Dealers and collectors are preparing for the release of the 2024 line-up: a visual wallet trick, an also very visual card trick, a tiny book test, and a typical Tenyo plastic trick. They should be available around mid-October, with prices ranging approximately between 18 and 27 Euros over here. So here are the trick names and the PR blurb for dealers:
Shocking Pass Case
“The magician shows the transparent compartment of a wallet and inside it puts a white piece of paper after having folded it. He gives the transparent compartment a “snap” and takes out the piece of paper that will now magically have writing on it! The same can be done with a playing card of hearts, for example, which will turn into a spades, and for many more transformations in full sight!”
Magical Picture Cards
“The magician asks a spectator to select a card. Then he shows a deck of blank cards except for a couple of drawn cards. He places these two cards on the table and brushes the white deck across the table four times as if he were painting, and each time releasing a “stripe” of cards. There will be four rows of cards on the table, vertically placed side by side, which will magically compose a drawing (they were white before!) representing a Japanese person who predicts the chosen card!”
Mentalist’s Animal Photo Book
“The mentalist hands the spectator a booklet that has different pictures of animals on each page and asks him to choose two pages at random. On the two adjacent pages the spectator will see three animals. The mentalist asks the spectator to place his hand on the pictures one at a time while trying to visualise the pictures in his mind and mentally transmitting them to him. The mentalist then writes three animals down: they will be the exact names of the animals thought of by the spectator!”
Mistery Showcase
“The magician shows a small pedestal surmounted by a transparent case. He removes it and, from the pedestal, takes away and shows a stand with a slit in the center. He puts this stand back on the pedestal and puts the case back in position by blocking the pedestal and case with an elastic band. He covers everything with a rectangular tube and after a moment, he removes it and a coin will have magically appeared in the case, displayed vertically on the stand!”
Let’s see if the latter comes close to this year’s Mister Danger in terms of genuine Tenyo plastic ingenuity!
It’s been four years since the last EMHC 2019 in Vienna, four long years, thanks to COVID, its creators, superspreaders, and ignoramuses (yes, that’s a regular word!), but finally the community of European magic historians and hobbyists has managed to reassemble! Thanks to the joint effort of Herman Dufraing, Nikolaas Maartens, Luc Poppe and Kobe Van Herwegen, 120 of us were invited to the beautiful city of Ghent (or Gent, in local writing) in Belgium and treated to four wonderful days of magic and mirth. As a positive side effect of COVID, many magic fellows had used this forced hiatus of business and public life for completing their recent studies and books, and it showed in the abundant program.
The venue for our community’s sold-out reunion was well chosen. We lodged and met at Monasterium PoortAckere, a neo-gothic former monastery, to reflect quietly, but enthusiastically, and safely removed from the craziness of the bustling world outside, on characters and tricks from times long gone. The conference was held inside its inhouse chapel, giving it an impressive framework so much nicer than your average hotel’s demure conference hall.
The link between religion, belief and make-believe echoing in the chapel was inspiring, and it was nicely symbolized by some photos of happy nuns at the hotel‘s reception area: On closer inspection, we found that the nuns were deceptively composed of hundreds of tiny images of buns and other female body parts!
The conference took off on Thursday afternoon with registration and welcome words of the hosts at the House of Mysteries, a small charming magic theater, located just a few minutes walk away from the hotel. The first presentation by Jack Cooper featured legendary Italian quick change artist, impersonator and conjurer LeopoldoFregoli (1867-1936) both with a talk and a nice exhibition. Jack has spent 25 years collecting and researching Fregoliana, and it showed. How about these figures: Fregoli played a three-hour show with a full orchestra, and went through more than 100 changes per night. He performed 300 shows per year and thus advertised, unlike others, when he did not perform: on Mondays. His show took 23 assistants and 30 tons of props and clothing in four wagons several times around the world. In his prime, he earned twelve times more than a French minister. He also dabbled early in cinema and presented films with his very own “fregoligraph”. As some video clips revealed, Fregoli also performed “slow changes” by undressing layer after layer of clothes, a variation of the art that has apparently (and thankfully) been lost over time.
