Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2013 - 47

n a quiet, seldom frequented upper room
in the Theatre Museum at the Lobkowitz
Palace in Vienna, there is a treasure and
a mystery. Stored impeccably in flat files
are approximately 1,400 sketches for
musicals and musical revues produced
on Broadway from 1900 to 1925. The
collection features the work of forty-six
American designers whose names can
be identified, plus the work of another
twenty designers who, to date, cannot
by verified. The mystery of how these
works came to be housed in the Theatre
Museum has yet to be solved.
This article will piece together a few of the facts known so far.
In 1981, the museum director Oskar Pausch discovered twenty-eight
boxes, which he said were "misleadingly labeled" Venedig in Wien
(Venice in Vienna). Venice in Vienna was a name sometimes given to a
replica of Venetian buildings, cafes, restaurants, stalls, and a musical
comedy stage that was built in 1895 as an amusement area in Vienna's
large public park, the Prater.
According to Pausch, "The uniqueness of this otherwise unidentified jumble of American costume was immediately confirmed by experts
such as Helen Johnson, Richard Green, and Gerald Bordman. Stefanie
Winkelbauer, an American art historian living in Vienna, agreed to catalogue and research the material. She tackled the challenging job with
great idealism" (Winkelbauer 1986).
She needed all the idealism and enthusiasm she could muster, for
not only were the contents of the boxes unidentified, it appeared that
someone, perhaps in an attack of neatness, had erased almost all of the

pencil notations on the drawings. Valuable designer's notes, sometimes
including the name of the show and the character, were lost. The result of
Winkelbauer's work was a slim monograph, Wake Up and Dream, published by Herman Böhlau in 1986. The monograph also served as the
catalog for an exhibition of the same name.
We had known of the existence of this collection and Winkelbauer's
monograph for several years. As we renewed our acquaintance with them
in early January 2012, we became intrigued and decided to dig deeper.
Alexandra Steiner-Strauss, curator of drawings at the Theatre Museum in
Vienna and curator of the 1986 Wake Up and Dream exhibition in Vienna, gave us joyful and willing assistance, and Winkelbauer's monograph
provided us with a firm foundation. It is from her pioneering effort that we
borrow much of the material in this article.

the ProVenAnce mystery
In Pausch's footnotes to his foreword to Wake Up And Dream he offers
a possible explanation for how the designs may have found their way to
Vienna:
Not to be discounted is the possibility of a provenance from the wellknown Viennese costume house Lambert-Hofer, which in 1961 sold the
Theatersammlung [Theatre Collection of the Austrian National Library]
a large number of drawings grouped under the heading "Costume designs
from Viennese theaters, incl. "Venedig in Wien" (Venice in Vienna)"; see the
pertinent accession book no. 756. However, as far as can be traced, these
drawings, including some American drawings, were listed and catalogued as
a unit. They all bear the ownership stamps of Viennese costume houses and
Lambert Hofer item numbers. (Winkelbauer 1986)

Another hint in the monograph is found in Winkelbauer's essay
"Broadway Shows and their Costumes." She notes that in America during this time, "The ultimate in fashionable glamor was . . . considered to
come from Europe, no doubt assisted by the fact that costumes produced
in the United States were up to one and a half times more expensive than
those manufactured in Europe" (Winkelbauer 1986).
Winkelbauer further notes that the large Berlin firm of Hugo Baruch & Son, which also had branches in Vienna, London, and by 1912
in New York, had a great number of artists on contract and were able to
supply costumes and sets at competitive prices. Producers found their
prices irresistible and even found ways to import the goods in devious
ways to reduce their costs more.

To avoid paying the steep 60% import duty
imposed by the U. S. customs, the costumes were
often only roughly basted together and shipped to
New York as "fabric" as opposed to garments.

w i n t e r 2013

theatre design

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2013