Mystery! Original Artwork

In 1985, I purchased my first piece of original Edward Gorey artwork. Within a year, I was able to obtain three pieces of original art by Mr. Gorey. I was unable to add a forth piece of original art to my collection until 1994 because there was so little Gorey art on the market during this time. This was a time before the internet when it was much more difficult to find out what dealers had without a lot of networking and going to book fairs. It wasn't until the mid-90's, when Mr. Gorey needed to finance the extensive maintenance to his home, that he decided to sell a large portion of his original art holdings through Gotham Book Mart.

The piece that started my Gorey art collection was created for Mystery!, but was unused. This is a pen & ink illustration of a skeleton/ghost against an evening sky. A tissue overlay accompanies the piece of art and shows the intended lettering (sketched and written in Mr. Gorey's hand) stating that "Now Appearing on Mystery!" would appear as white lettering against the black sky. The overlay shows the intended cropping of the drawing into a perfect circle (the art bleeds outside the circle). This "button logo" was to have appeared in a corner of the television screen when ads for the program were shown. Like other images Mr. Gorey created for the program, the producers changed their minds and this project was abandoned. This drawing remains a favorite piece in my collection.