This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 10/26/2024
DE VEGA (Alex Stewart, 1892 - 1971). Twelve Handwritten Instructional Magic Notebooks. 1910s – 50s. Includes neatly written (and sometimes elaborately illustrated) instructions for hundreds of feats, including both sleight of hand tricks but also mechanical devices and complicated apparatus, as well as stage illusions. Among the effects explained and described are the [Walter] Jeans Coin Production, Hugard’s Floating Ball, Table to Sweeper (vacuum), Houdini’s Pinchers, Frank Lane’s Vanishing Knot, and dozens of card tricks, rope tricks, and stage effects; as well as illusions and tricks gleaned from classic conjuring books and periodicals, among them Okito’s Quality Magic, Goldston’s locked books, The Sphinx, and works by Oswald Rae, Annemann, John Booth, Kaplan, Tarbell, and others. Two notebooks relate to De Vega’s work with Marionettes, including scripts, as well as designs for figures that transform while in use, appear from inside an inflated balloon, etc., and another deals with visual gags and comedic situations. Each bound in cloth-backed boards with wear from heavy use and handling (a few disbound or with starting hinges), but good condition overall. A remarkably detailed and intricate personal chronicle of magic tricks, stage illusions, and related ideas from the mind of this inventive magician and author.