Thomas
Taylor

It all started with… a train

The story has been told many times that Harry’s story started on a train. I’m not only talking about the Hogwarts Express that the young wizard embarks at the beginning of every school year. In fact, the idea of the books first came to J.K. Rowling in 1995 while she was stuck on a train, somewhere between London and Manchester. In a delightful twist of fate, the tale of Thomas Taylor and how he became the very first artist to illustrate the cover of a Harry Potter book also started… on a train. In 1996, just a few months before thousands of readers would become the first out of millions to immerse themselves in the story, 23-year-old Thomas Taylor stepped off a train at King’s Cross station in London. That same station that would become famous all around the world for hiding a little something between its Platforms 9 and 10. Having left art school a year earlier, the young illustrator was then working at a children’s bookshop in Cambridge, opening his eyes on the children’s book market, when he decided to head to the big city and try his luck at finding a publishing house to work with.

Thomas Scamander

Without an agent and very few contacts, he had decided to stop at the offices of Bloomsbury to drop off what he had in his case: a few dragons. Not literally, it was actually a few sketches that he had drawn, including some dragons. A few days later, he received a phone call from publisher Barry Cunningham, the man who became famous in the publishing world as the person who first signed up J.K. Rowling. Thomas Taylor recalled: He said he had seen my samples. He had a book by an unknown author, and would I fancy doing the cover?

Celebratory (Butter)beers

After Thomas Taylor accepted the offer (and treated himself to some nice pens and a bottle of Belgian beer to celebrate this first illustration job), Bloomsbury sent him a printout of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, complete with editors’ notes and revisions, over a year before its publication. He remembers reading it… on the train, immersing himself in the novel, just like J.K. Rowling did a few months before when she imagined the story. Entrusted with the incredible task of visually interpreting the novel, he embarked on what would become one of the most iconic artistic contributions in the publishing history. Back then, when he started working on the book, the brief he received included commission for black and white chapter heading illustrations, which he did a few sketches of, including different characters from the book, but it quickly turned out he would illustrate the cover only.

Journey to Platform 9 3/4

When working on a book cover illustration, it is common for the artist to receive some art direction, regarding elements that should or should not be included on the artwork. This helps the artist work on sketches, sometimes playing with several different ideas, which are shown to an editor, leading to an agreement on what the final design will be. As for the Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone cover illustration, one of the first things to be discussed with Bloomsbury was the scene from the book that was going to appear on the front page. Thomas Taylor was told by the publisher that he was free to explore different scenes, with Bloomsbury suggesting Harry reaching for the Hogwarts Express on Platform 9¾. With this choice came a small challenge for the illustrator. In one of the first rough sketches, Harry can be seen walking towards the Hogwarts Express, facing away from the reader. This choice from the illustrator seemed to raise some eyebrows with Bloomsbury, leading to the final design. In the final illustration, sketched with pencil, painted with concentrated watercolour and outlined with a black Karisma pencil, a young Harry Potter, wearing his famous circled glasses and a red and yellow scarf, is standing on Platform 9¾. Behind him, there’s a big red steam train with Hogwarts Express written on the front. All around, purple smoke and yellow stars give a whimsical tone to the drawing. It took Thomas Taylor two days to complete the illustration. Happy with the result, he went back to London’s Bloomsbury offices, and delivered the drawing by hand. Looking back at the cover illustration today, Thomas Taylor expressed how he feels like the choice of the train station can be a little weird. I probably wouldn’t paint the interior of a London railway station in order to illustrate, you know, Harry Potter. And also the way he’s dressed. He’d been described as wearing hand-me-down clothes, and he’s about to go off to become transformed into a wizard, but now I would probably use artistic licence to dress him more fabulously. I would fill the page with magic. A good cover should tell you what it will feel like to read a book. I’m not sure that’s quite how the Harry Potter story feels. Bloomsbury’s first plan was to use the illustration on the whole front page of the book, with the title of the book filling the smoke on the very top of the illustration. However, this choice ultimately changed, as Bloomsbury took the decision to add the title on a red background, hiding the upper part of the drawing. On top of that, Platform 10, which can be seen on Thomas Taylor’s drawing, was kept off the final cover of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

