all time by Publisher’s Weekly in 2000. Few children’s books have had as much of an impact on pop culture as much as E.B. White’s 1952 book Charlotte’s Web, featuring Williams’ sublime drawings of Wilbur the pig, Fern, the young girl who loves him and one very clever spider named Charlotte who saves him from slaughter.

The Cover Page: the original graphite-and-ink drawing of Charlotte holding Wilbur made by Garth Williams in 1952 was sold for $155,350, more than six times the pre-sale estimate of $20,000 to $30,000. "For it to break $150,000 is breathtaking. It just shows how universally beloved this book and this art really are," said Barry Sandoval of Heritage Auctions.

Portraits of the Mind: Brain Cells Under Microscope

Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century By Carl Schoonover is a book that is to be released on November 1. Portraits of the Mind follows the fascinating history of our exploration of the brain through images, from medieval sketches and 19th-century drawings by the founder of modern neuroscience to images produced using state-of-the-art techniques, allowing us to see the fantastic networks in the brain as never before.
Below is a small preview from the upcoming book.

Photomicrograph of a neuron’s cell body (top, center) and its dendrites radiating out of it, obtained with a scanning electron microscope.

The 13 Most Expensive Celebrity Photos Ever

This is a list of the most expensive celebrity photographs. Over the years magazines have been paying and willing to pay an exorbitant amount for exclusivity to celebrity photos, be they weddings, births, or just everyday photos. The public's desire to see and hear everything within the celebrity's world has driven this quest.
This Forbes' list has surveyed the top-priced photos sales in the United States for the past 10 years and came up with what they feel is the 13 most expensive celebrity photos (magazine note: estimates are not adjusted for inflation).

1. Baby photos of Knox and Vivienne with mother, Angelina Jolie & father, Brad Pitt

People Magazine and Hello! Magazine
July 2008
Purported Price Tag: $14 million