I received the following long fax today from Flip in Holland, which should put to rest any questions about the Topsy-Turvy Nesting Chair routine.
Dear Richard,
There's some fuzz about a "Topsy-turvy Chair? routine, credited to Peter Pit and manufactured apparently without his permission by some dealers. One has stopped. Maybe your readers are interested in my side of the story.
Somewhere in the seventies, maybe 1974, I stayed at the Magic Castle, Hollywood. Peter Fit, member of their board of directors, being Dutch like me, wanted to hear the magic. gossip from Holland
During our conversation I showed an interest in the interior design of the Magic Castle, having been a designer myself. Peter invited me then to his apartment to see his Art-Deco collection. Against a wall stood a chair. I said; "Peter, That chair doesn't look quite like pure Art Deco, does it"?" "Right", he answered, "It's a Thayer (or Owen's, I don't recall) nesting chair, a chair with a shell. I don't know yet how to use it".
"Jeez", I remarked, "That's interesting, nesting chairs seem to be very rare, but I happen to have had a triple nesting chair!" Then I told him I bought mine in 1968 from the legacy of Balsamo, a well-known Dutch magician. It might have been of German origin, Bartl or Willmann. That same year I did a routine with it as a climax to a competition-act at our national magic convention (Yes I won a prize).
I had seen the Kalanag Magic Revue as a youngster, and remembered him splitting one chair into three, as a gag. Although surprising, upon reflection it was clear to me that they must have been nested. When I got the chairs myself, I thought what a pity to use such a good principle and such well-made chairs for just a throw-away gag. So my solution was to make it into a good trick. The act was all about the use of "magic salt" and the chair had been used to sit on and put things on. Near the end of the act the chair should vanish with help of the salt, but needed to be isolated.
I showed a four-sided screen, which I placed around it in form of a square tube. Some salt sprinkled into it. Looking inside, apparently nothing had happened, wrong location maybe. So I took the chair (first shell) out and placed it to the left. Took the screen away to put it again around the "chair", but to my surprise I discovered a second chair. Well, screen placed around this one, salt sprinkled, to no avail. Second shell taken away, placed to the right, screen taken away: a third chair! Help! Looking in despair at the saltshaker I remarked; "I?m sorry, wrong salt, have to go back to the magic salt shop, see you next time,? and exit.
For years I heard magicians in Holland talk about FLIP and his chairs. In 1973 I used them for the last time with a slightly different presentation in a show I did with a male partner who played in travesty the very bored female partner of a lousy magician (to be honest, the show wasn't that good, because of not enough creating and rehearsal time), Every time I announced I was going to make the chair vanish with the salt, "she", unbeknownst to me, secretly took a chair out and placed it silently out of sight, but every time I opened the screen to show the chair was not ready yet to be vanished. When the third chair was taken away, I finally sprinkled the salt, opened the screen and indeed, and off course thanks to the salt, the chair had vanished!
So if by chance you own a triple-chair, now you now how to use it.
Then the chairs, being old, became wacky and full of woodworm and I decided to give them to Bob Driebeek (Aenigma) for a magic: museum he planned to make (It never came so far). I had played with the topsy-turvy idea already, so I might have hinted to Bob at that.time. I don't recall. When I met Peter, maybe that same year, maybe later, in his home, I told him of my chair-production presentation variations and some more. possibilities I thought they had, one of them doing a topsy-turvy trick with the chairs, using a square tube instead of a screen.
Other ideas included having two sets and two tubes and doing a sympathetic topsy-turvy chair routine, and with triple chairs, producing six chairs at the end filling the stage, following the line of his multiplying bottles finale. (One stack of three reversed on the seat of the other stack, to save space in transportation).(And that's how I came upon the idea!).
What I claim also is to have given Peter Pit the concept of the topsy-turvy chair as a trick. Presentation and realization was his. I didn't give it to him as an exclusive: some other people before me could have found the same an well. Although, when in the early eighties as partner in one of the oldest magic shops in the world (1881) that still exist (El Rey de la Magia, Barcelona), I had access to very old magic catalogue (De Vere, Dickmann etc.) and old magazines and discovered ads for nesting chairs, but nowhere the upside-down idea.
When I met Peter a couple of years later and asked him if he already had used the chairs in a show, he told me he was working on a top-secret routine that would knock the socks of the magic community. Even I wasn't to get a clue, Many years later I saw him do his routine in a Paul Daniels TV-show, and was quite, but also pleasantly, surprised to see my basic idea beautifully performed.
A couple of years ago now, not long before his death, Peter happened to be in Holland, at a one-day convention near Eindhoven, where his family lived also. Bob Driebeek, who still had the set I'd given him sea many years before, had made his own elaborate typically "Aenigma" routine with the Topsy-Turvy idea, had planned to do it at that convention but it wasn't ready. In his innocence he told Peter about it. Peter then threatened him (I believe like he did to some other people as well), to take legal action if Bob indeed had done it. I tried to contact Peter there to tell him he had no right as far as the trick concerns and wanted to remind him where the idea in the first place came from. Couldn't find him, he had left already.
Writing a letter to him to settle the matter I postponed, and then, sadly enough, he died. In January this year I walked by Billy McComb to tell. this story to Pete Biro and Jay Marshall as well..
Now the well respected German manufacturer Harold Voit makes these chairs Because of negative rumors about ownership of the concept he contacted me. I told him my story and gave him permission to use it whole or partial in his publicity for and explanation of the trick.
I hope that with this clarification the turmoil of accusation against same people can come to rest.
Flip Hallema (FLIP)
e-mail:
fliphallema@flipmagic.myweb.nl
