Buatier De Kolta is certainly a magician of great significance, the creator of many classics of magic. It is said that his act consisted of his own original creations (most of which were pilfered by rival magicians) His creations included: Multiplying Billiard Balls, The Expanding Cube (Expanding Die), The Vanishing Bird Cage, Flowers from a Paper Cone (spring flowers) among others. De Kolta's Vanishing Lady illusion is one of his most well-remembered effects: A newspaper is spread out on the stage floor (to disprove the use of trap doors), then a chair is placed on the newspaper, a woman is seated on the chair and covered by a large cloth . De Kolta whisked the cloth away and the lady vanished (in De Kolta's version the cloth vanished, too ! but I know of no other magician who performs it that way.) Here is historical recreation performed by Adam Wilde: https://youtu.be/6zsm3feEq6Q?t=54

By the way, a pet peeve of mine is magicians referring to The Vanishing Lady in public (such as on YouTube) as "The De Kolta Chair Illusion". Dammit, guys, it's not an illusion about a chair. The chair should be perceived by the audience as "just a chair" the lady sits down on.

Here is an online biography of Buatier De Kolta: https://www.themagicdetective.com/2020/0......ion.html There is a book (now out of print) by Peter Warlock titled 'Buatier de Kolta: Genius of Illusion' (published by Mike Caveney in 1993)

In some form or another most of De Kolta's creations are still performed today. I have searched for a photograph showing De Kolta performing his 'La Cage Volante' (The Flying Cage, aka The Elusive Canary, or The Vanishing Bird Cage). As far as I have been able to determine in my research there are no extant photographs of De Kolta with his vanishing bird cage (which was originally a large, cylindrical shaped cage, although I have read that later on he switched to using the more familiar rectangular shaped cage) The only imagery I can find is a 3-panel drawing of De Kolta with his cylindrical cage published in 'The Magician Annual 1909-1910' By Will Goldston.





Just for fun, I took a stab at making a historical recreation photo of De Kolta with his cage. This was created as a composite photographic image in Photoshop , it is not AI imagery. (the original photo was of De Kolta performing his illusion 'The Expanding Die' - see here: https://tinyurl.com/DeKoltaExpandingDie )





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I saw John McGiven perform the round DeKolta style cage. It was bigger but I would not say more impressive. John said it was a delicate construction that required repair almost everytime it was done. This may be why DeKolta ended up doing the square style cage.

In one of the magic auction catalogs I found a photo of the John McKinven reproduction of the large oval DeKolta cage.

Buatier De Kolta invented the classic effect "Flowers From a Paper Cone" (aka "Spring Flowers") where a sheet of newspaper is rolled into a cone , shown empty , and then overflows with dozens of flowers.

A quick casual glance at the picture of the flowers and cone, he almost looks like Ricky Jay.

Indeed you're right! I hadn't noticed that but he does look like Ricky.

I think it was John Mulholland, who having seen De Kolta as a very young child... said his memory was vague, but that DeKolta reminded him of a 'performing bear'! Make of that what you will!

I can't remember where I came across it (maybe a zoom lecture, or perhaps something like Maven's Parallax) but I'm quite sure I heard in the last few years someone quite knowledgeable opining that originally, spring flowers were made so well they looked real. I think this proves that's not the case-- not that it really takes anything away.

It may not show up very well in the black and white photo of De Kolta, but often the spring flowers of old were hand tinted with transparent ink or water color washes with gradation of color that gave the effect of real flowers.

These were listed in an auction catalog as being surviving examples of De Kolta's flowers (of course, never intended to viewed close up , but from stage distance)


Other examples of spring flowers from the 1920's - 1940's era I've seen have some really beautiful coloration effects.

Oh thank you! The person was correct. In B&W They look terrible as they are now, in color they are fantastic. Thanks for sharing.

The other problem with many presentations of spring flowers is that there are too many clashing colors, so the effect is garish. Also, as David Devant (and other past masters) advised , the proportion of GREEN leaves should be much higher than the number of colored blooms, to give a more realistic appearance.





More green, less colors works better:




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHu138_nGgg




The same principle applies to feather flowers. In many cases they look like a rainbow feather duster, but made right they can be quite beautiful stage props . See:

Feather Flowers Gallery -
https://photos.app.goo.gl/vNGheUwxXDqvmHYU9


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