Pages from gibeci re vol 1 issue 1 by Conjuring Arts Research Center

From Sextus decretalium liber a Bonifacio VIII in concilio lugdunensi editus (Venice, 1514)

G ··· i b e c i è r e Journal of The Conjuring Arts Research Center > ?

U T CVM QVE NEW YORK MMV

The Conjuring Arts Research Center Board of Directors William Kalush Dr. David Singmaster Steve Cuiffo Philip Varricchio David Blaine

Contents Pocket Notes—Stephen Minch 7 Publisher’s Note—William Kalush 11 The Yawning Mouth—Volker Huber 13 On the Prearrangement and Mnemonic Use of a Deck of Cards—Vanni Bossi 47 Sharpers and Their Tricks in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Times—Robert Jütte 73 Davenport Brothers & Fay—Ricky Jay 131 Contributors 137

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Winter 2005 \ Gibecière

Pocket Notes

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In little more than a century the craft of conjuring has had the benefit, to greater and lesser degree, of hundreds of journals, with spans ranging from one issue to over sixtynine years. Given the large number of such publications at any one time, the perpetrator of every fledgling magic journal is faced with the questions, Does the field need this? and Is it different enough to deserve a readership? One must assume that every publisher has decided, although sometimes deluded, in the affirmative to both questions. In this, the publisher and editor of Gibecière are no different. We feel unusually confident, though, of our ground, because of a very specific goal, one that few other conjuring journals in English have attempted, and none has successfully fulfilled: an examination that considers the whole breadth of conjuring history fit grist. While there have been and, indeed, are journals devoted to the history of conjuring, they almost invariably find their focus narrowed to a period of roughly a hundred years, from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. This was the period when the large illusion shows roamed the earth, and eventually expired: the “Golden Age of Magic.” As fecund as this interval was, and as many fossils as it left, it is but a thin stratum in the historical and prehistorical epochs of man; and to have so near the whole of research devoted to so short a time and so small a scene in the wide landscape of conjuring’s history is an indisputable aberration. Winter 2005 \ Gibecière

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Gibecière

(The reasons for this blinkered approach are fascinating and themselves deserve a study.) It is our hope that the pages of Gibecière will be a start in filling in the large historical voids left previous to the “Golden Age.” This does not mean we intend to turn a blind eye to that well-plowed field, but that it will get attention more in proportion with the whole. In pursuit of this intension, we will exercise a bias toward the rest of conjuring history, which has been so lamentably underexplored. Until the late 1980s, I harbored the misunderstanding that most everything that could be known about the older history of magic had been discovered and recorded by such researchers and writers as Frost, Evans, Houdini, Clarke, Volkmann, Smith, Christopher and Dawes. Then, a scant handful of youthful researchers began peeling the onion and making public what they had found. Their discovery was surprising, although it should not have been. Information about conjuring, conjurers and their methods was scattered throughout innumerable sources, in many languages, published and unpublished. As more and more information was drawn into the light, dusted off and assembled, it became clear that an international mosaic of conjuring history was waiting to be exhumed and assembled by committed researchers worldwide. That last word contradicts another severe limitation previously put on conjuring history, at least in provinces of the writers and readers of English: Anglocentrism. The information on magic and magicians within the Englishspeaking territories is grotesquely disproportionate to those outside that constricted perimeter. Conjuring has deep Gibecière / Vol. 1, No. 1

Gibecière

roots in all cultures and societies, from the most primitive to the most decadent. The development of effects and methods, and both their containment and dispersion, are topics begging study. This will be one of the underlying purposes of this journal. With the world ever more rapidly becoming a “global village,” and with people and information made ever more accessible through the Internet, researchers into conjuring history in many countries, and speaking many languages, are becoming known to each other and are banding together with the purpose of assembling a truer, more comprehensive picture of how magic began, developed and was shared during our history on this planet. We intend to publish the findings of these researchers, and to become a small but vital nexus in the community of those striving to illumine the roots of our craft. We take our first step in this direction with this, the initial issue, where we draw from researchers in Germany, Italy and the U.S.A. Volker Huber contributes an article on the long and prominent history of the Yawning Mouth principle, known widely to today’s conjurers as the means underlying the operation of the “Himber” z-fold wallet. Vanni Bossi shares his research on the related topics of secret arrangements and mnemonic systems applied to playing cards. Prof. Robert Jütte provides a history of that section of early organized crime devoted to gambling cheats, in which he explores their argot, society and methods. And Ricky Jay closes the issue with the story of a late, brief collaboration between the Ira Davenport and William Fay. We present the credentials of these contributors and Winter 2005 \ Gibecière

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Gibecière

the quality of their contributions as a fair sample of what we intend Gibecière to be. A more scholarly tone will be found here than is assumed in conjuring journals, and as an aid to other researchers, bibliographic notes are included. This comes with the territory, but we will strive to keep the material accessible to all readers interested in the subjects presented. Having made clear our intended goals and hopes, we now leave it to you to evaluate the first attempt. a Stephen Minch Editor

Gibecière / Vol. 1, No. 1

Publisher’s Note

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For those of us who love them, Conjuring and her Sister Arts are intoxicating and addictive. It’s with this spirit that the Conjuring Arts Research Center was founded. At present it contains 9,000 volumes printed between the 1490s and today, thousands of pages of manuscript material from the same range and thousands of artifacts, such as medals, engravings, broadsides, drawings, lithographs and items owned by magicians. The library is staffed by six fulltime employees: Carrie Schulz, Head Librarian and Curator; Dr. Lori Pieper, Translation; Sara Dockery, Digitization; Kenlynne Rini, Fundraising and NonProfit Operations; Gary Au, Computer Technology; and myself as Executive Director. Our goal at the Conjuring Arts Research Center is to provide resources to the magic community at large for exploration, investigation and research into all aspects of conjuring and the allied arts. I don’t believe there is another institution extant that is devoted exclusively to these goals; nor do I believe there has ever been one. It’s my hope that we can fill this void and, by doing so, do our part in elevating the status of our art. a William Kalush Executive Director

Winter 2005 \ Gibecière

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The Yawning Mouth a

Bernardino Luini’s Boy with a Puzzle, ca. 1520, oil on wood, 15" × 13", Peterborough, Elton Hall, the Proby Collection

THE YAWNING MOUTH A Principle of a Toplogical Trick in Art and Literature

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Volker Huber In the spring of 1898, an exposition of paintings of the Lombard school was held at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in London. Gustav Pauli, a museum director and art historian from Germany,1 visited it and published a report on it in the Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst. The exhibition had an especially rich selection of works by the Lombard artist Bernardino Luini (ca. 1470–1533), an artist whom Pauli valued, but not without reservations. He wrote: “His preeminent gift was a sense of beauty, which never forsook him, but he had a fatal touch of bathos, that bathos which is naturally indispensable for wide popularity. And popular Luini has become among those people sentimental about art.” Thus, his remarks on Luini’s paintings are also more of a listing than a description, except for one small picture, to which Pauli enthusiastically devoted his attention: Of the remainder of Luini’s work in the exhibition, may I especially point out an enchanting genre picture: a half-length figure of a naked, brown-eyed little boy, who with a mischievous expression shows the visitor a little conjuring trick. He holds in his hands a pair of those little folding boards, which through a clever interlacing of straps leaves both sides open. At the moment he is showing that on one side a bone is inserted behind the straps, which he will make disappear when it is opened again. The little picture is in the possession of Lady Carisfort.2

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