Gibecière 23, Winter 2017, Volume 12, No. 1

A magnificent collection of fascinating articles for your perusal. These originate from all over the globe. Inside this issue:

HENRY SLADE AND HIS SLATES: FROM EUROPE TO THE FOURTH DIMENSION - Gary R. Brown
One of the most publicized instances of magicians tangling with the supernatural - before Randi vs. Geller, before Houdini vs. Margery - was John Nevil Maskelyne vs. Henry Slade. As many are aware, Slade was a celebrated spirit medium who invented the phenomenon of spirit slate-writing. This issue of Gibecière opens with an in-depth study of two dramatic episodes of Slade's career, told by Gary R. Brown.

STUART C. CUMBERLAND: BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS - Barry H. Wiley
One of the giants of muscle reading was Stuart Cumberland. While Cumberland's life as a performer and author is reasonably well documented, little is known about his private life. Barry H. Wiley has done further digging to come up with some foundational facts and dates in Cumberland's personal and family life. Those facts are recorded in this article.

TESTAMENT OF JEROME SHARP: CHAPTER TWO
Filling out the issue is a translation that The Conjuring Arts Research Center is particularly pleased to publish. It is a chapter on card magic from the 1786 classic, Testament de Jerome Sharp, by Henri Decremps. In the late 1930s, Jean Hugard translated all five of Decremps's books on conjuring into English. Plans to publish these translations have been raised and have fallen at least twice. The Conjuring Arts Research Center has purchased the rights to the Hugard translations from Richard Kaufman, and publication of the complete set of books in English is once more being planned. Chapter II from the Testament is a preview of that project. This is a seminal text on the state of card magic in the 1700s, and we are excited to present it to you.