The Art of Magic (T. Nelson Downs)

Description

This classic book of magic was written over 70 years ago and is still referred to by many great magicians today!

The art of sleight of hand is thoroughly discussed pertaining to playing cards, coins, eggs, balls and other everyday items. Different types of apparatus are also explained with detailed illustrations.

This 348 page book is considered to be one of the ten basic books for a working library of conjuring!

For the magician who has learned the basic sleights of cards and coins, and who wants to make his act both mystifying and entertaining, the undisputed all-time best guide is T. Nelson Downs’s The Art of Magic. Downs was one of the greatest sleight-of-hand performers who ever lived, and his name is associated with many of the most famous card and coin manipulations. In this classic volume he compiled a selection of the finest tricks by other magicians, new methods of his own for many tricks, and several tricks that he invented. Beyond giving excellent instructions for all these tricks, Downs often includes complete transcriptions of appropriate patter – a vital part of many tricks that is often missing in other books on magic.

Approximately two-thirds of the book is devoted to tricks with cards:

Everywhere and Nowhere (2 methods)

Houdini’s Torn Card Trick

The Flying Cards (2 methods)

Cards Up the Sleeve (2 methods)

The Card Through the Handkerchief

The Rising Cards (6 versions)

The Four Ace Trick (7 methods)

and many others!

The remainder of the book contains: over 20 unbeatable coin tricks (one of Downs’s specialties), including the latest method for the trick of which he was the supreme exponent, The Miser’s Dream; tricks with eggs; tricks with balls; and miscellaneous tricks, including The Cigarette Paper Trick, The Torn Bank Note, The Vanishing Knot, and the king of all rope ties and the most mysterious release ever invented – The Jacoby Rope Tie.

Many of the outstanding methods and sleights in The Art of Magic cannot be found in any other standard book. The Art of Magic can be recommended as an indispensable book for all intermediate and advanced magicians.

….One of the ten basic books for a working library of conjuring.” – H. Adrian Smith, the noted collector and owner of the largest private magic library in the world’.

….Remains one of the finest manuals of sleight-of-hand in existence.” – Cyclopedia of Magic

Unabridged (1980) republication of the text of the second (1921) edition.

New introduction by Charles R. Reynolds.

New table of contents.

68 illustrations.

348 pages.