The Adventure of the Walotsky Portfolio.

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

Sherlock Holmes, A Scandal in Bohemia

The story begins, as so many stories here do, with a blog posting. 

I was looking for a good scan of the cover images from Roger Zelazny's Amber series for a Reading Week posting last year (my copies being much the worse for wear after years of ownership, and as such not the source of choice for scanning).  As part of my search, I discovered that there was an artist's portfolio of the unique cover artwork from the Avon editions of the first five books, a 1,500 copy limited edition portfolio signed and numbered by cover artist Ron Walotsky.

I've always had a strong appreciation for Walotsky's Avon covers, and immediately visited eBay to see if someone had the portfolio up for sale.  To my disappointment (and mild surprise) there was nothing.  I expanded my search to the Internet in general, and although I was able to find one or two references to past sales, there was absolutely no sign of current opportunities to buy the set.

It surprised me that a portfolio of cover images by a relatively unknown artist for a series of genre novels would vanish so completely. You'd think that someone, somewhere, would have one up for sale.

I even stumbled across evidence of a short artist's proof run of 25, again, signed and labelled as such and numbered, but just as absent in terms of availability.

However, the primary attribute of the internet is change.  Things come, things go, and as such, whenever it crossed my mind, I would do a search for the portfolio.

A recent search finally bore fruit, resulting in a hit on eBay - or at least a partial hit, the set being sold only had four of the prints rather than five.

It was unfortunate that one of the prints was missing, but it wasn't hard to imagine someone pulling out a favourite and framing it, this is how life works. Because it wasn't a full set, the price was quite reasonable, and I decided to buy it.

There was just one oddity to the portfolio's provenance - the covering letter was neither signed nor numbered.

I'd seen several examples of the signed letter as part of previous sale postings, so I knew what it should look like. There are no surprises, Walotsky had signed on the line and written in the number of the edition.

How could this partial portfolio exist?  If someone was going to counterfeit an artist's portfolio, they would want to add the signature, not remove it.  And given that even the artist's proofs are numbered, it seems unlikely that Walotsky would just randomly hand out one of the portolios in its blank state.

Sherlock Holmes would undoubtedly want to investigate the evidence before coming up with any premature theories, but in his absence, I'm going to venture my own solution to the mystery.

My theory is that there was an extra proof set at the printing house, possibly discarded due to a flaw in the missing portfolio page, and someone in the production staff simply took it home.  In this scenario, the missing print was never part of the set, and the unsigned partial portfolio was replaced by a full document with a corrected image.

If this was Picasso, the discovery of a partial portfolio that fell outside of the recorded editions would be an epic breaking-news story.  As it is, it's a curiosity more than anything else, just an odd story for a blog posting, written in my own hand in lieu of Doctor Watson's:

Out of all the cases put before my good friend Sherlock Holmes, perhaps the oddest was the mystery of the Walotsky Portfolio. It began on a rainy night when I had returned from my practise to our lodgings at 221B Baker Street, and sat down in front of the glowing screen of my Babbage difference engine to catch up on the events of the day and pursue my interest in items made available through electronic auctions, an activity which had seized the Empire's interest as well in the year of our Lord 1881.

- Sid