Friday and Saturday offered a full schedule of more than 20 lectures (which I will not cover to full extent, both for your and my sake) plus varied evening entertainment. Francois Bost had the honor of opening the great line-up of speakers, and he dedicated his presentation to the memory of Jacques Voignier (1936-2022), eminent magic historian and first initiator of EMHC in Paris (2008 and 2015). Bost traced the influence of 18th century magic on Robert-Houdin, who continued the Enlightenment and embraced it fully, both as an inventor and performer. His “integration into the upper echolons of society of his time had no equivalent for the magicians of his time”, Bost said. According to him, Robert-Houdin made “brilliant use of the legacy of the Enlightenment” and never denied these influences – but his biographers did.
Also dealing with the “father of modern magic” was Georges Naudet. He has discovered three previously unknown playbills for Robert-Houdin in Belgium, performing in Mons near Ghent (actually, most Belgian cities are pretty close to one another, when you think about it) on his route back from England to France, and he wove a loong story around them.
Adventures and anecdotes
More than a few speakers chose a biographical approach and renarrated some performers‘ lives along the linear timelime, often drawing on their already published books and colorfully illustrated with scores of Powerpoint slides.
Charles Greene III gave a very engaging presentation on Ionia a.k.a. Clementine de Vere (1888-1973). She lived a full live despite the fact that her magic career only lasted from 1910 to 1913. (Her last performance actually took place on the stage of Berlin’s Palast am Zoo.) Drawing on his book on Ionia and more recent research, Greene told us how she survived the Russian Revolution (rather comfortably, not locked) in the basement of her Moscow luxury hotel right across the Kremlin, married a rich nobleman, owned a restaurant in Paris for ten years and had her own perfume brand that was sold globally (a feat that not even David Copperfield has matched yet!).
Greene also connected with Ionia’s family and found, to his surprise, that her granddaughter didn’t know about her magic career at all! Due to his tireless research and charming gate-crashing we finally learned that Ionia’s bedroom at her last home at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat even had two windows with a spectacular view on the Mediterranean Sea. Whew! (BTW, Charles has a new booklet out on The Complete History of Friedländer Lithography.)
Speaking of extensive travelling, Fergus Roy measured the breath-taking life and travels of Murray (1901-1988) in terms of miles rather than of achievements (although it was him, and not Houdini, who made the word “escapologist” universally known). At the age of 17, the escape-artist-to-be left his native Australia for Vancouver, Canada. The fact that he had never seen snow before in his life did not prevent him from a roundtrip up and down the Yukon river in Alaska in the wintertime. For a climate change, he joined an Amazon expedition next and had already concluded his first world tour by 1920. What surely helped him was the benign fact that, unlike his co-travellers, he never contracted a tropical disease.
In August 1939, Murray performed in Berlin at the Wintergarten, and when the war broke out shortly after, he barely made his escape to Copenhagen. Throughout his career, Fergus measured, Murray must have visited 95 countries and travelled more than 600,000 kilometers – about 15 times more than what Marco Polo, the godfather of all world travelers, had ever managed!
In contrast, James ‘Jim’ Hagy’s topic was limited in terms of geography, but not in depth. He has extensively researched the life and times of John Grdina (1885-1975), “The Instant Illusionist”, and his Cleveland bunch, a group of aspiring magicians dreaming of vaudeville fame. Names like Pereira, Scheidler and Wagner flew by, then Freund and Hartz and Kalma (who popularized the Floating Ball long before Okito) – “working class magicians for working class audiences”, as Jim labeled them. Fortunately, he’s written a whole book about this group (327 pages and 1,350 footnotes!) , and he graciously handed out a free copy to every attendant. Wow! (By the way, Jim started his career as a magic publisher at the age of eleven (!). Currently, he puts out a fine periodical on magic history called Perennial Mystics Squared, and if you are seriously interested, you should get in touch with him. And yes, it’s also free!)
Kobe Van Herwegen dealt with the life and work of Jean Lambert Pickman (1857-1925), a Belgian magician, card manipulator, hypnotist, mindreader and impostor. Most attendees (including me) had never heard of him before, although he was big in his time. He traveled many countries and performed in over 500 venues. Pickman was a master of publicity stunts and rumoured to have real magical powers, but, alas, before his death he admitted that it all had been just “quackery and imagination”…
Mike Caveney brought Turkish illusionist Zati Sungur (1898-1984) to the attention of the audience and shared some of his illusions, drawing on many unpublished photos he had obtained through correspondence with Sungur’s daughter, Aynur. According to Mike, this master illusionist was “years ahead of his time” and must be credited, among other things, with the invention of the Thin Model Sawing a Lady in Half illusion in 1932. As a young man, Sungur had studied submarine engineering in Flensburg, Germany. In Cologne, Alois Kassner encouraged him to pursue a magic career instead of his factory job. He also invented “Shooting a Cannon Ball Through a Lady” and became friends with Kalanag. You can find more about him in Mike’s most recent books One Hundred Years of Sawing and The Final Conference Illusions. Fun fact: By now, Mike has spent over 50 years of research on sawing ladies, starting with a term paper back at college!
