Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes - any comment?

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Marco Pusterla
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Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes - any comment?

Postby Marco Pusterla » August 1st, 2002, 1:29 am

Hi, everybody!
sorry if I post here this message that is not exactly Genii-related... as many other ;)

Is there anybody that had a chance to read/see the "Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes", by Jerry Cestkowski ( The Flourishman )? Any comment?

Thanks in advance, ciao!

---
Marco Pusterla
Marco Pusterla - https://mpmagic.co.uk

Ye Olde Magic Mag: magazine on magic history and collecting.

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Re: Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes - any comment?

Postby Guest » August 1st, 2002, 3:54 am

I just saw the website. It looks like it could be a very worthwhile text. I was reading the table of contents and if the descriptions and illustrations are clear, there could be some items in there that may add a bit of flavor to your card magic. I might actually purchase this.

Shawn Preston
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Re: Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes - any comment?

Postby Shawn Preston » August 1st, 2002, 12:57 pm

Jerry is a great guy with incredible skill. The book is truly amazing as it contains fabulous photos and very concise and easy to read descriptions. The biggest problem is trying to learn the flourishes with cards in hand AND turn the page. IMO a video or DVD would have been better, but nevertheless this is an amazing book that really has no compare. Enjoy

Regards
Shawn
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. - Einstein

Don Spurrier
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Re: Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes - any comment?

Postby Don Spurrier » August 1st, 2002, 4:21 pm

I assume that the book is more attuned to flourishes than card fans. However, I thought that this thread might be the place to remind folks of Goodlette Dodson's Exhibition Card Fans. I am probably one of the few folks around (Iwas a young lad)that saw Goodlette's act many times. Everything he published, I saw in real performeance and it was flawless and, yes, entertaining. I haven't seen anyone expand on this, and , perhaps, this book does. By the way, if anyone has Goodlette's act on film or video (I doubt the latter), please let me know. Besides being an excellent manipulator, he was a gentleman

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Re: Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes - any comment?

Postby Guest » August 8th, 2002, 7:50 pm

This does look like a worthwhile addition the the literature. Glancing over the table of contents, it looks like most items are "taught" in an average of two pages. Is this true? Anyone get the book yet? Besides friends of the author?

Guest

Re: Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes - any comment?

Postby Guest » August 9th, 2002, 4:11 am

I ordered this book a couple of days ago. I sent an e-mail to Jerry Cestowski and got a reply right away. I'll let you know when I get it, but the book has over 2,800 photos, 540+ pages and weighs 5 pounds. It looks like it has everything imaginable.

I don't have it yet, but I am willing to bet that it is well worth the money (if you are into spicing up your act with flourishes).

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Marco Pusterla
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Re: Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes - any comment?

Postby Marco Pusterla » August 9th, 2002, 4:20 am

I ordered it some days ago, but as I live in the UK, I suspect to receive it after all my American friends :(

If somebody receives it soon and comments on the board, it will be nice.
Marco Pusterla - https://mpmagic.co.uk

Ye Olde Magic Mag: magazine on magic history and collecting.

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Re: Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes - any comment?

Postby Guest » August 9th, 2002, 8:52 am

I've got the book, and it is an incredible compendium of all manner of flourishes, spreads, fans, cuts, flips, springs, drops, and shuffles, thoroughly illustrated with photos and adequate supporting prose.

Encyclopedia of Playing Card Flourishes culls the best from the past including the published works of Andrus, Cossari, Dodson, Farelli, Ganson, Hugard, and LePaul, and also contains up to date work of Murphy, Jay, McBride, and I would say even some of the young guns, but most is of the author's creation.

This is the Bobo's for finger-flickers, a true encyclopedic tribute to this branch of cardwork, and Jerry Cestkowski's life's work.

Randy Campbell

Edwin Corrie
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Re: Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes - any comment?

Postby Edwin Corrie » August 9th, 2002, 2:53 pm

The encyclopedia of Card Flourishes is news to me. Can anyone give me the relevant website address? It doesn't seem to come up when I search for key terms using Google. However, using a different search engine (Ixquick) I did find a Card Flourishes Forum (http://pub6.ezboard.com/fcardflourishesgeneral) and also another site with video clips of various flourishes. I will have to find the address for that one again and post it next time.

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Re: Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes - any comment?

Postby Guest » August 10th, 2002, 4:01 am

His website is

www.flourishman.com

Guest

Re: Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes - any comment?

Postby Guest » August 10th, 2002, 8:27 am

I got the book this past week. I ordered on Saturday, and I got it on Wednesday. It's a big book, and there are some ridiculously hard things, but Jerry says that they are doable. Yeah, he actually responds to e-mails and ships quickly unlike "various" magic dealers and sellers(who will remain nameless because I'm sure that we have stories to tell).

