Card manipulation
From Free net encyclopedia
Image:Card trick.jpg Card manipulation (or card magic) is the illusion of magic using a deck of playing cards. In modern times, it is associated with the creation of illusions with a deck (or packet) of playing cards. Card magic is commonplace in magic performances , especially in close up magic or parlor magic and street magic.
Playing cards became popular with magicians in the last century or so as they were props which were inexpensive, versatile, and easily manipulated. Although magicians have created and presented myriad illusions with cards ( sometimes referred to as card tricks), these illusions are generally considered to be built upon perhaps a hundred or so basic principles and techniques. Presentation and context (including patter, the conjurer's misleading self-serving account of what he is doing) account for many of the variations.
Card magic, in one form or another, likely dates from the time playing cards became commonly known — towards the second half of the fourteenth century — but its history in this period is largely undocumented. One may surmise from the practice of how other everyday objects have been pressed into the service of conjurers across cultures and the ages that card magic developed spontaneously and roughly concurrently in different parts of the world, if not always synchronously. However, compared to sleight of hand magic in general and to cups and balls, it is a relatively new form of magic.
Notable card practitioners
Main article: list of magicians
- Allan Ackerman
- "Cardini" (Richard Pitchford)
- Charles Bertram
- Dai Vernon
- Darwin Ortiz
- David Blaine
- Ed Marlo (Edward Marlowski)
- Jay Sankey
- Jeff McBride
- Johann Nepomuk Hofzinser
- John Scarne
- Juan Tamariz
- Lennart Green
- Michael Ammar
- Paul Daniels
- Ricky Jay
- Robert Houdin
- Simon Lovell
- S.W. Erdnase (suspected to be Milton Franklin Andrews)