I’m not sure if Dick Koornwinder came by Kar (please pardon the pun), but he certainly came to Ghent in order to share some anecdotes about the late, great Fred Kaps, whom he had befriended early in his life. Besides catching a glimpse of Kaps’s early notebooks, we learned that
the short and snappy stage name KAPS was apparently inspired by an ad for suits of the brand DAKS
the famous press photo showing Kaps balancing some dice on top of a cup and defying gravity did not come about by the use of glue or trick photography; in fact, the picture was taken with Kaps standing upright, and then it was simply cut out diagonally to great effect
Fred’s famous Endless Salt Pour routine was probably triggered by an ad for Cerebos salt with the slogan “See how it runs” and an appropriate image.
Ali Bongo (1929-2009), another magic legend, received his tribute by his “adopted nephew”, Rafael. He had brought a table full of original props from the zany “shriek of Araby”, performed some of them and shared with us a selection of Bongo’s lovely art work, including the hand-drawn original draft of the now famous folded and growing Bongo Hat.
For those of you who might argue that presentations like the latter two are probably a bit too much “above the surface” to be discussed at a venerable magic history conference, allow me to disagree. First, I wouldn’t enjoy a full conference that only stacks heavily footnoted academic presentations onto one another; I’d be dead by noon of the second day, at the latest! Second, I feel that oral history, and that includes anecdotes and bits and pieces not found in books and footnotes, is also an important part of the historian’s arsenal. Third, a lighter approach serves as a nice and most welcome break between heavier topics and may sometimes remind us that we are in the entertainment business, after all!
But there was more academic and more topical stuff to come! Ian Keable tackled a phenomenon most of us will have encountered at one point or another: the mixing and confusing of the Cups and Balls (as entertainment) with Thimble Rigging (as a money-making con game) in public imagery. While never hiding his comedy magician pedigree (and why should he?), Ian guided us through a lovely collection of old prints to prove his points. According to him, Thimble Rigging took off in 19th century England at the races and is well documented both in racing prints and cartoons, including 20 mentions in Punch magazine. French imagery of the time, however, showed the „exact opposite“ and made heavy use of the Cups and Balls as a symbol for political and other tricksters, as can be studied in Volker Huber’s edition of Bob Read’s famous collection of prints, The Oldest Trick in the Book. Finally, Ian shared that he had worked over Bob’s own manuscript during two COVID years, and he hopes to get it published as an appendix to the Huber book in the future.
Academic excellence
A favorite topic of mine is the intersection of magic and photography/film, so I was delighted to hear the presentation of Frédéric Tabet and Pierre Taillefer who looked at “Magicians facing photography” in the second half of the 19th century. Clever magi quickly embraced the technical advances in photography and exploited them in various ways. The once unique and irreproducible portrait photographs developed further into visiting cards and cabinet cards which could suddenly be printed in dozens and thus be used for promotion purposes. Joseph Velle became the probably most photographed (or “copied”, rather) magician of his time, as he enjoyed propelling loads of his photo cards into the audience. By spreading their images, magicians also helped in spreading photography.
Other interesting examples of this talk included early trickery with photography; staging the short “frozen” moment of a magic effect with actors who had to stay in pose for up to 20 minutes; and early stereoscopic images which the EMHC audience eyed through 3-D glasses with red and cyan filters. To accompany their compelling presentation, Frédéric and Pierre have diligently produced two booklets which I highly recommend.
Noted magic historian Steffen Taut was the only German fellow who had made it onto the agenda (There were far more applications than speaker slots, I was told by one of our hosts.) He has spent more than 20 years meticulously researching the Westcar Papyrus and the context of Djedi’s (not Dedi’s) famous performance described in it, which has brought him the recognition and acclaim of leading egyptololologists. His conclusions have recently been published in much detail (see Gibecière 35, Winter 2023), so I can be brief here: The Djedi story is not a report, but a piece of fiction. Djedi was not a conjurer, but a high-ranking heka priest. As known from other sources, these priests did, in fact, perform tricks. So this may actually be where magic took its starting point: in religious rituals and wonder-making for a greater purpose than a laugh and a dime.
