Gorey Style

 Vogue recognizes Edward Gorey's unique sense of style and his sartorial influences in this entertaining article.

https://www.vogue.com/article/celebrating-edward-gorey-style-icon?fbclid=IwAR3NisiPAY9-fHJr_Uae3ndBsktKot1OHxZrZGjeXgEtOQRguMsLB3ItoNg

Voyage with a Vampire

 

The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust has been working on expanding their website and a new feature introduced this past week is a Gorey blog. Entries for the blog will be written by different authors on a variety of Gorey related subjects. To kick off this exciting new feature to their website, the Trust invited me to write an entry that would be appropriate for this time of year. The resulting essay, Voyage with a Vampire can be seen here:

 https://edwardgorey.org/2021/10/20/voyage-with-a-vampire?fbclid=IwAR3tX9Vi24B75_1CkmTWLrlhD4jYhiDgKY3R6PYkQ2ro1Y54PvDq1-rs61Y

The Simpsons Go Gorey...Again

 

Every October, The Simpsons produces a Halloween themed program titled Treehouse of Terror that consists of several short horror story segments. This year the have channeled Edward Gorey for The Telltale Bart.

In this segment, a faux Vincent Price is reading Maggie a bedtime story in rhyming couplets ala Edward Gorey extolling Bart's misdeeds during each month of the year. This is not the first time The Simpsons have honored Mr. Gorey with an animated segment - see my post from October 13, 2018 for the Too Short Story. 

 To view The Telltale Bart on YouTube, go HERE.

 

Goreyana's 13th Anniversary

 

2007/08 was a dark time for Edward Gorey collectors. The Gotham Book Mart, the mainline source not only for Gorey books, merchandise and original artwork, but also for information had closed permanently in 2007. Most book dealers would have a few Gorey items in stock, but there was no longer a centralized location for information and collectors were for the most part on their own, clinging to their 1996 copies of Goreyography by Henry Toledano and old catalogs from various book dealers and auction houses for reference. The seminal Elegant Enigmas traveling exhibition would not materialize until 2009, and the only physical location to experience the works of Edward Gorey was The Edward Gorey House in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts.

As a way to re-energize myself and reconnect with my collection, I created this Goreyana blog on October 5, 2008. My intention was to show pieces from my collection, inform interested parties about Gorey happenings, pass along many of the stories that I had gathered over the years and hopefully begin conversations with others interested in Edward Gorey and his works. Thirteen years of diligent posting have not dampened my curiosity and enthusiasm for all things Gorey and I look forward to creating upcoming posts that everyone will find informative and entertaining.

- Irwin Terry

goreyana.blogspot.com

ampootozote@aol.com

Auction News - Graham Gallery Cat

 

Doyle auction house in New York City offered an exceptional pen, ink & watercolor piece of original artwork by Edward Gorey. The colorful 3.5" x 4" image (paper size 8" x 10") features one of Mr. Gorey's signature cats acting like a small child...or an interior decorator. The drawing had a pre-sale estimate of $2000 - $4000 and sold for $9450.00 (including buyer's premium).

This beautifully rendered piece makes superb use of the white space, giving the image a sense of time passing as the industrious cat patiently draws the wallpaper design freestyle. In a sense, this piece could be considered a self portrait of Edward Gorey at his drawing table, endlessly adding detail to his intricate works of art.

This piece was originally created for Edward Gorey's 1974 fine art exhibition at The Graham Gallery and was still in its original gallery framing with the label on the reverse. Mr. Gorey created 46 unique pieces of art for the show and this was piece #33. The art created for the show had several different thematic threads: cats, children, fantastic animals, people doing sports, and china designs. The 15 cat themed pieces from the show are all siblings to the 50 drawings created for the deluxe limited edition of Amphigorey (later presented in book form as Categor y).

To see the other pieces from the 1974 Graham show, see my post: https://goreyana.blogspot.com/2014/02/edward-goreys-1974-graham-gallery.html

 

Gorey Collectors Share

 

Collecting the works of Edward Gorey can be approached from multiple viewpoints. Pick a collecting category: books by Gorey, original artwork, prints, posters, periodicals, books illustrated by Gorey, Anchor covers from the 50's, theater, dance, foreign editions, and the list goes on. Mr. Gorey was so prolific that anyone can easily specialize in one or two areas and always find something fresh to excite them.

Traditionally, collecting has been a solitary endeavor with collectors privately enjoying their treasures while keeping their collections private. There has been a change in the ozone in Goreyland recently. Perhaps it was the pandemic shutdowns that led collectors to begin more openly engaging with other collectors, sharing the pieces they love on Facebook and Instagram. The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust began regularly sharing pieces from the Gorey archives on social media in August 2019. The result of all this activity is that there is more specialized information available to those interested in the works of Edward Gorey than ever before, which is never a bad thing.

To view or contribute to the fun that is Gorey collecting, join Facebook Groups: Edward Gorey and/or Edward Gorey Fans, and follow The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust. A increasing number of collectors have been showing pieces from their collections, which leads to interesting conversational threads.

On Instagram:

edwardgoreytrust - Images from the Edward Gorey Archives are posted regularly, many of which have not been seen before outside of the archive.

toddcamp - Todd Camp posts images and in-depth explanations of pieces from his collection which he has dubbed the Goreyphemera Archive.

edgoreyfashion -An interesting collection of Gorey images paired with real life fashion, past and present.

edward.gorey - Drummond Miles shows off a variety of objects and artworks.

edward.gorey.house - Keep up with the latest happenings in the Gorey world and see images from current exhibitions at The House.

There are, of course other places to find posts and information on the web, but these places are great places to see interesting things.

Response Postcard Original Art

 

Edward Gorey received a fair amount of mail from admirers of his works looking for autographs and asking him with questions in the hopes of getting a personal reply by return post. Mr. Gorey felt an obligation to answer his fan mail but he really didn't have the time or interest to respond with a personal reply to every request. His solution to this mounting challenge was to create a postcard that he could quickly hand sign and mail back. 

The original artwork for this exceptional postcard was recently offered at Swann Auction Galleries in New York City and I was able to add this stunning piece of original artwork to my collection. Drawn on an 11 1/2" x 7 1/4" piece of paper, the image is 6 1/4" x 4 1/4" with crop marks in the margins. 

When creating artwork for a piece that would be reproduced with a full bleed ( the image would extend to the edge of the printed piece with no white margins), Edward Gorey would draw the image slightly larger than the final size and indicate how it was to be cropped. In this instance, the image was drawn 4% larger than the final postcard size of 4" x 6". The mastery and precision of Mr. Gorey's pen strokes is evident at the edges of the drawing. Without inking a border line to contain the image, each pen stroke stops at the precise edge of the drawing field. Since the image was intended to be trimmed, Mr. Gorey could have made the edge of the artwork ragged.

Edward Gorey dated the drawing in typical fashion, with a start and completion date. He must have decided to date the drawing upon finishing it because he doesn't seem to remember the exact day he started this piece of artwork. Dated "? ix 79 . 1 x 79", it is clear that he completed the drawing on October 1, 1979, and had been working on it in September of that year, but did not make a note of the day he began the piece.

I have a postcard in my collection that was signed, addressed and sent by Edward Gorey to a fan in April 1, 1999. Hope the recipient didn't think it was an April Fool's Day joke!!