Now in its 2nd Edition, May 2023
This item gathers together greetings cards from David Devant and his family. We are most grateful to have been granted permission to include cards from The Edwin A Dawes Collection, The Magic Circle Archives, London, The Paul Kieve Collection, The Ian Keable Collection and The Peter Lane Collection. Click on View Details to download the file.
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E-newsletters like this one are sent out four times a year, highlighting recent additions to the website. If you’d like to be added to the mailing list, please contact the curator.
The December 2021 issue included:
– a very effective penetration trick from 1933.
– a box from the German magic dealer Carl Willmann, full of apparatus for a shadowgraphy performance.
– rare items from the Maskelyne and Cooke Provincial Company from the 1900 period.
– a 1904 illuminated address to Mr. and Mrs. Devant, concerning their daughter Vida.
– examples of novelties and jokes spanning 100 years.
– new plans for the website in 2022.
To see all the other e-news, click on Website e-news.
This charming presentation signed by the members of the company accompanied the gift of a Dressing Case. Research in recent decades has pointed towards their daughter Vida Mary Heather being adopted by the Devants. This might explain the wording ‘congratulations on the recent advent of your daughter’. There is no mention of the birth of Vida.
Peter Brunning’s painstaking research has uncovered the most complete story yet about Devant and his family. This includes new insights into Devant’s marriage and his daughter Vida, topics which have puzzled many magic historians. Peter’s article is illustrated with seldom seen images from the Davenport Collection.
This rather well known photograph, reproduced in Devant’s ‘My Magic Life’, shows Vida and Jasper as they appeared with Devant in his Boy, Girl and Eggs trick at the Royal Command Performance at the Palace Theatre, London on 1 July 1912. For some reason Devant’s book gives the date of the photograph as 1913.