Drawer Box With Holes Magic Trick
"Dissecting Drawer Box" from the Marco Pusterla Collection. Nigh images, when clicked on, will testify the movie in higher definition.
One of the most enduring magic tricks, with which almost any magician, amateur or professional, has at least once played with, must exist the "drawer box", a wooden parallelepiped with a drawer which can be shown empty, closed, opened again, and shown to contain some objects that accept mysteriously materialized. Today, this box is often constitute made in plastic, churned out in hundreds of thousands of copies by some company in China, and sold equally a toy for children, as a commercial gadget to promote products, or every bit part of a magic set for aspiring magicians.
The object doesn't actually look like anything existing in this fourth dimension and age, and it oftentimes looks like what it is: a suspicious magic device, hiding some clever mechanism to befuddle the unwary. On doing a quick search for images of contemporary drawer boxes on the Internet, i sees an interesting gallery of the nigh variegated, multi-coloured, collection of boxes.
Modern Boxes
A modern drawer box. Of course, information technology looks EXACTLY similar something you have in your home, doesn't it?
The predominant colours of these boxes seem to exist the reds and the yellows, making them different from what everyone not in bear witness business would run across as a "normal," everyday household object. The use of these boxes seems to be obscure, simply suitable to a magician on a stage, a cruise ship, or at a children'due south birthday party. This was not e'er so, and this curious object has a long story backside it, a story and a justification which was well known to magicians of yesteryear and has since been forgotten. The recent acquisition of two such boxes, from the mid/late nineteenthursday century, has inspired me to share with you, my faithful reader, their story and the amazing workmanship that skilled artisans had put in them, something defective in today's mass-produced toys.[one]
It is now time to explain that the outset drawer boxes were not gaudy decorated, but, instead, looked like a normal jewellery box which may exist found in the boudoir of the Victorian lady: a more than or less substantial box, with a single or, generally, more drawers, in which to store bracelets, necklaces, rings, earrings, and the usual knick knacks women seem to be fond of equally much as they are mysterious to most men. While jewellery boxes with a drawer were non the most common containers for these objects (equally it is indeed easier to elevator a lid rather than to pull out a drawer and rummage inside to look for that pair of mother of pearl earrings), examples of jewellery boxes with a chapeau and i or two drawers tin exist found at specialist antiquarians, so they must have certainly looked familiar to Victorian audiences.
The trick is in the box!
The first description of the working of the "drawer box" in English language language can exist plant in that classical text, Modern Magic , past Prof. Hoffmann, first published in 1876 and that quickly sold out its kickoff printing (two,000 copies) to and so become through many reprints until the turn of the new century. The drawer box quickly became a very popular object and entered in the repertoire of many conjurers, being widely available at the Victorian magic depots. The fob doesn't crave any skill, as the clever mechanical box tin exist used past any amateur without long and wearisome practice sessions, and it allows showy productions of live animals (the classical bunny) or of large quantities of silks or collapsible items. So much so that already in 1900, Ellis Stanyon was lamenting:
The Drawer Box – This is i of the oldest pieces of apparatus designed for a magical production, but […] its hole-and-corner is pretty generally known. [2]
As the hush-hush (an inner drawer which can be held back with the help of a finger, while showing the outermost drawer empty) became increasingly known, inventive conjurers and mechanics devised more sophisticated boxes, able to withstand a more thorough exam by the hands of a knowledgeable audience (who may have read Hoffmann'southward book), or to produce farther effects, like a double product from the same box.
An exquisite "Dissecting Drawer Box"
In my collection a identify of honour belongs to one of the best made boxes I e'er had the opportunity to see, a superior model sold under the name of the Dissecting Drawer Box. This box allows a double magical production and, between the first and 2nd product, information technology can be taken apart to be shown completely empty and apparently devoid of guile.
" data-medium-file="https://smallmagicollector.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/drawer_featured1.jpg?w=200" data-large-file="https://smallmagicollector.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/drawer_featured1.jpg?w=200" class="wp-image-916 size-full" src="https://smallmagicollector.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/drawer_featured1.jpg?w=614" alt="" srcset="https://smallmagicollector.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/drawer_featured1.jpg 200w, https://smallmagicollector.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/drawer_featured1.jpg?w=150 150w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px">
The mystic box that will produce two large quantities of scarves, silks and other compressible items.
Detail of the studs on the box
The box measures 25 ten 16 x 12.5 cm (9.8 x half-dozen.iii x iv.nine inches), it is of rosewood, with panels of parquetry decoration, inlays and studding. The studding is something that is hardly ever seen in these objects and it's a sequence of metal circles (semi-spheres) and stars, alternating on the edge of the domed acme of the box. While the box is aesthetically very nice and it may pass for a Victorian jewellery box, the mechanisms in it are where the magic lover wonders on the ingenuity and the skills of the builder.
Detail of the drawer, with the inner compartment exposed
The drawer can be removed completely and shown up close to the audition: it is not possible to see that information technology is actually double and there is an inner i. The only fashion to separate the outer drawer from the inner one is by depressing a tongue of wood on the base of the outer box: this raises a piece of wood which engages the inner drawer, preventing it from sliding out. In this manner, the drawer is shown empty, the box is closed while pressure on the tongue is released and, on opening the box again, the audience will exist amazed by the sudden appearance of the big number of scarves, or past a white rabbit.