Conclusion: “The court conjurer Dedi” is finally another magic myth busted. May he rest in peace in the tomb of Beni Hasan, together with those cups-and-balls-fakin‘ bakers!
An excerpt from the Westcar Papyrus (Hint: Read it from right to left!)
Speaking of strictly academic approaches, the Saturday morning session was dedicated to two interdisciplinary projects that are up and running at the University of Antwerpen. Two professors and five PhD/postdoc researchers presented snapshots of their ongoing research on “SciFair – Magic, science and the otherworldly” and “B-Magic: Magic, technology and showmanship”.
A brief overview must do (see web links above for more): Hannah Welslau looked for spirits at Belgian fairgrounds; Tim Overkempe showed that X-ray imagery enjoyed a short career as magical science and fairground entertainment; Evelien Jonckheere traced the shadows on the enigmatic performer Mélidès, who might actually have been young George Méliès (just skip the “d” in the name!), but this is pending confirmation. Professors Kurt Vanhoutte and Nele Wynants looked at the many faces of Henri Robin and at Vanishing Ladies on stage and in magic’s history, respectively; Eleonora Paklons enlighted us on the magic lantern performances of George R. Tweedie, while Thibaut Rioult closed the session by tracing the foundation of modern illusionism from the concept of mannerism.
Though partly strict on academic habits, I found this session most rewarding, as it proved again the value of looking at magic phenomena through the lens of neighboring disciplines and with (a different) academic background and specific hypotheses. If only we collaborated more among like-minded people, I’m sure many of our findings would be so much richer!
Serving Servais
The final speaker slot of the conference was appropriately dedicated to Belgium’s “monarch of magic”, Servais Le Roy (1865-1953). He personified the Golden Age of magic and had, according to Houdini, “the greatest magical act in the history.” (Incidentally, the Potter&Potter auction on that same Saturday presented no other than Le Roy on the cover of their catalogue!) Paul Kieve, global magic consultant and creator of stage illusions, chose a few significant Le Roy objects to shine a spotlight on some interesting aspects of this inventor’s and performer’s life and promised to reveal some “amazing new information.” And he did!
To start with trivia: Did you know that the elegant magician shown on rock band Blue Öyster Cult’s 1976 album “Agents of Fortune” was painted by artist Lynn Curlee after a photograph of Le Roy? There you go!
From left to right: EMHC co-hosts Herman Dufraing, Kobe Van Herwegen, Nikolaas Martens; Abigail Grater, Paul Kieve
But slightly more relevant in magic’s history are his inventions of the Asrah principle, the horizontal stripes on illusion tables in order to camouflage their depth and using doubles and switches in illusions, as Paul pointed out. He also showed some previously unseen images from Le Roy’s scrapbooks (courtesy David Copperfield) and created a truly magical moment when he finally made Abigail Grater, a great granddaughter of the illusionist, appear (although she only walked up to the stage) to great applause! Through his research and persistence, he had actually brought the descendants from Servais Le Roy’s two families (with his wife and with his partner, Talma) together. Another example of how rewarding it can be to track down today’s family members of the late and great! Sometimes they even have a hitherto unknown poster in their attic…
Finally, the location of the next EMHC 2025 was revealed: It will be held in Riga, Latvia and hosted by the energetic Italian Enrico Pezzoli, a long-term expat in Riga, and his wife and partner, Dace. They run their own magic theater and museum called MYSTERO there. It was fun to see how enthusiastic both were in promoting their city and venue and welcoming our curious bunch there in two years time. I’m sure they’ll do great, and I will certainly try to be there! Dates will be August 21-24, 2025, and registrations are already open.
Entertainment nightly
The three evenings of the conference were also well organized and offered varied entertainments. Opening night on Thursday gave us a nice welcome barbecue in the courtyard of the Huis van Alijn museum, followed by a charming Laterna Magica show ably performed three times for small groups of us by Ditmar Bollaert and Els Prevenier, who were also accompanied by a spot-on two-man band for piano and sound effects behind the curtain. If you sat near the double magic lantern projector, you could see and hear the hard work, drill and timing of the performers that goes into inserting, animating and exchanging the magic slides at appropriate speed. Truly magical, though likely not as scary as centuries ago when the first ghosts floated over the screen and when innocent people suddenly exchanged their heads with animals or turned into skeletons!
