The cups and balls is a performance of magic with innumerable adaptations. Street gambling variations performed by conmen were known as Bunco Booths. A typical cups and balls routine includes many of the most fundamental effects of magic: the balls can vanish, appear, transpose, reappear and transform. Basic skills, such as misdirection, manual dexterity, sleight of hand, and audience management are also essential to most cups and balls routines. As a result, mastery of the cups and balls is considered by many as the litmus test of a magician's skill with gimmick style tricks. Magician John Mulholland wrote that Harry Houdini had expressed the opinion that no one could be considered an accomplished magician until he had mastered the cups and balls. Professor Hoffman called the cups and balls "the groundwork of all legerdemain".
Sleight of hand ) refers to fine motor skills when used by performing artists in different art forms to entertain or manipulate. It is closely associated with close-up magic, card magic, card flourishing and stealing. Because of its heavy use and practice by magicians, sleight of hand is often confused as a branch of magic; however, it is a separate genre of entertainment and many artists practice sleight of hand as an independent skill. Sleight of hand pioneers with worldwide acclaim include Dan and Dave, Ricky Jay, Derek DelGaudio, David Copperfield, Yann Frisch, Norbert Ferré, Dai Vernon, Jerry Sadowitz, Cardini, Tony Slydini, Helder Guimarães and Tom Mullica.
Card manipulation, commonly known as card magic, is the branch of magic that deals with creating effects using sleight of hand techniques involving playing cards. Card manipulation is often used in magical performances, especially in close-up, parlor, and street magic. Some of the most recognized names in this field include Dai Vernon, Tony Slydini, Ed Marlo, S.W. Erdnase, Richard Turner, John Scarne, Ricky Jay and René Lavand. Before becoming world-famous for his escapes, Houdini billed himself as "The King of Cards". Among the more well-known card tricks relying on card manipulation are Ambitious Card, and Three-card Monte, a common street hustle also known as Find the Lady.
Coin magic is the manipulating of coins to entertain audiences. Because coins are small, most coin tricks are considered close-up magic or table magic, as the audience must be close to the performer to see the effects. Though stage conjurers generally do not use coin effects, coin magic is sometimes performed onstage using large coins. In a different type of performance setting, a close-up coin magician will use a large video projector so the audience can see the magic on a big screen. Coin magic is generally considered harder to master than other close-up techniques such as card magic, as it requires great skill and grace to perform convincingly, and this requires much practice to acquire.
A trick deck is a deck of playing cards that has been altered in some way to allow magicians to perform certain card tricks where sleight of hand would be too difficult or impractical.
David Frederick Wingfield Verner, better known by his stage names Dai Vernon or The Professor, was a Canadian magician.
Max Malini was a magician who at his peak performed for several US Presidents and at Buckingham Palace, receiving gifts from monarchs across Europe and Asia. Many magicians, such as Dai Vernon and Ricky Jay, have held him in high esteem for his skill and bold accomplishments.
This is a glossary of conjuring terms used by magicians.
This timeline of magic is a history of the performing art of illusion from B.C. to the present.
The French drop, also known as "Le Tourniquet", is a sleight of hand method used by magicians to vanish a small object such as a coin or ball. It is one of the oldest methods of vanishing, however it is still effective when properly executed. Although the method is known as a vanish, it can also be used as a switch or transformation, giving rise to numerous possibilities.
The hat-trick is a classic magic trick where a performer will produce an object out of an apparently empty top hat.
Herbert Gershen Zarrow was an American magician influential in the profession for his inventions of unique sleight of hand and card tricks. The inventor of the Zarrow shuffle, his skills were held in the highest regard in professional magicians' circles.
The Tarbell Course in Magic is a notable encyclopedia of magic amongst professional and amateur magicians. It has eight volumes; the first five were part of the original home-study correspondence course compiled in 1928 by Harlan Tarbell, the remaining three volumes being added on later.
Platform magic is magic that is done for larger audiences than close-up magic and for smaller audiences than stage magic. It is more intimate than stage magic because it does not require expensive, large-scale stage equipment and can thus be performed closer to the audience and without a stage. Many of the tricks performed by platform magicians are sufficiently angle-sensitive as to make them impossible to perform as micromagic. Most working magicians are parlor/platform magicians.
Chink-a-chink is a simple close-up magic coin trick in which a variety of small objects, usually four, appear to magically transport themselves from location to location when covered by the performer's hands, until the items end up gathered together in the same place. Variations, especially the Sympathetic Coins, also known as Coins-n-Cards, have been performed since the 1800s. Popular modern variations are Shadow Coins and Matrix. A variation using playing cards as the objects is known as Sympathetic Aces.
Karl Fulves was a magician and author and editor of publications on magic, including the Pallbearers Review, a series of books on sleight of hand and close-up magic.
The Bamberg Magical Dynasty were a Dutch family of magicians, consisting of six generations of Bambergs. The Bambergs were an upper middle-class Jewish family. Three Bambergs were court magicians who entertained the Dutch royal family, and many of the Bambergs were also trained actors. This chain was unbroken for 165 years, from the 18th to the 20th centuries.
Magic, which encompasses the subgenres of illusion, stage magic, and close-up magic, among others, is a performing art in which audiences are entertained by tricks, effects, or illusions of seemingly impossible feats, using natural means. It is to be distinguished from paranormal magic which are effects claimed to be created through supernatural means. It is one of the oldest performing arts in the world.
The art form of card flourishing, commonly referred to as cardistry, grew out of simple flourishes used in close-up magic by magicians in the 1990s to early 2000s. Chris Kenner's notable two-handed Sybil cut from his 1992 publication Totally Out of Control has carried great influence and gave birth to a series of advanced flourishes which today represents the foundation of the performance art. Sleight of hand pioneers Dan and Dave Buck popularized cardistry on the world stage with their instructional DVD releases from 2004 and 2007. Journalist Kevin Pang of Vanity Fair characterized the art of card flourishing as, "It's yo-yo tricks performed by cardsharps with the street cred of a Parkour video. There's a name for it: cardistry."
