The Devil’s Playthings

Beauty in the Macabre

An original short film featuring a concert of sleight-of-hand conceived as a macabre fantasy, performed by David Ben, one of the world’s foremost practitioners of card table artifice, as a tribute to his late friend, the renowned adventurer and tribal art collector, Billy Jamieson, and his collection of artifacts documenting human humiliation and cruelty.

TAKE TWO ARCHIVE

A Curated Study of Magic 

Welcome to the Take Two Archive, a rich and colourful collection of essays by Jamy Ian Swiss.

The project was originally conceived as a weekly post to share the author’s insights on the appreciation for the art of magic. Over two years, it has evolved to become a collection of seventy-two articles that examine the specific form, or individual styles of magic and magicians, using two (often more!) curatorial choices of magic videos to illustrate.

This collection covers a broad array of magic and magicians, offering you an interesting point of entry, not only to the tricks themselves, but also into the minds of the artist, their history and backgrounds, mixed with Jamy’s personal viewpoints on what makes these subjects so fascinating. 

Where should you start?

You can’t go wrong. Here is the collection, starting with the oldest post first. But whether you choose to dive in at the beginning, or work your way backward you will find a rich treasure trove of essays and videos curated for you, ready and waiting. 

If you are looking for a specific post or magician, we have created these two indexes to help narrow your search:

Alphabetical Index        Numeric Index

MOVIE MAGIC

Most magic collectors are focused on accumulating apparatus, books, posters and ephemera. But in the Seventies, Larry Thornton, of Calgary, Canada set his sights on a different medium. His goal was to create a visual record of magicians who performed on film and television. Before home VCRs made it possible to preserve performances from live television, Larry went out, 8mm camera in hand, and started recording magicians whenever and wherever they would grant him permission.

The result is an extraordinary collection of home movies, meticulously preserved and catalogued—a rich video archive of magic video featuring many well-known performers including, Daryl, Paul Harris, Paul Gertner, Johnny Ace Palmer, Abert Goshman and Mike Skinner... to name a few!

The collection includes performances from 1976 to 1981. Larry set the scene where performers gave private performances for small audiences or directly to the camera in hotel rooms at magic conventions and other gatherings. Some of the convention stage acts were also preserved. Through 2016 and 2017, these reels were digitized and prepared for our online video archive, The Screening Room. 

We made Larry’s acquaintance while collaborating with Dale and Lynda Harney on the Magic Palace exhibition. We discovered Larry not only had immaculate copies of the Magic Palace television shows, but that he also had an immense stockpile of 8mm reels of his own making. He generously agreed to share this treasure with Magicana for viewing in The Screening Room.

We are thrilled to share this material with a wider audience as a free online resource for research, entertainment, nostalgia and—most importantly—sharing wonder.

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