VDT Blog – “Donʼt Judge a Book By Its Cover…”

The official Facebook page for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has a new blog up! This blog covers the making of hundreds of books for Coriakin’s library. Here’s an excerpt from the blog talking about the Magic Book of Spells that Lucy looks through.

This handsome prop (although untitled in Lewisʼ chapter, but here called the ʻBook of Incantationsʼ) did not just contain the chapters on the invisibility spell or that of Lucyʼs own beauty as depicted in Lewisʼ novel. Barry and Rebecca confirm that the entire book was illustrated by two members of the art departmentʼs graphics team — Michael Wholley and George Kabot.

What to illustrate? Their designs were guided by chapters written for the book by not only themselves, but Robison and key propmaster Richie Dehne, all under director Michael Aptedʼs guidance who, Cohen reports, “also wrote some spells text for us to use in the book.”

“Michael wanted to stay true to C.S. Lewis’ book of spells,” echoes Robison about their inspiration for the massive and important movie prop. ”I believe the ones Michael really loved were the spells for curing warts, toothaches, snow and, of course, the beauty spell. All of which were accounted for in VDT. We added a few of our own to fill the book out. Michael was so hands on with the artists creating the book. He had definite opinions and desires. The final product was exactly what he wanted. We were all very proud of that singular prop.”

You can read the full blog here.

Thanks to LucyP0104 and Lady Éowyn for the heads-up!