" data-medium-file="https://smallmagicollector.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/04web.jpg?w=276" data-large-file="https://smallmagicollector.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/04web.jpg?w=614" class="wp-image-892" src="https://smallmagicollector.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/04web.jpg?w=212&h=230" alt="The "Dissecting Drawer Box" opened. If you look carefully at the lid, you can see the panel that hides the second load." width="212" height="230" srcset="https://smallmagicollector.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/04web.jpg?w=212&h=230 212w, https://smallmagicollector.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/04web.jpg?w=424&h=460 424w, https://smallmagicollector.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/04web.jpg?w=138&h=150 138w, https://smallmagicollector.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/04web.jpg?w=276&h=300 276w" sizes="(max-width: 212px) 100vw, 212px">
The "Dissecting Drawer Box" opened. If you look carefully at the lid, yous will see the panel that hides the 2nd load.
At this point, the drawer can be removed and the box opened. I accept to confess that when I caused the box, I spent a expert hour trying to sympathise how to open it: of course, I wanted to avoid breaking it, but I could not discover any clandestine button to depress to disengage the sides. The studs on the top deceived me, while I was pushing, pulling, prodding and blasphemous under my breath. To open the box it's a affair of pushing the height of the sides, to unlock the lid, then to pull back the bottom part of the sides, to unlock the lesser, which will fall down, leaving the box completely open.
The take hold of element of the side. Click on the image to capeesh the details.
Details of the bottom closure of the sides of the box.
This solution is highly ingenious equally it is simple: the closures are elementary and, by operating in two different ways (outside and inside) keep the box solid all the time. The box can then be closed again, the drawer inserted, a magic gesture washed over information technology and, on re-opening, some other product volition fill the drawer. This product was of course hidden inside the domed height and information technology is released past depressing a wooden slat in the back wall, which, when raised, pushes a hinged bar that is holding a fake top. On this bar tilting, the panel of forest will fall inside the drawer, releasing the load of compressible items hidden higher up it.
Who made me?
Who was the manufacturer of this box, when was it fabricated, where does information technology come from? Unfortunately, the box doesn't contain any label or mark that could place the maker. Equally the measurements are exact in centimetres, my guess is that the box was fabricated in continental Europe, perchance in France, and and then imported into England and sold past some of the magic dealers of the country, like Joseph Bland, of whom I've already talked nearly, or W. H. Cremer, both well known to Prof. Hoffmann. Indeed, Hoffmann describes this model of Drawer Box on page 346 of Modern Magic . Likewise, it is very difficult to date the box, not knowing the maker, and by not having any reference, I estimate information technology may be dated to around 1870, merely other experts have suggested it may be older.
From where does this box come from? Sometimes, when knowing the provenance, 1 can reconstruct the story of an object, perhaps even identify a famous possessor: I would exist thrilled to learn if the box had belonged to such luminaries of the magic arts as Compars Herrmann, or to Professor Anderson (The Neat Sorcerer of the N), or even to John Nevil Maskelyne. Alas! this is non something I have been able to ascertain. The box comes from the collection of Prof. Gerard L'Estrange Turner (1926-2012), an authority on the history of the microscope and of other scientific instruments. Indeed, Prof. Turner, as a researcher, from 1963, in the Museum for the History of Science in Oxford, had a vantage position to study and identify the provenance of old scientific instruments. He had a sizeable collection of antiquarian scientific toys and described some of them in a chapter titled Recreational Science in his 1983 book Nineteenth-Century Scientific Instruments . The links will take you to the relevant pages on Google Books. Frustratingly, the Drawer Box is non listed in the book, which probably makes sense equally it is well known equally a magic pull a fast one on, rather than a toy for "recreational sciences," so my quest to identify its history has reached some other stumbling block.
Co-ordinate to John Gaughan [three], the complexity of these boxes makes them very deficient: just half a dozen were built every year, and often they were custom built for some professional wizard or wealthy entertainer. In fact, yous don't observe many "Dissecting Drawer Boxes" offered for auction regularly: generally, you can find only the standard model of the trick. Indeed, at the time of this writing, I could find merely two boxes as having sold in the recent past: the outset one, quite like to mine, by Bloomsbury in the Great britain in 2008 (apparently, information technology belonged to Jasper Maskelyne), while the 2d, an American one from the collection of Jay Marshall, non every bit elaborate as mine, sold in 2010.
The super-cloak-and-dagger epitome of the box, showing the lid console removed and exposing the hidden compartment.
Thinking well-nigh Magic
Is it of import to know who used this box? Probably not: he may have been a performer or possibly the box originally belonged to a collector who treasured it. The important matter, I think, is to know and to admire the subtle mechanism that causes the magic to happen, and to be amazed past the ingenuity and by the skill of the unknown artisan, whose proper noun is now lost to history. Such an amount of ingenuity went into this box and it has now been lost in the bastardized version 1 tin buy today for a few dozen dollars. To learn, to know and to study the history of magic can give joy to the pupil, giving a sense of wonder in discovering the lengths our predecessors went through to create the illusion of Magic.
Notes:
- This mail service talks simply about ane box just: the second one is fifty-fifty more mysterious and, if I will receive sufficient requests, I will dedicate another post to it.
- Stanyon's Magic, Vol. 1, n. seven, p. 54, April 1901
- Genii Magazine, Vol. 74, n. 4, p. 29, April 2011
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