Mike and the Modelmakers. Edition Ex Libris No. 14.

Cologne.: Salon Verlag., 2008. Box (30.4 x 22 cm).. pp. (42). Rachel Whiteread was invited, for this edition, to select a book of special importance to her, for which she then designs a new dust-jacket, and presents it under her own name as a 'Reprint'. In this case the artist has chosen 'Mike and the Modelmakers' by M. Sasek, originally published in 1970. The London studio of Whiteread lay opposite the company Lesney, who during the 1970's was the toy manufacturer of the Matchbox car. Whiteread's dust-jacket is a photographic illustration of the Lesney factory. The book is still in its original shrinkwrap. Issued loose with the book is Whiteread's ex-libris bookplate (flat-packed colour printed cardboard box for the matchbox cement-mixer), designed to be detached and pasted into the book. This is one of 40 deluxe copies, with a solid lead cast of the cement-mixer, stamp-numbered and initialled on its base. This model is wrapped in a small protective woolen blanket which has a stitched label carrying the same numbering. The aforementioned flattened bookplate is also signed in pen by Whiteread and numbered from the edition of 40. Together presented in the publisher’s orange solander drop-back box.