Gorey Glasses

In 1988, The Metropolitan Opera created and sold a set of four glasses showing classic opera scenes drawn by Edward Gorey. These generously sized "Double Old Fashion" glasses are frosted and have a nice heft to them. The images are quite wonderful and are full of fantastic details. It is a pity that Mr. Gorey never designed costumes for the Met. The glasses were sold as a set and include:

The Drinking Song

The Vengeance Aria

The Recognition Scene

The Mad Scene

Edward Gorey Mugs

Edward Gorey created several different coffee cup/mug designs. These mugs were sold through catalogs, at theater gift shops, and through The Gotham Book Mart. They can often be found on the secondary market today.

One of the earliest mug designs was made for The Metropolitan Opera and sold through its gift shop. I have seen it made with a band of gold around the upper lip, and plain. I have a plain mug floating around the house somewhere, and will post a photo when I run across it.

The most unusual mugs were the two created for the Signals catalog to advertise Mystery!, the weekly series of classic and modern murder stories. The two designs were made with printing that partially disappeared when the mug was filled with hot liquid, revealing new plot twists. While nice in theory, the mugs never really worked that well, and with repeated use the disappearing ink goes mid-tone grey. I am showing one of these mugs - once again I need to find the second example, but here is one!

There was a second pair of Mystery! mug designs sold through Signals that did not have the disappearing ink.






Mr. Gorey created mugs for theatrical endeavors. The two mugs shown on the right were made for the Cape Playhouse.







A Mug was made for the off-Broadway production of Amphigorey which shows the drop curtain design. Surprisingly, there are no Dracula mugs.

A mug was created for the Funeral Consumers Alliance that featured an image from The Osbick Bird.

The delightful image of Figbash appears on three different mugs. The central mug with the maze is a particular favorite of mine - it reminds me of a giant brain. The Figbash mugs also bring up the question: Is Figbash a single creature, or are there more than one?
The Edward Gorey House has revived the tradition of mugs by Edward Gorey by creating a new line of coffee mugs which are for sale through their gift shop and on line.

Graham Gallery Artwork

In my quest to see and present as many images as possible from Edward Gorey's two Graham Gallery Exhibitions, two more pieces surfaced during the past year. One image is from the 1974 show, while the second was shown at the gallery in 1975 as part of a group exhibition. I am continually impressed by every piece created for these exhibitions, and must admit to getting weak at the knees when I have the good fortune to view them in person.

The 1974 exhibition had 46 pieces of original artwork created by Mr. Gorey specifically for the show (see my posting from June 30, 2009 for the complete list). So far, I have now seen ten of the pieces in person or in print. After a Staffordshire sugarbowl was #14 on the list and is drawn in what appears to be dried blood, but is really just deep red ink. This masterful genre drawing presents a delightful scene with an abundance of birds and animals.

Les Roses bleuatres l'oubliette dans la cuisine was included in the 1975 Graham Gallery show. I have yet to find a checklist of the pieces that were displayed. This stunning piece is reproduced in Looking for Edward Gorey (see my post from December 20, 2011), but was not on display in the exhibition at the University of Hawaii. The cutaway scene includes just about everything anyone could ever hope to see in a piece by Edward Gorey.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Goreyana!

Pepper has asked Santa to bring more Gorey Kitty Dolls for her to play with!

Looking for Edward Gorey

Looking for Edward Gorey, published by the University of Hawaii Art Gallery, 2011, is a companion volume to the September 26 - December 10 exhibition at the gallery. This privately printed book is only available from the University, so to obtain a copy you must contact the gallery, then send off your payment (credit cards are not accepted). This will no doubt become one of the rarer volumes dedicated to Mr. Gorey as time goes by.

The University of Hawaii is the repository of one of the larger collections of Edward Gorey material. The items were donated to the university by John A. Carollo, who continues to enrich his namesake collection. The 2010 exhibition was the second showing of this stellar grouping, and this exhibition was augmented with many items from the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust. The resulting exhibition had a depth of material rarely seen on display.

Looking for Edward Gorey is profusely illustrated with photographs from the exhibition. There are many images showing the gallery installation as well as highlights from the show. At 163 pages, this over sized paperback book consists of an essay about Mr. Gorey and his works by Dr. Joseph Stanton. General topics, major themes and individual books are discussed at length. My main disappointment with the volume is that there is no checklist of the items displayed in the show or in the collection of the University. To better appreciate which items were on display, one must minutely examine the installation photographs and try to make out the displays.

Tuning Fork Auction

The suite of original artwork for the The Tuning Fork by Edward Gorey was withdrawn from the December 13th auction at Sotheby's.

More Tuning Fork

The plot, or soup, thickens around Edward Gorey's original artwork for The Tuning Fork, which is being offered at Sotheby's Auction House next week.

According to Edward Bradford, the official Edward Gorey bibliographer and author of F is for Fantods; Edward Gorey's Fantod Press: A Bibliographical Checklist, the art being offered was most likely the version of The Tuning Fork published in Status Magazine in November 1968 (two other complete books by Edward Gorey also appeared in the magazine in March 1969 & July 1969) under the title - Theoda; A Gothic Tale of the Generation Gap, Alienation and Despair Driving Parents and Children into Monstrous Behavior which Solves Nothing. This is, quite possibly, the most convoluted title to any tale penned by Mr. Gorey.

So the question remains - Why redraw the book? The most reasonable explanation offered by Mr. Bradford is that the original artwork simply was not returned to Mr. Gorey by the magazine, and when EG thought of including this story in Amphigorey Also, the art could not be found. The only option would be to redraw the entire book. This also explains why there were no changes to the story and the illustrations match the originals so well - Mr. Gorey had no choice but to copy his own work from the printed magazine pictures.

It is not as unusual as it sounds for an artist not to get art back from a publisher, especially in the 1960's. It usually fell to the artist or their agent to keep track of such things, and if a significant amount of time had elapsed before anyone thought to get the work back, it could easily be lost.