More Auctions!

Martinka & Co. has announced an upcoming 20 April auction offering items from the Milbourne Christopher Collection.  A “sneak peak” of the books was posted on their website earlier this week, where you’ll find an Erdnase, a Pinchbeck, and 7 others.  250 lots of posters, books, and other memorablia will be up for the highest bidder.

This would be the third auction from the Christopher collection.  The first auction took place on October 15, 1981, with Milbourne Christopher himself in attendance (see sidebar for advertisement).

From Genii, Vol 45, No 9 (Sep 1981), p. 607

Milbourne died June 17, 1984.  In my opinion, the most heartfeld tribute to Milbourne can be found in pp 79-90 of Twelve Have Died.

• Robinson, Ben, White, Larry, Dawes, Edwin A. (ed.), and Booth, John N. (Ed.) Twelve Have Died: Bullet Catching – The Story & Secrets. Watertown: Ray Goulet’s Magic Art Book Co. 1986. 191 pp. Cover | Full Title

The second auction occurred on October 30, 1997.

• [Swann Galleries]. Magic: From the Collection of Milbourne Christopher. New York: Swann Galleries. 1997. Cover | Full Title | Full Text via Ask Alexander

From the frontispiece:

The catalogue for this auction includes rarities that the Christopher Collection acquired through British and American friends such as Roland Winder, Trevor Hall and Adrian Smith. Before Christopher’s death the collection was housed in New York and Baltimore. Both residences were decorated with hocus pocus posters, playbills and paintings.

More importantly, the collection served as a working library of Christopher’s many articles and columns, and as research material for his more than twenty books, as well as for books of countless other writers whom he unselfishly welcomed and often assisted despite his own demanding, multifaceted schedule of performing, writing, editing and inventing.

The Christopher Collection also provided inspiration and stage settings for his television and theatre shows. His favorite posters were likely to turn up on his specials on NBC, CBS, Westinghouse, or the BBC.

My husband had planned to have this second auction before his death on June 17, 1984. However, he sidetracked his own plans while he maneuvered to keep his friend John Mulholland’s Collection intact and in America after the Players Club had decided to sell it.

The 1981 Christopher sale at Swann Galleries set a record for a magic auction in America. The illusionist who had created the collection sat watching in the back of the crowded room with his wonderful smile lighting up the place.

James Hagy gives a 12-page review of this second sale in the magazine Perennial Mystics #13 (Full text via Ask Alexander), which does a great job of giving you describing the excitement and feel of the auction, including this gem:

An acknowledgement was also made of Maurine Christopher’s presence in the room, which was greeted with soft, appreciative applause by the audience. George Lowry added that “not only has she given you a h— of a sale, she has given you a h— of a chance to schmooze, something you all seem expert at.”

The entire collection was catalogued by George P. Hansen, and the 4,178 distinct entries (many with multiple copies) was published in these two books:

• Christopher, Maureen Brooks and Hansen, George P. The Milbourne Christopher Library: Magic, Mind Reading, Psychic Research, Spirtualism and the Occult, 1589-1900. Pasadena: Mike Caveney’s Magic Words. 1994. 160 pp. Cover | Full Title
• Christopher, Maureen Brooks and Hansen, George P. The Milbourne Christopher Library: Magic, Mind Reading, Psychic Research, Spirtualism and the Occult, 1901-1996. Pasadena: Mike Caveney’s Magic Words. 1998. 339 pp. Cover | Full Title

Indeed, one can find all 9 books in Martinka’s preview website listed in these volumes.

Finally, one of Martinka’s e-mail newsletters advertising the preview shows that the “History of Magic – Bronze Statue” will be up for sale.  A detail of this statue graces the cover of my copy of Christopher’s Illustrated History of Magic.

• Christopher, Milbourne. The Illustrated History of Magic. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company. 1973. 452 pp. Cover | Full Title

Auctions!

Auctions abound this month. First up, the new Potter & Potter auction catalog for their March 26, 2001 “Rare Posters” Sale arrived early last week (Full PDF here).

• Fujari, Gabe. Rare Posters: Conjuring, Circus and Allied Arts. Chicago: Potter & Potter Auctions, Inc. 2011. 55 pp. Cover | Full Title | Complete Text

I don’t have the wallet to be a poster collector, but a few things things caught my eye:

1 – Introductory Essay.  An “adapted reprint” of the Introduction from 100 Years of Magic Posters from the late Charles Reynolds and Regina Reynolds appropriately starts off the catalog.  It’s great to see these Potter & Potter take a page or two, as they consistently have over the years, to honor the subject or collector at auction.

Their January auction Card Table Artifice & Legerdemain was no different, and cleverly paid homage to Erdnase (the cover auction) in the catalog title page and also in the preface.  A side-by-side of the auction catalog (left) and Erdnase:

At left, Fujari's auction catalog preface. At right, Erdnase's classic text.

2- Full color publications seem to have finally become cost effective for the low print runs of conjuring books over the past year (think the Taschen book, Beating a Dead Horse, Classic Correspondence I…) but gets put to no greater use than here with full color reproductions of every single poster in-line with the lot descriptions.  I believe that’s a first for magic auction catalogs.

3 – The now-customary final page previewing the next upcoming auction.  In this case, “Tom-Foolery, the personal property and collection of Tom Mullica, including memorabilia from his legendary Tom-Foolery magic bar in Atlanta, the tricks that made him famous, and the props from the Nicotine Nincompoop cigarette act that took him around the world.” Tom briefly discusses auction his gear towards the end of a Dec 2010 Magic Newswire interview

4 – The cover image of Houdini’s “Ehrenklärung! Im Namen des König’s Wilhelm II. Kaiser v. Deutschland” (misspelled here in the lot description) has always been a favorite of mine.  It’s been reprinted before – you’ll find a black & white reproduction in 100 Years of Magic Posters and a very poor reproduction on page 45 of Milbourne Christopher’s Houdini: A Pictorial Life, but here enlarged and wrapping around the cover with full bleed – it looks fantastic!  Too bad, as the lot commentary claims, only five copies are known to exist and the estimate is $15,000-$20,000!  John Cox discusses the poster a bit more over on his blog Wild About Harry

Potter & Potter have developed quite the knack for auctions over the years and their catalogs are first-rate.  They appear to have effectively bumped Swann Galleries out of the business; presumably the pool of quality collections is too small for two companies to make a living.  We haven’t seen the once-annual October Swann Magic auction since 2007, the same year Potter & Potter scored their first Jay Marshall auction, though Swann’s website still lists Magic “specialist” Gary Garland on staff…

• Christopher, Milbourne. Houdini: A Pictorial Life. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company. 1976. 218 pp. Cover | Full Title
• Erdnase, S. W. Artifice Ruse and Subterfuge at the Card Table: A Treatise on the Science and Art of Manipulating Cards. N.P.: Published by the author. 1902. 205 pp. Cover | Full Title
• Fujari, Gabe and England, Jason. Card Table Artifice & Legerdemain. Chicago: Potter & Potter Auctions. 2011. 60 pp. Cover | Full Title
• Reynolds, Charles and Reynolds, Regina. 100 Years of Magic Posters. New York: Grosset & Dunlap. 1976. 112 pp. Cover | Full Title