The Mysterious Wizard

The 1997 edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was illustrated by Thomas Taylor to have a mysterious wizard on the back, wearing a purple hat, striped trousers and smoking a pipe. The mysterious wizard was carrying an old book, while some object seemed to be filling his cloak's pocket. While many fans assumed this was young version of Professor Albus Dumbledore, some other fans thinking it might be Professor Quirrell or Nicolas Flamel with the Philosopher’s Stone in his pocket, Taylor later admitted that this miscellaneous wizard is actually based off his father, Robert Taylor: Well, though I’m afraid it’s rather dull, here’s the real explanation: when I was commissioned by Barry Cunningham to produce the cover art for a debut middle grade novel by an unknown author called J.K. Rowling — and yes, I did read it — I was asked to provide “a wizard to decorate the back cover”. So I did. The books are full of magical characters and sorcerers, so it wasn’t difficult to conjure up one of my own. It never even crossed my mind to depict Dumbledore.

In the pocket

As for what was mysteriously filling the Mysterious Wizard’s pocket, the illustrator explained that it might be something as random as a hedgehog, though it is impossible to remember now what went through his mind 25 years ago back when he was asked to illustrate what no one would have expected to become one of the most famous books in history.

Albus the Hobbit

Later on, the mysterious wizard ended up being replaced with a full silhouette of Albus Dumbledore, a Deluminator in his left hand. The reason behind this change is that with Harry Potter becoming a phenomenon, Bloomsbury had to face a growing number of phone calls, letters and emails from fans asking about the Mysterious Wizard. A little Easter egg is not-so-hidden on this illustration of Albus Dumbledore, with a hint to another famous book series: the runic letters on his cloak, inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, spell the wizard’s name.

The Fame and the Phenomenon

One thing that made Thomas Taylor’s experience with drawing Harry completely different from all the other illustrators that would follow is the complete absence of pressure of producing the cover illustration for the book. At the time, none of the Harry Potter books had ever been published yet, and J.K. Rowling was still completely unknown, and so was he. He remembers some of the strange situations that happened when the book came out and he was still working at the children’s bookshop. While all his colleagues knew about his work on the cover of the book, none of the customers were aware of it. Some of his coworkers couldn’t restrain from telling the customers, who reacted very confused and suspicious when told the news that the guy at the counter was the one who drew Harry’s face on the cover. But just like Harry Potter rose to fame, and J.K. Rowling too, once the Harry Potter fever started becoming a national then a global phenomenon, the press ended up taking an interest in him too. Probably pretty desperate for something to write about that would be related to the Harry Potter phenomenon, one man once called to say that he had stumbled upon an early sketch from Thomas Taylor on which Harry’s bolt scar wasn’t there. One day, a journalist from Canada called at Thomas Taylor’s house and started an interview on the go, asking about the cover illustration. When asked about his inspiration, Thomas started talking about how Harry was “more or less” based on a real person, as he felt this answer was more interesting than “I just read the book’s descriptions”. Scared that the journalist would end up trying to send a photographer to someone’s house to reveal the secret to them and make a newspaper article out of it, he ended up quickly finishing the conversation. One regret from his Harry Potter experience is that he didn’t buy any of the ten first print copies of the book that were available at the bookshop where he worked. Part of it is because he was expected to be sent a signed copy from Bloomsbury, which happened to never arrive… Though this fame wasn’t so bad to handle for Thomas Taylor, who even feels very proud of this connection with the Harry Potter books, he likes for people to keep in mind that one book cover does not make a career. This image has long been something for me to live down as much as it is something to be proud of, and the idea that it might be the crowning glory of my working life (hinted at by some, even now) is not appealing. How can it be when it was my first ever professional commission? After his Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone experience, Thomas Taylor recalls it opened some doors, even though not always the right ones. Indeed, some people might have been just trying to hire him just to associate the words ‘Harry Potter’ with whatever projects they were working on. He ended up meeting J.K. Rowling years after he had illustrated the cover of the first book, when she came to sign books in the bookshop where he was working. She knew who he was, and they had a quick chat, though not about Harry Potter at all, mostly about gardening. When asked which other Harry Potter book he would have liked to draw the cover of, Thomas Taylor said it would be Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, as it has some lovely imagery.

Drawing for Charity

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25 years of Harry Potter magic