Featured Image: Costume sketch for Canina, from Volpone: CARLI Digital Collections

From American Theater Collections (Southern Illinois University Carbondale) in CARLI Digital Collections

This colored pencil costume sketch from Volpone makes me smile. Which is appropriate because I understand it is a comedy. I love Canina’s bright orange hair done up like horns on top of her head. Her plunging neckline and corseted bodice, the small flag she waves with one hand and the oversized handkerchief she clutches in the other all evoke the Renaissance era of the play. That’s the point of costume design, isn’t it?

This sketch is by Mordecai Gorelik. The collection includes 811 designs by Gorelik. Among them are examples of Gorelik's colored pencil and watercolor scene renderings, several cartoon-like ink and gouache storyboards, and a few gorgeous tapestry/drop designs. There are also 149 scene and costume renderings by Darwin Payne. Payne’s set illustrations tend to be portrayed as if they were dioramas; in other words they show the outlines of the stage, and the view is sometimes slightly angled from above. Gorelik’s are more like paintings of complete houses or rooms.

Written by Mary Rose, Metadata Librarian at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

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