Harry Marvello Lives!

I am a big fan of magic history and a few years ago I started to investigate the life and work of a remarkable Scottish conjurer called Harry Marvello.

Harry enjoyed an amazing career during the early nineteen hundreds. He staged pioneering seaside shows in Edinburgh’s Portobello and even built a theatre on the promenade (the building survives and now houses a great amusement arcade).

Harry then toured Britain with an act called The Silver Hat, which involved him producing a seemingly endless stream of objects from an empty top hat.

The act relied on a novel principle that has since been used by lots of famous magicians. I recently came across one of Harry’s old Silver Hat posters, and it’s as huge (about 40 by 80 inches) as it is stunning. Alas, it wasn’t in very good condition and so I had it restored.

Last week something rather lovely happened. I was due to give a talk on Harry at Portobello Library and a local art space staged a special exhibition based around the Silver Hat poster! The Porty Light Box is housed in a classic British telephone box, and it hosts exhibitions and even lights up at night to illuminate the images.

I worked with the folks in charge of the Porty Light Box to create some images of Harry’s iconic poster, and now hundreds of people in Portobello will see see them and hopefully become curious about the magical history associated with their local area. Here are a couple of photographs of the space….

The project was a fun way of getting magic history out there and hopefully it will encourage others to create similar events in their own local communities.

My thanks to Peter Lane for the lovely Marvello image and poster, Stephen Wheatley from Porty Light Box for designing and creating the installation, Portobello Library for inviting me to speak and Mark Noble for being a great custodian of Marvello’s old theatre and hotel (he has done wonderful work restoring an historic part of The Tower).