While I was travelling, one day I had about 90 mins to kill before I could check into a hotel. It’s rare that I get to a hotel that won’t let me check in early, but it happens occasionally. When it does, I try to do something fun with my time, and that day I went to an antique mall.
One of the stands had a bunch of magic magazines (linking rings, genii, etc) which were way overpriced, but they also had a few magic books that were reasonable. I picked up the Thayer Catalog vol 8, Ireland’s Yearbook for 1952 and a couple of other things.
The Ireland’s Yearbook for 1952 was interesting. It’s a collection of tricks that were published annually by Laurie Ireland. A good chunk of the yearbook was taken up by an origami storytelling routine. This was interesting that I had the folds and the figures, but not the story?!
I had some paper and decided to try the routine, the problem was with how it was written and illustrated, there were a lot of errors with the words and pictures.
For example figure 4 and 5 are incorrect:
I had to do a lot of messing around and guessing what was meant, to get to the finale of the routine, which is a “Chinese junk boat”.
This was challenging to learn, and it’s a storytelling prop like a Troublewit. I don’t think I’ll ever do it, but I do find it interesting that this was a trick of note in 1952!
-Louie