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Designed and Hand-Made by Prince, Emancipation-Era CD package with Accompanying CD of Songs

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:12,000.00 - 14,000.00 USD
Designed and Hand-Made by Prince, Emancipation-Era CD package with Accompanying CD of Songs

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Auction Date:2018 Feb 15 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
One-of-a-kind full package CD mockup artwork dating from the Emancipation era, designed, hand-made—drawn, written and glued together—by Prince and presented as a gift to Michael Van Huffel, the in-house artist/art director at the time at Paisley Park. The full package consists of a CD jewel case and the accompanying mockup inserts. The front cover depicts colorful digital artwork of Prince with his wrists shackled, and the word ‘Emancipation’ spelled backwards and descending from clouds broken by the sun; affixed to the lower right is a large cutout hand in beckoning motion, and both the symbol on the shaved side of Prince's head and word “slave” on his cheek annotated in red ink; the reverse of the front cover bears an affixed circular close-up image of Prince’s mouth, with an array of hand-drawn intricate ink and felt tip designs and patterns filled in and decorating the open edges. The artwork for the inner tray consists of a magazine image of the sun concealed by clouds over the ocean, as well as various other magazine clippings with matching color pattern; and the back cover design is a clipped color image of Prince’s iconic symbol, with “NPG Records” and “Unfinished Demos, 1995 NPG Music Publishing” labels affixed to lower right corner; Prince has added a copyright notice, the album title, and an early configuration for the 10-song track listing in black ink, which originally lists the song ‘Slave’ as ‘Slowly Candle Burns.’ In fine condition. From the collection of artist/art director Michael Van Huffel and accompanied by a letter of provenance.

An award-winning designer, creative director, and motion design specialist, Michael Van Huffel designed advertisements and album artwork for the Paisley Park and NPG Records art department. According to Van Huffel, the Emancipation artwork was presented to him by Prince’s future wife Mayte Garcia, who simply said, ‘He wants you to have this.’ Believing it to be a conceptual guideline for an upcoming project, Van Huffel called Prince’s assistant Therese Stoulil. She confirmed that Prince had ‘sent an assistant out at night for markers and glue, and cut up a bunch of really expensive coffee-table photo books,’ and that the CD was, in fact, a present. Prince himself allayed any lingering doubts when he arrived in Van Huffel’s office, calmly and tersely stating: ‘It’s for you.’ (The story behind this item is featured in the bestselling book Prince: Stories from the Purple Underground). Although the original ‘Fall 1995’ configuration of the songs Prince included with the full package is not present, Van Huffel has supplanted it with his own transferred CD-R copy—a tracklist and mixes immensely unique in their own right. A tremendously desirable piece of original Prince artwork relating to his landmark Emancipation album, a recording that represents Prince’s long sought-after release from his nearly two-decade-long contract with Warner Bros. Records.