Barry Humphries was acutely conscious his iconic characters would outlive him within the public consciousness.
Barry Humphries in 1991 as Sandy Stone in The Life and Demise of Sandy Stone.Credit score: ABC
“I’ve bought containers and containers of stuff, costumes, packages, posters and props from his exhibits all over the world, a few of it I’ve donated to the Australian Performing Arts Assortment, like the enormous Dame Edna glasses he would sit atop as he got here on stage,” Humprhies’ former Sydney-based supervisor Harley Medcalf revealed in Could.
In 1980 Humphries supplied to donate materials to the Victorian Performing Arts Museum in Melbourne. His correspondence was typed on pink or yellow personalised letterhead. On the backside of the web page, it learn: “The recipient is suggested to protect this memorandum because it may effectively develop into a really extraordinarily useful collector’s merchandise.”
Humphries as Sir Les Patterson.Credit score: Penny Bradfield
Humphries’s memorabilia started to reach in suitcases and trunks. One such supply got here with a self-portrait sketch from the completed artist and a handwritten observe of thanks: “For accepting my memorabilia in my lifetime and dishonest the silverfish of a banquet, with gratitude.”
At this time there are 100 costumes within the assortment, together with a glittering robe lined with “spooky” eyes. When a hidden string is pulled, one eye really winks open and shut.
Dame Edna judges vogue at Flemington race monitor on Derby Day in 2010.Credit score: Craig Sillitoe
There’s additionally Edna’s “Scream” costume, primarily based on Munch’s determine in torment, sitting quietly in storage, together with Kylie Minogue’s gold scorching pants and varied different objects related to well-known Australian performers.
Humphries was additionally a collector of uncommon and curious books.
“I’ve already had calls from all over the world from patrons desirous to know what’s going to occur to the books,” Humphries’s long-time good friend and Sydney guide seller Nicholas Pounder shortly after his loss of life.
A self-described “bibliomaniac”, Humphries’s assortment of uncommon books prolonged to a unprecedented 50,000 quantity housed in his houses in Sydney and London.
It reportedly incorporates Oscar Wilde’s phone guide, a signed copy of The Significance of Being Earnest on vellum, a primary version of Philip O’Connor’s Memoirs of a Public Child, an autographed copy of Harold Acton’s Humdrum, the entire works of the poet Wilfred Childe, Nineteenth-century ghost tales and cabinets of classic youngsters’s books.