This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 10/31/2020
Dove Decapitation Coffers. Circa 1900. Set of two finely made nickel plated receptacles. A white bird is placed in one, a black bird in the other. The heads of the birds are removed and switched; the animals are then shown to have mismatched heads when removed from the coffers. The process is reversed and the birds are as they were at the beginning. Oval coffers 11” at widest. Scarce.Said to be one of the “oldest tricks in the book,” the decapitation of animals and the transposition of their heads is indeed an ancient feat, though recent scholarship has shown that the oldest known descriptions of such feats are most likely fables. Even so, the effect has been a popular one for centuries, and versions of it have been favored by no less than Bartolomeo Bosco, Servais LeRoy and his comic foil Bosco, David Copperfield, and David Blaine. Versions using the apparatus offered here were popular at the turn of the twentieth century.