Friday night saw the attendees back in the House of Mysteries, after a reception at the City Hall (with an interesting labyrinth design on the marble floor) and a joint dinner over spare ribs and king prawns, for a magic history quiz set up by Hermann Dufraing and hosted by Marco Pusterla. In groups of five, the teams had to answer a few dozen questions (some really tricky!), had to identify magic posters from which the names had been removed and had to connect performers‘ birth names with their stage names. Fun and beer were had by all.
Not surprisingly, “Team America” (Steve Beam, Mike Caveney, John Gaughan, Charles Greene III, Jim Hagy) took first prize with aplomb; but then, these heavyweights of magic brought about 400 years of experience to the game (I may be exaggerating)! Excuse me for proudly documenting for posterity here that our very own Anglo-Belgian-German team, “Kalanag’s Mystery Girls” (Jonathan Allen, Jan Isenbart, Rafael, Uwe Schenk, Convin Splettsen), came in second, and we were very happy to receive a signed copy each of the brand-new book Magical Minard: Evenings of Wonder (see below), produced by Mystery Lab and co-written by many of the Belgian EMHC speakers. – I do hope and predict that magic quizzes will appear more often on the bill of future conferences!
Team AmericaTeam Kalanag’s Mystery Girls
Saturday night is traditional gala night, so we were invited to the wonderful Minard theater that took us back 150 years in time, red curtain, golden decorum and high balconies included! Rafael with his many props and zany ideas took us swiftly through a varied all-male (!) program featuring Belgian and Dutch performers Jack Cooper, Jonas De Bruyn, Fritz (Alkemade), Gili, Kevin Laurens and Tim Oelbrandt, who covered a wide magic range from comedy, mentalism and shadowgraphy to manipulation and illusions.
Now you might argue that cutting playing card symbols from a newspaper, vanishing a 1970s stereo system and sawing through a lady who was rope-tied around her neck and ankles is not quite in line with our present time and taste anymore; but then, isn’t most of magic? Can‘t we take it as a nod to magic’s rich history, especially in this venerable venue? I’ve heard mixed opinions about this issue, but I enjoyed the show as much as the laymen (and laywomen, I’m told to write) seated behind and above us, the magic experts and critics, did.
Worldly Business
Sunday morning saw the chapel bustling with wordly business, participants worshipping the artefacts and ephemara of magic history, wheeling and dealing in the endless cycle of BOSS (buying, owning, swapping, selling). After two days of quietly sitting and listening, it was finally time to bring out your elbows in the crowd, speed-leaf through folders and rummage through boxes on the hunt for that rare program, print or autograph. It was here that grown men and serious scholars turned into frenzied collectors and happy children, and I think both buyers and sellers enjoyed the jolly dance around at least one truckload of magic wonders.
And then it was time for good-byes and another big thank you to our four hosts Nikolaas, Herman, Kobe and Luc, who had run such a smooth and varied conference and who had gone out of their way to make everyone happy and comfortable over the course of four days!
Some concluding thoughts and observations
The (same) time allotted to each speaker does not necessarily correlate with the number of relevant bits of information in each talk. However, one must compliment almost all speakers for their strict time management.
Some speakers seemed to struggle more with the English language (or their computers) than with their research topic. Blessed are our British and American friends who shall never worry about such matters!
Cheesy Powerpoint animations are okay for a laugh here and there, but they rarely do justice to the topic nor do they elevate the art.
As documented above, the program was a bit heavy on the biographical side. Therefore, what I did miss were two or three topics for collectors and the occasional off-beat topic or interview or discussion on stage.
Quite a few speakers dwelled on their previously published books and articles (and, to be fair, sometimes enhanced them with more recent findings). That’s fine, but if you had already read a few of these, the news value was limited here. I think many listeners would prefer it the other way round: speakers giving an exclusive preview of their upcoming works and then using the collective intelligence of the audience (their wisdom and collections) to take things further.
