Grand illusions

Copperfield became reticent when asked about The Amazing Johnathan Collection.

David Copperfield preserves the myths of magicians' past in his personal museum

BY SKYLAIRE ALFVEGREN

When David Copperfield first began performing in Vegas at the Hilton in 1983, he stayed at his secret warehouse, which he has since transformed into the International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts. Founded by Copperfield after he purchased the 15,000 volume Mullholland Library collection in 1991, he has continued to add to it. It now includes the Cole Collection, over 5,000 cubic square feet of magic paraphernalia Copperfield liberated from Sotheby's storage in London, and the Dr. Robert J. Albo collection, considered the most important private collection of antiquarian magical props ever assembled.

Copperfield has exhibited part of the collection in New York and L.A. "We take this stuff (on tour) and show the history of magic," he says. Filled with scrapbooks, stage clothes, props and playbills, he flits from Professor Hoffman's cups and balls to Dante's Spirit Cabinet to nine years' worth of correspondence between Houdini and Kellar, to Alexander's trick turban and the ornate mystery clocks of Robert Houdin (from whom Houdini took his name), "The best magic mind of two centuries," says Copperfield.

"These copper pennies were used by a magician named Wyman the Wizard in a performance for Abraham Lincoln," he says. "Ironic that that very coin would eventually feature Lincoln's face on it!"

The collection of priceless prestidigitation features nearly 100,000 individual pieces; "All the greats of magic, their ghosts are here," Copperfield says. Pieces belonging to Heller, Bosco, Dante, Thurston, Herrmann, Blackstone, Chung Ling Soo. "He was killed trying to catch a bullet -- this is perhaps the gun that did him in," Copperfield says before pointing to a poster from the failed 1918 performance.

Copperfield is genuinely enthusiastic about the museum. He acquired the crowning jewels -- six important pieces from the Houdini Museum in Niagra Falls, New York -- just last year. "Everything that Houdini is famous for is here, pretty much. He was famous for doing the substitution trunk," says Copperfield as he taps on the object of which he speaks.

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