$900Add to CartOtto Maurer

Illustrated Descriptive Price-List of Magical Apparatus & Illusions

New York: Otto Maurer, Magical Bazaar / Columbia Magic Trick Manufacturing Co., n.d., [ca. 1890]. 7.5 inches, duodecimo. Original printed pictorial wrappers, the front with an engraving of the Magical Bazaar storefront, its verso with the "Card to Customers" and testimonials. Two portrait plates printed in blue, rectos only: Otto Maurer and Otto Maurer, Jr., "Prestidigitateur.". Unpaginated, 118 of 120 leaves ([240] pp.). Profusely illustrated with wood engravings. Catalogue Nos. 1–695 (No. 90 omitted in the numbering, without loss of text); Magicians' and Amateurs' Tables; Handsome Boxes for the Young People, Nos. 1–6; full-page illusions including the Cremation Illusion, the Black Art, the Ajeeb chess automaton and the Disappearing Lady; Special Acts for Ladies; a "Ladies and Gentlemen" address beneath a vignette of Maurer as the devil; a notice of Otto Maurer as "the world's greatest equilibrist and oriental wonder worker," with his portrait in oriental costume; 26 unillustrated entries; Maurer's NOTICE disclaiming any "CONNECTION with parties who are using the name of MAURER in New York and elswhere"; advice to professionals and amateurs; press notices dated 1867–1886; followed by a 45-page illustrated juggling and balancing section with prices, opening with the Columbia company's "Superior Juggler's Stand." The catalogue closes with Punch and Judy figures and the Pigeon Act.

Poor. A heavily used working copy, lacking the rear wrapper and two leaves (Nos. 296–302 and 388–396), with two entries clipped out: most of No. 246, taking the majority of No. 249 on the verso, and all of No. 462, taking No. 468 on the verso. The front wrapper is detached, severely cracked, with losses, and fragile. The spine is covered in old tape, with loss at the head, and there is an old tape repair to the Maurer plate. The binding is sound and the text block intact, though the final few leaves are beginning to separate. The text is printed on inexpensive, uniformly toned stock, with occasional edge tears, dog-ears and missing corners; the final three leaves are heavily chipped at the edges. Early pencil annotations appear beside various entries, mostly "x" marks and the name "Chase," occasionally with prices; there is a pencil mark on the verso of the Jr. plate.

Trade catalogue of Otto Maurer, the Bowery dealer who supplied Houdini, Thurston and Downs, issued under his Columbia Magic Trick Manufacturing Co. name. This expanded edition contains "a considerably greater number of illusions than any list heretofore published," including a substantial illustrated juggling section.The juggling section corresponds closely to Maurer's separately issued catalogue of juggler goods, recorded in a single known, 52 page copy.