Salon de Magie: The Klosterman Collection Part I

Kellar, Harry (Heinrich Keller). Harry Kellar’s Center Table. Louis XIV-style gilded center table with cabriole legs supporting a finely carved base incorporating a Bacchus-like head at its center, flanked by flowers and foliage, and four matching faces at the top of each leg. The top incorporating some thirteen secret devices, including traps of varying designs (wrist, rabbit, and coin), electrical connections, as well as pistons to control a Devil’s Head automaton. Height 36". Width 55 ¼". Width 23 ¾" at widest point. With an engraved brass plate attached identifying the table as once in the collection of the John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art (number 1786). With lock and key for rear servante. Owned and used by Harry Kellar. See Salon de Magie, page 166. This table was at one time part of the Hooker and Larson collections, having also been owned by John A. Petrie and John J. McManus. In Greater Magic (1938), the center table rated mention among only a handful of unusual and significant props in Larson’s collection: “Kellar occupied a position midway between the old time magician who relied entirely on elaborate mechanical pieces and a stage full of apparatus and the modern performer using a practically bare stage. Kellar to the last remained his old time center table.” The table itself was prominently featured in contemporary photographs of Larson’s New York studio.