Artifacts

Bradbury’s IBM typewriter, office desk, and desk chair.

The Bradbury artifacts gifted in 2013 include his original office furniture and equipment, as well as three of his typewriters used over a forty-year period; many significant national and international awards, mementoes, and other artifacts from his personal office; significant art by noted illustrators, by various writers, Hollywood figures, and by NASA artists; hundreds of his author’s copies of the major market magazines where his work was published; and a large collection of Bradbury publications including first editions, foreign language editions, and rare editions, many signed by Bradbury. Below is an outline of those holdings that make up the Center’s “Ray Bradbury Musuem.”

Personal Artifacts

An eclectic mix of Bradbury’s mementos, awards, signed photographs from famous figures, childhood scrapbooks, gifts from Hollywood and government organizations, space program awards, and many more artifacts from a long and busy life.

“Mars” flag that rode in the Space Shuttle Discovery, 2006

Highlights:

  • Bradbury’s IBM typewriter, office desk, and desk chair
  • A number of national awards including the author’s Emmy awards, National Book Award, and National Medal of Arts
  • Stationery, paint sets, and sketches
  • A “Mars” flag that rode in the Space Shuttle Discovery on its 2006 trip to and from the International Space Station
  • Gifts related to NASA missions such as the Viking Mars landers, the Spirit and Opportunity Mars Rovers, and the Challenger Center

Bradbury Related Art

Bradbury’s poetic and evocative fiction inspired generations of visual artists, and the Center is home to many of the paintings, sketches, illustrations, photographs, and even sculptures gifted to Bradbury by his inspired professional artists, readers, and fans. The Center also houses some of Bradbury’s own sketches and high-resolution facsimiles of his own art.

Model dinosaur inspired by Windsor McKay’s “Gerty the Dinosaur”

Highlights:

  • Concept art by Robert McCall (proofs)
  • Dough Wildey’s graphic adaptation of “Mars is Heaven”
  • A replica of the Nautilus from Jules Vern’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, sculpted by the Disney Imagineers and gifted to Bradbury in the 1960s
  • A model dinosaur, inspired by Windsor McKay’s “Gerty the Dinosaur” cartoons

Author’s Working Library

All those volumes from the shelves of Bradbury’s Los Angeles home office, which surrounded and stimulated Bradbury throughout the majority of his career.

Various personal artifacts, The Bradbury Center.

Highlights:

  • Numerous first editions, including a well-preserved copy of The Thin Man
  • Volumes of Melville criticism consulted by Bradbury after his work on the screenplay for Moby Dick
  • Early “graphic novels” Milt Gross’s He Done Her Wrong and Lynd Ward’s Vertigo
  • A Buck Rogers “Little Big Book,” circa 1930s
  • Bradbury inscribed and dated copies of many American and British works of literature that he acquired and read throughout his career

Author’s Books, Personal Copies

Bradbury’s author’s stock of his own books, including many signed and limited special editions and hundreds of foreign language editions from many lands.

Danish first edition of Fahrenheit 451, translated to 233 Celsius.

Highlights:

  • Asbestos bound Fahrenheit 451
  • Signed copies of limited-edition printings
  • The Danish first edition of Fahrenheit, rendered as 233 Celsius