Of course, we are a secretive bunch and like to fiddle with our topic on our own before we step on stage. Therefore, collaborations seem far and few, but they can harvest big rewards. (In all modesty, please check out Jonathan Allen’s and my co-work on Kalanag’s marvelous Polaroid trick as an example; it can certainly pay off to examine a topic across cultures and language barriers.) So maybe it’s time to add “collaborate” to Eddie Dawes’s famous dictum “to collect – collate – communiciate”?!
Curtain
Leaving the secluded spot happily after a few days, I suddenly realized that there are more ties to the non-magic world outside than you probably would have imagined: Putin made Prigoschin vanish without flashing; in Gabun, president Ali Bongo (sic!) Ondimba was struggling with his reelection; and just as I was driving out of town, the radio started playing “Could It Be Magic” by Barry Manilow (a song I had actually never heard before). Well, it could, couldn’t it?
After more than two years of joint research, I am very happy to report that Jonathan Allen‘s and my article has just been published in the ambitious Cabinet magazine!
In it, we trace the story of a rather fascinating yet mostly overlooked magic trick created in 1948 by German magician Helmut Schreiber (1903-1963), known to the world as ‘Kalanag’ in his time. By secretly employing the brandnew Polaroid Land camera, which was still unknown to the public, he added an extra “kicker” to an already astonishing trick, the Broken and Restored Watch, by handing the helping spectator a souvenir photo that had been taken on stage only a moment ago.
Until now, Kalanag’s pioneering role as a creative Polaroid artist seems to have gone unnoticed amongst historians of both photography and magic. This is even more surprising, as some early programs of his magic revue “Simsalabim” indicate that Kalanag already had a Polaroid camera in secret use several months before its official market launch in the U.S.!
Here’s an amazing new optical illusion that sucks you right into its black hole! According to some research done, about 86% of people looking at it do realize that eery, pulsating movement. I do, and I hope you do, too! The illusion was created by Japanese psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka at Ritsumeikan University in Kobe. You can find some background on the phenomenon here in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
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It’s only a tiny ad in the current issue of Genii (July 2022), but it announces something virtually greater than great: Richard Kaufman‘s revised and updated edition of Greater Magic from 1938, scrapping outdated stuff and adding the greatest mysteries of the second half of the 20th century from all magic genres. It seems like The New Greater Magic will consist of 3 volumes with about 900 pages each. Phew, that’s certainly some heavy-lifting! I should start saving money and doing some workout soon!
Many sections and chapters seem to be written already, but now Richard is looking for an illustrator who would like to do 1,000 or more drawings swiftly and quickly, which means there is no official publication date yet. As long as it’s before 2038, I’m fine with that!
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Jim Steinmeyer must be one of my favorite illusioneers, imagineers and magic authors. He is super knowledgeable, super creative, and a superb writer as well. Recently, he has refurbished his website, and he is regularly adding blog posts now under the heading “What we hide”. I find them (you guessed it) super interesting and insightful. Discover them here!
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Another master mind of our art and craft is David Berglas, “the international man of mystery”. I must have missed its start, but the David Berglas Scrapbooks website is another exciting discovery for the magic history aficionado. You can watch, hear and learn a lot about his career and some of his biggest publicity stunts, including the legendary vanishing piano.
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In this context, I also have to mention magic historian James Edwards again. Amazing what stories – some heartbreaking, some uplifting – he keeps digging up for his blog on Magic at War! His latest piece is on The Great Cortini, a Dutch-Indonesian magician (spelled Cortiny in other sources and not to be confused with his contemporary, German coin manipulator and illusionist Cortini). He also has just announced an upcoming book. Besides, James runs a separate website dedicated to Jasper Maskelyne.
Another recent article on Jasper Maskelyne struggling with war and truth can be found here. It includes a number of interesting photos.
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Now here’s an encore I guess nobody would have expected: Supreme Magic is back on the scene! Founded by Edwin Hooper in 1953, Supreme quickly became a household name for magicians all over the world, due to their colorful and imaginative line of props and tricks, an endless flow of publications of value, and excellent customer service. Now they are back as Magic Supreme Ltd., and it seems that they still have a warehouse full of old tricks to sell! They say they own all publishing and manufacturing rights, but they won’t manufacture anything again. Once the crates are empty, the story’s over. So take a look around their new website and see what you may have missed 30 or 60 years ago, or just marvel at the simple beauty and innocence of a magic era long gone!
