Alan Bean "Apollo" Deluxe Signed Limited Edition, Leather Bound Collector's Edition w/COA [Sealed]

This edition has been personally signed by astronaut and moon-walker Alan Bean.

Easton Press, Norwalk CT. 1998. Alan Bean "APOLLO: An Eyewitness Account by Astronaut/Explorer Artist/Moonwalker". A hardcover signed limited edition. Full genuine leather. Alan LaVern Bean is a former NASA astronaut and currently a painter. Bean was selected to become an astronaut by NASA in 1963 as part of Astronaut Group 3.

Quarto (9" x 12") printed by The Greenwich Workshop Press for Easton Press and bound in full blue leather with a color pictorial paste-down on the front cover. Profusely illustrated with color reproductions of paintings by astronaut/artist Alan Bean. Includes Certificate of Authenticity from Easton Press, collector's notes, and an extra unattached bookplate for your own personalization. Mint condition in the original shrink-wrap from the publisher.

This deluxe Signed Limited Edition combines a rare personal signature from a moonwalker, high-end publisher craftsmanship, and Alan Bean's unique status as the only professional artist who actually walked on the Moon.

The Astronaut-Artist Connection

Moonwalker Status: Alan Bean was the Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 12, making him the fourth human in history to walk on the lunar surface.

First hand Perspective: The book, Apollo: An Eyewitness Account (co-authored with space historian Andrew Chaikin), features personal narratives and his own fine art capturing the lunar landscape from an unmatched, firsthand viewpoint.

Unique Legacy: Bean left NASA to become a full-time painter, famously incorporating tiny fragments of moon-boot texture and lunar dust from his Apollo training into his canvases, which elevates any associated publication in the fine art and space communities.

Strict Scarcity and Signatures

Limited Print Run: Published in 1998, the Easton Press run was strictly capped at 3,000 individually numbered copies.

Hand-Signed Page: Each collector's copy includes a special tip-in limitation page or pictorial page boldly hand-signed by Alan Bean, often accompanied by a publisher's Certificate of Authenticity (COA).

Deceased Signer: Because Alan Bean passed away in 2018, his signatures are finite, driving up demand and market value among aerospace memorabilia collectors.

Additional Book Information

When NASA sent the crew of Apollo 12 to the moon, they may not have realized that they were giving an artist the vision that would carry him through a lifetime of painting. The artist, of course, was astronaut Alan Bean, whose trip to the moon with pals Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon sunk so deeply into his brain that he's been trying to get it down on canvas ever since. He even mixes moon dust and bits of charred Apollo 12 heat shield into his paints to capture a bit of the Ocean of Storms in each image.

The astronauts Bean paints are brave, exuberant, and all-American, right down to the reflections of Old Glory in their mirrored visors. His moon is surprisingly colorful and dreamlike, a magical place for jumping higher than you ever did before, racing around in the lunar rover, and swatting golf balls into orbit. Apollo: An Eyewitness Account, coauthored with space expert Andrew Chaikin, is filled with Bean's riveting stories and paintings, recording a long, successful career as an explorer-artist. He recreates the drama and brash enthusiasm of the Apollo program in bold strokes.

From Publishers Weekly

With the descent of the lunar lander Intrepid, Apollo 12 astronaut Bean became the fourth man to walk on the moon. Since his retirement from NASA in 1981, Bean has devoted himself to his realist paintings; this handsome volume allows him to display both his artistic skills and his orbital experience, reproducing dozens of Bean's paintings of lunar surfaces, moonwalks, astronaut gear and so on, alongside a blow-by-blow narrative of Apollo 12, which Chaikin (The National Air and Space Museum Book of Aviation and Space Flight) has written very much from Bean's perspective. Chaikin and Bean describe the thrills and setbacks on the latter's path from naval aviator to astronaut, his first view of the blue-and-white Earth from 293,000 miles and the technical problems of making sure an American flag stays up on the moon.

Final chapters track Bean's adventures with the paint and canvas he took up in 1974 ("Flying skills are so much like painting skills, it's amazing"), the exploits and close calls of other astronauts and Bean's hopes for his art and for space exploration. Short paragraphs in which Bean explains his pictures' subjects and techniques alternate with the longer segments of narrative; this format can make the whole book seem scattered, though the images, and the anecdotes, retain undeniable power. The meticulously detailed paintings themselves add warmth and a mid-19th-century softness to the photos and equipment on which many of them are based.

Features

Includes all the classic Easton Press qualities:

* Premium Leather
* Silk Moire Endleaves
* Distinctive Cover Design
* Hubbed Spine, Accented in Real 22KT Gold
* Satin Ribbon Page Marker
* Gilded Page Edges
* Long-lasting, High Quality Acid-neutral Paper
* Smyth-sewn Pages for Strength and Durability
* Beautiful Illustrations