Gibecière Vol. 8 No. 1

Contents Pocket Notes—Stephen Minch 7 A Curious Manuscript— Donatella Gnetti 15 From Florence to Asti— Stephen Minch with the help of Thierry Depaulis 23 MSS. III, 18: The Asti Manuscript— Anonymous 29 Furthermore... 235 Contributors 237

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POCKET NOTES In the past (a suitable opening for this journal), Gibecière has been the vehicle for publishing some groundbreaking historical documents. Among the most significant are Horatio Galasso’s Giochi bellissimi di regola e di memoria of 1593 and the anonymously written “Sloan 424” manuscript, believed to date from the 1600s. Both of these documents have enlarged our understanding of the magical repertoire of the period, and have taken known tricks and principles back decades, when not centuries, earlier than previously thought. Both documents were also written in Italian. In this first issue of our eighth year, we have the privilege of publishing another manuscript of major importance, also Italian. In the spring of 2010, Marco Aimone learned of an interesting handwritten and illustrated manuscript on conjuring in the Biblioteca Comunale di Asti. For many years—no one is certain how many—this manuscript languished on a shelf in a cramped catch-all storage room, along with the library’s detritus. Only recently was it inventoried and cataloged as MSS. III, 18, without it being viewed as having any great importance. ­Aimone contacted Italian professional magician and magic historian Aurelio Paviato, and the two men traveled to the library in Northwestern Italy to examine the manuscript.

Its binding showed centuries of wear. Its corners were chipped away, its surface heavily chafed. Inside were 326 pages, which a previous early owner had valued highly enough to have professionally bound. On reading just the first two tricks described in the manuscript, Paviato realized the importance of the document. The first item was a sleight-of-hand color change, the second was the force of a card done from the bottom of a spread or fanned deck. The earliest published sleight-of-hand color changes done on the face of the deck didn’t start to appear until the late 1800s. The Under-the-Spread Force was commonly thought to date Q

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Title page of MSS. III, 18. The three reddish-brown blemishes are of interest.

A CURIOUS MANUSCRIPT Donatella Gnetti

T

he manuscript preserved in the Biblioteca di Asti with shelfmark MSS. III, 18, was found completely by chance more than thirty years ago by an employee of the Biblioteca, who received the task of rearranging the storeroom for periodicals of the Biblioteca, and was then assigned to the rooms on the ground floor of the west wing of the Palazzo Alfieri. At the end of the corridor there was a narrow passageway, difficult to move about in, where for decades every type of material had accumulated. Amid piles of scrap paper, old chairs and broken bottles there emerged, in a fair condition for its age, a volume rebound in leather, which, once the dense layer of dust on the cover boards had been removed, turned out to contain an old manuscript. The title specifies its contents in detail: Il presente Libro è diviso in tre partj, la prima, che insegna a far Giuochj di mano, tutti con Carte. Il secondo far Giuochj di mano con Bussolottj, e simili.

Il terzo, varij Giuocolini da passar l’ozzio, con alcune esperienze, e Segretj, tutti da mè prouati. (The present Book is divided into three parts, the first one, that teaches how to do Sleight-of-Hand Tricks, all with Cards. The second, how to do Sleight-of-Hand Tricks with Cups and similar things.

The third, various little Tricks, to pass leisure [time], with some experiments and Secrets, all tested by me.)

There is no indication of the author’s name, the place the manuscript was composed or the date of composition.

About ten years after it was found, it was the task of the present writer to catalog the manuscript, an operation that involved a detailed examination and description of the volume. It is a volume in 4o, ­composed of Q

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From page 253 of MSS. III, 18

From Florence to Asti Stephen Minch with the help of Thierry Depaulis

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hoever the author of the conjuring manuscript MSS. III, 18 was, he was a Florentine, and not a citizen of Asti; and he probably wrote his manuscript around 1700.

These are the conclusions of Thierry Depaulis, leading authority on the history of playing cards and card games, after his examination of the author’s drawings of playing cards and various card games he mentions in the manuscript. Taking the usual caution in such estimates, Depaulis dates the composition as being sometime from 1670 to 1730.

Let’s begin with the drawings.

