Rustaveli, Shota. The Knight in the Panther's Skin (Vepkhistkaosani). Illustrated by Lado Gudiashvili. Decorative design by G. Ochiauri, 1963. In Georgian.

რუსთაველი, შოთა. ვეფხისტყაოსანი
რედაქტორი შ. ამისულაშვილი. ილუსტრაციები ლადო გუდიაშვილისა. დეკორატიული გაფორმება გ. ოჩიაურისა. ტექსტი დაბეჭდილია 1957 წლის გამოცემის მიხედვით.
თბილისი: საბჭოთა საქართველო, 1963. 328 გვერდი.
მაგარი ყდა, ფორმატი 17 სმ, ტირაჟი 50000 ცალი.
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Rustaveli, Shota. The Knight in the Panther's Skin (Vepkhistkaosani)
Edited by Sh. Amisulashvili. Illustrated by Lado Gudiashvili. Decorative design by G. Ochiauri. The text is printed from the 1957 edition.
Tbilisi: Sabchota Sakartvelo (Soviet Georgia), 1963. 328 pages.
Publisher's hardcover, 17 cm, edition of 50,000 copies.
Owner's marks: stanzas numbered in pencil up to page 36.
Condition: cover good, with small brown spots on the front cover. Text block very good, with slight toning of the paper.

The Knight in the Panther's Skin (Vepkhistkaosani) is the twelfth-century Georgian epic of Shota Rustaveli, composed in the age of Queen Tamar and telling of the knights Avtandil and Tariel and of Tariel's love for Nestan-Darejan. This small-format edition was issued in Tbilisi in 1963 by the state publishing house Sabchota Sakartvelo. The poem is given in Georgian, in the text of the 1957 edition, edited by Sh. Amisulashvili, in an edition of 50,000 copies, which made it widely available to the Georgian reader. What sets it apart from plainer reading copies is its illustration. The line drawings are by Lado Gudiashvili, one of the best known Georgian painters of the twentieth century, and the decorative design is by G. Ochiauri. The cover and title page carry a stylized lettering of the poem's title with a panther, a grapevine and a pomegranate, and a cartouche with a sun and a panther frames the title. Full-page illustrations, among them a palace interior and a sea battle, sit opposite the corresponding quatrains. The text opens with the invocation to God and runs through the whole epic in its traditional rhymed quatrains. For collectors of Georgian literature, Rustaveli editions and Soviet-era book illustration, it is an accessible, attractively decorated printing of the national poem in the language of its author.