CollectingMagicBooks.com

Saturday, 21 June 2014

Robert Mason's Magic Shop Interior.

When I was the tender age of 8 I went to the book shop with my birthday money and chose a book on my favourite topic at the time, magic. At the time I only had a few books on how to do tricks and this was the first book I had on the history of magic, Peter Eldin's "The Best-Ever Book of Magic".


Each double page spread in this oversize book includes illustrations from a large range of artists commissioned specially to accompany Eldin's history of magic. One particular page that had a profound effect on me was the section on magic shops. It gave a short history of them, along with a highly detailed illustration of a magic shop by Robert Mason.


I recently rediscovered my copy of this great book and upon turning to the magic shop page remembered how much I loved it. So I Googled Robert Mason, found his website and gave him an email. As luck would have it he still had the original, though he'd cut it down to remove the figures on the right as he'd not been happy with them. I bought it and framed it along with a print of the figures that had been removed. The picture appears to be heavily based on the interior of Davenports.


Though I didn't know when I first saw the image that it was so close to Davenports, I did find that out when I first went there aged 10. The image had a big influence on me and it's one of my favourite items in my collection.