Luckily, there are some very easy flourishes in the book. One of them is doing an in-the-hands riffle shuffle, but you spring the cards the other way. Some of the items aren't outlandishly in-your-face, but it makes you feel like you're progressing, and maybe it will build the confidence in order to juggle cards or spring the cards over your head (two of my favorite things taught in the book). And it's kind or refreshing that every cut in the book ISN'T based on "Sybil".

Even though most of the descriptions are short and straight to the point, there are enough pictures in sequential order to follow what's going on without even reading the instructions.

So far, I've skipped a lot of instructional text, and basically have just been looking at the pictures :rolleyes: . However, there are some very interesting articles on his philosophies regarding flourishes in his introduction and before each section.

I was disappointed that there weren't any Ace Productions, but I guess they're too magic-oriented for that. I guess I have to see the Dan & Dave Buck, Brian Tudor, and Lee Asher for those. If there were some Ace Productions in the book, I don't remember any. There were a couple of display cuts where you could show the faces of the cards, but it's not quite the same.

In one of his e-mails, he mentioned that he was planning on putting some of these flourishes on video sometime in the future. I believe that video is probably the best medium to learn flourishes because flourishes are visual.

There is a lot of material in the books to last a while. And the book was well-produced. I'm used to seeing lecture notes that look like they've been photocopied and have poor quality drawings and pictures in them. But this book is well done, it kinda reminded me of Guy Hollingworth's Drawing Room Deceptions. The price may seem high ($65 to $75), but it has lots of material (500+ pages), and the book is high quality. It's a good book to have around.

Edwin Corrie
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Re: Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes - any comment?

Postby Edwin Corrie » August 12th, 2002, 1:47 pm

Thanks for the website address - it certainly looks like an encyclopedia worthy of the name.

The other site I found was http://home.earthlink.net/~ocb1/cfotd.html

By comparison, the flourishes shown are fairly tame. Many are very basic, but there are some more advanced ones too (including a John Cornelius flourish cut from his FISM act). The nice thing is that there are demo clips showing all of them in action, and they are very neatly performed.

Guest

Re: Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes - any comment?

Postby Guest » August 13th, 2002, 5:04 am

I just received the book yesterday in the mail. It is huge and very thorough. If anyone is interested in performing any sort of flourish, I highly recommend this book. It is very well done.

PS - the book is huge. It weighs about 5 lbs. and has over 2,800 photos.

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Marco Pusterla
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Re: Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes - any comment?

Postby Marco Pusterla » August 14th, 2002, 12:47 pm

Hi!
I received the book a couple of days ago and I have to admit it's simply gorgeous! 2800 pictures, clear text and up-to-the-point, and a lot of flourishes. Many of these are classical (fans and arm spreads), but an awful lot is original or, at least, unknown to me. I'm not saying that they are easy, far from that, but in a couple of days I've already been able to add two flourishes to my repertoire (ok, ok, I added a couple of the "easy" ones).

The only problem with the book is the sheer amount of flourishes it offers: I'm spoiled with the choice to what to study. The author, however, suggests some flourishes and proposes to look at the pictures, see what you can be interested in learning, and try it.

I personally believe the book (this kind of book) is a good method to learn a flourish, maybe even better than a tape. With the book I can study the fingers position with cards in hand... ain't easy to pause and restart the VCR while holding 6 packets of cards in two hands ;)

The only drawback, so far, is something common to many books on sleight of hand: some of the pictures are in the "next" page, or pictures for some flourishes span on 2 or more pages and this isn't easily manageable, again, with 2 hands busy with 4 or more packets (or an arm spread...). I understand there is no easy workaround to this problem...

I recommend the book to whoever wants to investigate more deeply on card flourishes, and have some original material (or, at least, unusual).

Ah! the book closes with a technique to juggle 3 playing cards, quite different from Ricky Jay's (spinning cards). I think it is the first time such argument has been explained in a book...

Ciao!

---
Marco Pusterla
Marco Pusterla - https://mpmagic.co.uk

Ye Olde Magic Mag: magazine on magic history and collecting.

Guest

Re: Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes - any comment?

Postby Guest » April 1st, 2003, 11:13 am

This book is a masterpiece! My kingdom for a desert island, this book and 1000 decks!
:D

Guest

Re: Encyclopedia of Card Flourishes - any comment?

Postby Guest » April 3rd, 2003, 10:20 pm

Have had teh book since publication and it is a beautiful production; massive. Loaded with photos though they tend to be washed out. Tried a few of the items and met instant frustration and did notfeel that just a fourish was worth a heck of a lot of practce, but that may just be a matter of limited talent. The other reviewers have covered it very well; till I read one of the above I did not realize that items had been culled from so many diverse sources. I thought the author had invented them all. I love the book as a production and perhaps as a future e -bay investment, if it ever gets limited in supply.
MartinJ.Kaplan


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