A Visit to the Edward Gorey House Continued

My visit to the Edward Gorey House in October was full of pleasant surprises. One room at the far back of the house had several very interesting displays, including the puppets shown in my previous post and materials relating to the animated sequence for Mystery!. This room also contains a display of hand made stuffed creatures. The case displays the popular Figbash dolls along with other rare pieces sewn by Mr. Gorey. A pile of frogs (with different styles of feet) are joined by a rabbit, elephant, and dragon-like creature. Of particular interest is the cat - a first glance it looks like one of the printed Toy Works cats, but it is actually a hand painted version.

In their goal to display as many interesting things as possible, the room also houses a wall of illustrated books that you can look through. Part of this display is a xerox facsimile or one of Mr. Gorey's sketchbooks containing sketches for the Nantucket and Broadway productions of Dracula. I was delighted to find a page showing his sketch for the iconic poster created for the Broadway production.

Even more of a surprise was to find a page showing the original sketch for the Dracula proscenium and drop curtain used in Nantucket. The finished artwork for the proscenium is in my collection, so it was a thrill to see the sketch. All of the elements in the final artwork are present in the sketch. When the production transferred to Broadway, Mr. Gorey redesigned the proscenium and drop curtain. One can assume that the crossing out on the sketch was done as he went through his idea book and was deciding what to keep and what to re-imagine.