Old logo, new again
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Speaking of the good old days of magic, more than a 100 wonderous items have been added recently to the vast Davenport Collection, which you can easily access online. They have also just launched the Davenport Instagram Collection. Oh, and then there is the Davenport Film Collection YouTube Channel as a companion, just in case you were wondering… Happy browsing and watching!
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With the Magic Castle property and rights being taken over by entrepreneur, millionaire and magic buff Randy Pitchford in April, it is hoped that the legendary California club home of magic is leaving behind some problem-ridden years and steering into a bright and safe future! However, there may be more trouble ahead: Joe Furlow, the Castle’s general manager from 2012 to 2020, who left / had to leave over accusations of misconduct, discrimination and sexual harassment within the staff, has announced “to reveal the truth” in his upcoming book, Behind the Curtain: Intrigue at the Palace of Prestidigitation. There is no publication date yet, but a full website full of dramatic PR blurb, finger-pointing and self-aggrandizement. This will get interesting… and likely dirty.
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UK Magician and artist Jay Fortune keeps creating some lovely artwork for your magic den or living room. Here’s his latest work on Dai Vernon, which will be published in a limited edition. You can check out his website here.
Dai Vernon studying Ed Marlo’s “Tilt” (?)
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The Brooklyn Rail is a U.S. non-profit organization that publishes a journal which serves as “an independent forum for arts, culture, and politics throughout New York City and far beyond.” The June 2022 issue features a highly interesting section on the phenomenon of Disappearance, examined from very different angles by more than a dozens authors. Our friend Jonathan Allen has contributed a magic piece on “What the Spectators See” and has pointed me towards this issue, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
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The folks from SoMA (Science of Magic Association) have just released their summer newsletter, and it’s full of interesting stuff on, well, magic and science. Their next conference is also coming up soon. It will be held at the University of London on July 21 and 22.
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Congratulations to all winners of this year’s Allan Slaight Awards, administered through Magicana:
Lifetime Achievement: Goldfinger & Dove
Sharing Wonder: Dani DaOrtiz
Sharing Secrets: Kayla Drescher for her podcast, “Shezam” / Lawrence Hass for his work on Eugene Burger: Final Secrets
International Rising Star: Mikayla Oz
Canadian Rising Star: Neil Croswell
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This video of an alleged “Starbuck Scam” has gone a bit viral here and there. I may be wrong, but isn’t that Gregory Wilson underneath that baseball cap? It sure sounds like him to me, and given his long series of coffee house magic with his fellow David Gripenwaldt it would make sense… Check it out:
Scam or simple, but effective magic trick?
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The Ehrlich Brothers, Germany’s leading illusionists today, will be playing London again for a one-nighter on August 13 at the OVO Arena in Wembley. Their claim of featuring “The World’s Biggest Illusion Show” may sound rather bold, but honestly, I have yet to see a bigger one touring today. You’re in for a treat with this high-speed mix of modern illusions, family entertainment and lots of fun!
Ehrlich Brothers ad
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Old & New: Just came across this nice quote from Jon Racherbaumer:
“Today’s audiences, born and raised in an electronic environment, want dynamic action, tight direction, different kinds of dazzling stimuli, and a sense of immediacy.”
Well, we’d all agree to that, right? Funny thing is, Racherbaumer is not referring to today’s online video and social media here; he actually wrote this back in 1984, in his book At the Card Table, and he was referring to the “fast-paced time-sense used by television” (remember MTV?). And here we are, almost 40 years later, still bungling and idly dealing down piles of cards… Onwards, and enjoy the summer!
Now here’s an upcoming event I’m really looking forward to! It will be both an honor and a great pleasure to share the stage with magic artist and fellow researcher Jonathan Allen. Our presentation will shine a light on a creative, yet mostly overlooked kicker ending of a Kalanag routine and share more than a few background information.
Stay tuned for more!
Advert for what will certainly be a great and inspiring day!
Admittedly, I have been rather busy with other projects over the last few weeks, both in my day job and with a task for our German Magic Arts Foundation. But I will resume posting interesting news, historical bits and fun stuff over the next few days and weeks (promise!).
For now, please enjoy the festive season with your loved ones , some golden moments of reflective silence and share the magic of hope and giving!
Here’s a lovely cartoon I came across in a 1928 issue of “Magie”, the magazine of the Magic Circle of Germany (MZvD).