On page 253 of the manuscript is a drawing of an Ace of Spades and a card back, incorporated into the plan for constructing a shell meant to represent a deck of cards. Thierry Depaulis notes that the Ace has turnedover edges; that is, all four edges of the card are folded over and attached to its face to create a border. This is a feature of Florentine design and a style of card-making that would be entirely unknown in Asti. The drawing of the back design shows a non-figurative ornament plus the word Poverone. These features were quite common for a card back of the period under consideration. Il Poverone was the well-known sign of a card maker in Florence. The company was probably established in the seventeenth century and was still operating in the late eighteenth century. Depaulis suggests that this kind of back design dates from the eighteenth century, although it is difficult to say how early or late it might be.

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Part 1 begins.

The present Book is divided into three parts, iThe First Teaches How to do

i

Sleight-of-Hand Tricks, All with Cards.

The Second,

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How to do Sleight-of-Hand Tricks with Cups and Similar Things.

The Third,

i

Various Little Tricks to Spend Leisure [Time] with Some Experiments and Secrets, All Tested by Me.

[Translated by Lori Pieper]

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Way of keeping [track of] the card.

First, when you want to keep [track of ] a card that another [person] has taken, or that ultimately you need to know [it is] where you like, when you take it,

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you see [in the ­drawing above]. Now, when you have arranged it in this way, you also press the cards, and strike the outer side on the table, so that they will return [to being] exactly even, and nothing of the deception will be seen. But when you have put them back even, if, when you cut, you want to know where card no. 1 is, since you know already where it is, you send either the palm or the £ngers a little bit forward, so that you will come to see the unevenness outside, and you cut there so that you will not err. But in addition to this, another person would

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To cause a coin to pass from one hand to another as you stand with your arms in a cross, without ever joining them.

In the £rst place you will make a little purse in exactly the shape you see here below, so that a tallero129 [can] enter there, or what you want to cause to pass over, closed on the side that is round and open on precisely the side where there come to be two ends of [the piece of ] cloth, which open with ease, and there you put the tallero in blindly and with one hand alone, as the trick requires [you] to do. Now in order to later close them [i.e., the two ends of the purse] again easily, and so that the tallero does not fall, on one of the two ends you make a ring, and on another you attach the cord, which when pulled, joins the said two ends; and this cord that is attached there must be long enough to pass from one hand to the other, although here below, because there is not enough paper, I have only hinted at it. And at the end of the said cord is attached a little stick also in the form that you see here following. When you want to do this trick, you £rst cross this cord underneath your shirt, so that it passes from one sleeve to the other, such that the little sack arrives directly in your left hand, and the little piece of wood in the right; and because the cord would [otherwise] remain uncovered on top of your wrists, you have a pair of gloves without £ngers, through which you pass the cord, and that they must

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[Reproduced at 76% of the original size] Q

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Gibecière do the trick, you will operate in the way that I will say later, that is, after the said £gures.

First, so that the trick is not a flop when you do it, you will tell a story, and it is that a Sorceress who was short of grain called on a moneylender, who had a great quantity of grain, to help her. When he did not want to give her anything, she gave him two grains of hers, which, being enchanted, made all the moneylender’s grain go into the enchantress’s granary, and that of the moneylender was left empty. The bell is the enchantress’s granary, the cup that of the miser. Put both on the table and show that under the bell there is nothing but those two grains. Thus take them and put them into the cup with all the others, then say, “You saw [that] this one is full,” and cover it with the lid; and raising the bell, say, “And here underneath there is nothing.” But during the time you set it back down, touch the little stick, and that [touches] the [inside] layer [i.e., the piece of leather], which as it falls also makes the grain 168 2 Gibecière ‹› Winter 2013 Q

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Addition to the Trick of the Cups Described on Page [n]o. 151.

When you do the Trick of the Cups, you have one of them apart, made in the form that I will describe for you here below, and you will be able to do the trick of drinking a cup of wine, having it pass into another [cup] that you have in your hand, and then into another [cup] that is on the table.

Model of how the said cup is inside, cut in half.

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Courtesy of the Thierry Depaulis collection.

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Florentine playing cards, made by Giacomo Antonio Zoya, trademark “Pellegrino,” recorded in Florence in 1785–91. Note the distinctive Italian turned-over edges, referred to in note 112.

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