View Full Version : Edward Gorey's Fantod Deck
I was just thinking today that an Edward Gorey deck would be interesting, and then I saw one on E-Bay. This is a limited edition deck that is incredibly expensive ( and seems to be truly "rare") So out of interest I did a search and found this really creepy but fun website. You'll enjoy it if you are an Edward Gorey fan.
www.phobos-deimos.com/Edward_Gorey/Main/Edward_Gorey.htm
Does anyone actually have this deck? Ruby7
p.s. hope the link works, I'm not too computer literate
Wow. So this is what total, abject tarot lust feels like.
"...to be able to move from total ignorance of something to total desire for it, and then actually to own the thing all within the space of about forty seconds was, for Dirk, something of an epiphany." -- Douglas Adams, 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.
Except, of course, that I don't think this is in my price range. Or even in the same state as my price range. So the 'owning the thing' part of the quote is, alas, destined to remain inaccurate.
CompassRose
05-06-2003, 01:29
There's an... Edward ... Gorey... deck?????
!!!!
Oh, my. I know what I want for my Winter Holiday Gift now.
How could I not have known this?
Probably a good thing I didn't, on the whole.
(How expensive, she wonders, off to look.)
I found it on ebay. It looked like, at over $150, it still hadn't met the seller's reserve price, but he'd be willing to sell it now for...
$560.
$560!
For a deck of cards!
:eek!:
Makes me wish we had that animated jaw-dropping smiley, because 'eek!' just doesn't express my emotion completely.
Sobeknofret
05-06-2003, 09:53
<whimper> I wanna Gorey deck... <whimper>
$560?!?!
Holy cow, I can buy most of a plane ticket to London for $560!
I think I'll save my money...despite the total tarot lust I've got going also.
$560? That's nothing...recently I was handling a deck with my usual flippant grace and I looked at the price tag…it had four digits to the left of the decimal place…
I was less flippant as I returned the deck to the box.
Then I heard the words, “limited edition, hand colored…”
Oh my…
Cerulean
05-06-2003, 11:16
...you had a collection of Edward Gorey art...would any of them be like the majors or minor suits?
I had a Dover collection of Dore's Dante Algheri engravings and chose them for...I think either Wands or Swords, haven't quite got it all figured out. I have period engravings of the Romance of the Rose calendar -- so I haunt old bookstores for old calendar images. Picked up great deals on Visconti Sforza, Romance of the Rose, Leonardo and Michaelangelo and other/Renaissance/romantic art images...
It helps your cravings a bit to have a sampler and sometimes help your creative yearnings as well...and adds to your definition of 'tarot archetypes in your head'.
Best,
Mari H.
HudsonGray
05-06-2003, 15:01
Aww.............Well, found out why it's not online anymore (damn!). Looks like he never did the deck, a fan did. It's a copyright problem with the fan, the dead artist & his lawyers.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
''Another vast wasteland''
Date: Friday, August 16, 2002 @ 00:01:21 CDT
Topic: Guest Editorial
By Matt Osborne
YellowTimes.org Guest Columnist (United States)
(YellowTimes.org) – I happen to be a big fan of Edward Gorey's madcap art - swooning Victorians, dark and malevolent landscapes made with severe ink crosshatchings, and mysterious penguin-shaped creatures that arrive at parlor doors and never leave. (If you've ever watched the opening and closing credits on PBS's "Mystery!" then you've seen his work.) When he died a couple of years ago I was crushed - and I turned to the Internet.
There are those minor events in every age - lost in the daily news grind of suicide bombings, stock market roller coaster rides, and celebrity marriages - that eventually burn through to our conscious mind. Nobody was thinking of Osama bin Laden on September 10th. This is about another seemingly minor problem: Who Owns What in the Internet age.
You see, Gorey's works are hard to find in Alabama - as you might imagine. My collection is meager. But surely there was information out there - right? Heck, just plug "Brady Bunch" into your search engine and watch eight million hits roll in. But you will find precious little of Edward Gorey on the Internet.
Why? Well, look at what happened to chokingpear.com, a unique little site devoted to one Philadelphia-area woman's personal obsessions. I found a complete Edward Gorey Fantod deck on her page that even had definitions of his obscure vocabulary. "Wow!" I thought, "this lady's page rocks!" I have corresponded with her ever since - she's a sweetheart.
But even then, I found a dozen sites with apologies: "Sorry, Edward Gorey's lawyers have forced the shutdown of this page." Last week they caught up to chokingpear.com, informing her that she would have to discontinue or alter the deck in such a way as to make it completely worthless.
Somehow, I doubt that either Edward Gorey or his publisher will gain anything from shutting down chokingpear.com and its ilk. In fact, over the long run, their actions threaten to push the under-appreciated artist's body of work into complete obscurity.
Without any way of discovering Edward's unique style, how will future generations even know about him? And if they don't know about him, they certainly won't buy his books! The publisher loses, the artist loses, and we all lose. Granted, his work is an acquired taste, but so is Moby's.
That's really interesting Hudson Grey. I saw the chokingpear website and the note about it being closed down and was curious as to why, thanks for the info, Ruby7
Cerulean
08-06-2003, 16:43
...if the artist who loved the work of Edward Gorey has a very similar style in her own way, there are people who can sell to others who really like that style of work. However if her deck title and more than 30 percent of each image is directly copied from Gorey, yes, the court and executers of estates will have a legal complaint. If she posts the images for educational purposes, she can state it...I'm hopefully suggesting these things and adding ideas below, so that maybe your artist friend can find a way to deal with this and produce her art as well.
I also truly found one artist I enjoyed and in early versions, incorporated details from his work (Jacobo Pontermo). But a website artist who told me about the 30 percent rule. So it took me a year or two to work in my own stuff and create majors that has less than 30 percent of his work and pays tribute to his coloring, style, etc...and I learned a lot.
But I'm not posting it on the web as yet, because I've not the time to do the other follow ups and refine the images yet.
My history teacher also told me museums and exhibition publishers have copyrights to the print and web images, that is how they make money....he paid to have a poster done for a Raphael reproduction and asked permission from the museum holding the rights to do so for educational purposes. I believe Kat Black of the Golden Tarot did extensive followups and design changes so that she could sell her medieval-based tarot...I'm sorry if all this sounds discouraging. I hope that your artist friend does get to navigating through such things and her deck does prevail. I'll check this thread to see what follows.
My sympathy,
Mari H.
Per Taort Garden, when I submitted a search in June 2006:
I haven't seen a Fantod on the secondary/collectors' market for a long, long, time -- but back when they could occasionally be found, they were going for an average of $300.