A Thimble Act

Thimbles may have been designed for sewing purposes, but the manipulative magician has found them very effective in sleight of hand. Every kind from the simple aluminum or silver thimbles to the brightlycolored metal or wooden ones are used. Cardini, the noted English magician, uses beautiful rhinestone thimbles.

Work with thimbles is flashy and permits of beautiful moves as they appear and disappear. They reflect the light and thus are very effective.

As in other branches of manipulation you have the three fundamentals in thimble work:

1. Production, or appearance.
2. Vanishing, or disappearance.
3. Transformation, or changing.

In this lesson I give you a series of moves in such continuous action as to make a pleasing thimble act or combination. You learn to work from a single thimble manipulation to a great production for the climax.

Performer reaches out into the air and causes a thimble to appear at the tip of his first finger. This is placed in the left hand. Suddenly it disappears - then he finds it at his right elbow. It is thrown upwards and disappears in thin air, reappearing on the tip of the second finger of his right hand.

Again magician throws the thimble high into the air and again it is gone - but in a moment it is back on the tip of his first finger. Next, in a most mysterious manner, the thimble becomes red and then changes back to its normal color again. Thimble continues to appear and disappear in bewildering fashion.

It jumps from the first finger of one hand to the first finger of the other hand. Then the spectators gasp in amazement as the magician reaches into the air and a thimble appears on each finger of his right hand, then on each finger of his left hand. He drops the thimbles in a glass on the table. He reaches into the air again and this time four thimbles appear on the fingertips of his right hand, and four on his left hand.