Keep the Linking Rings, replace the Die Box with a Rubik’s Cube and the Egg Bag with a Floating Table, and you will get a good impression of the general state of magic in 2020, 2030 and likely 2050…
History has her own ways of creating, reshuffling, and reevaluating facts. In January 1964, Helmut Schreiber/Kalanag, who had passed on December 24th, 1963, was mourned, hailed, and fondly remembered on the cover of Genii magazine and within its pages (and rightfully so).
Fast forward 57 years: The latest issue of Genii reprints the same cover photo, but this time Kalanag is stamped with a blood-red Nazi swastika across his face. A 37-page story presents selected chapters and unmasking photographs in Nazi company from Malte Herwig‘s detailed Kalanag biography, which was published in German a few weeks ago.
Genii covers from 1964 and 2021
The cover’s subline, “Hitler’s Magician,” feels somewhat ambiguous to me, though. On the one hand, it clearly describes what Kalanag strived for and how he wanted to be perceived at the time: as the Third Reich’s leading and undisputed magician and magic officer, who was on friendly, powerful terms with the Führer and his henchmen. On the other hand, it falsely suggests permanent, personal ties of Schreiber and Hitler, maybe even the status of a court jester or a gray eminence. Among others, the Führer had his deputy, his spokesperson, and his architect; he certainly never had ‘his” magician.
I feel that neither an “all black” nor an “all white” approach will do justice to the man who was both a great showman and a great egotist and opportunist in times of greatest turmoil. Malte Herwig, an Oxford-trained historian, appropriately avoided this ideological trap in his mostly descriptive, balanced, and heavily footnoted biography. Thus, a red swastika pin on Kalanag’s lapel may have been a better and more subtle cover choice.
You may also want to check out Richard Hatch‘s four-page, in-depth review of Malte’s book in the latest issue of Marco Pusterla‘s fine little history journal, Ye Olde Magic Mag.
Here is a lovely DIY illusion which I came across recently over at Magic Center Harri.* It cost me a mere 5 Euros, and I had some fun assembling the pieces (it only takes some cutting and glueing). When you turn the cardboard wheel on the right with your fingers, the right arm holding the top hat comes down on the rabbit, moves up again, and–poof!–the rabbit is gone.
Obviously, this trick is not precision-made from wood or metal, but with a slight bend here and there the cardboard mechanics work pretty accurately. This little illusion will make a nice display on my magic bookshelf. Oh, and I love the way the rabbit is looking up towards calamity!
*This post might be considered as advertising, but if so, it was unpaid and unsolicited. I bought the prop and enjoyed it, so for me this is news from the magic & art department and sort of a mini review.
As some of you may have noticed here, I’m a sucker for exploring the more subtle or hidden features of playing cards, especially of the Court cards. I have opened secret back doors on cards, have pierced pips of selected cards with the sword of a King, etc. This weekend I have finally gotten around to cut and glue together a new (?) form of prediction card. Have you ever noticed that both the Queen of Spades and the King of Hearts have their hands in perfect position to either hold a miniature playing card, an envelope or any other kind of prediction?
There are basically two ways of creating such extra cards: with our without an extra layer. Without is easier and slightly quicker to accomplish. That’s what I’ve done here. Simply take a small but sharp pair of scissors and cut the card around the two hands and arms (but not along the blue line that frames the image). Then cut out a matching mini prediction card (in my case the center pip of an Ace of Diamonds) and insert it between the hands, which you have to bend slightly upwards. The disadvantage of this method: You cannot put the card face down on the table because the cuts will be visible through the back. To avoid this, cut out the hands and arms you need from another spare card and glue them onto the Queen or King. But use glue only on the arms, so the hands are free to receive the prediction card.
To use this card in play, all you need is a sw***h and a f***e. You may even want to present the Queen of Spades as a wrong prediction first. Then toss it aside (and sw***h it), try again, fail again, and then come back to your original prediction and discover that this card is now holding another prediction, which of course then turns out to be correct. It’s a matter of taste whether you want to shove this prediction right into your spectator’s face or show it face down first. If it’s face down, you will have a double effect: first, the surprising appearance of this tiny prediction, and second, the correct prediction on the other side. In addition, you can use the corny joke first that you have correctly predicted the back design of the chosen card… Hey presto!
Just another thought. Have fun trying this or exploring it further!
ZZZAUBER 