Egg Bag

Egg Bag is a small cloth sack used to produce or vanish small objects (like an egg). Small sacks, like hats, have been used as magic props since at least the 1500s.

Prevost, Jean: Clever And Pleasant Inventions © 1584 by Antoine Bastide - Lyons (France) and 1998 English translation by Stephen Minch (brilliant lay-out in antique style); p 82 How You May Cleverly Strike A Cap Under Which You Have Plced An Egg, And Yet The Egg Shall Appear Quite Unbroken. Prevost describes the smashing effect using a peaked nightcap with secretly sewn-in pocket and the turning over of the bonnet before letting the egg reappear. This makes it the first written account of the egg bag in print.

In The Whole Art of Legerdemain, or Hocus Pocus in Perfection by Henry Dean (1722) describes "How to show the Hen and Egg-bag, and out of an empty bag to bring out above an hundred eggs and afterwards to bring out a living Hen".

Another early methods for doing the Egg Bag can be found in Récréations mathématiques et physiques by Jacques Ozanam in the edition of 1723 entitled La Poule qui pond (The lark which lays) and the eggs are in your sleeve.

Hoffman, Professor [Angelo Lewis] Modern Magic © 1876 1st edition, Routledge; p 317 Chapter XVI Miscellaneous Tricks: p 326 The Egg Bag; p 329 To Produce Eggs from a Person's Mouth & Later Magic © 1904 Dutton & Co; p 390 Chapter X. Tricks With Eggs: The Celluloid Egg; p 391 The Self-Balancing Egg; p 392 The Egg-cup, for Vanishing an Egg; p 394 An Improved Egg-Holder; p 396 The Magical Production of Eggs; p 399 Production of Eggs from the Mouth; p 401 Bellachini's Method; p 403 A Smashed Egg Vanished from a Handkerchief; p 405 The Diminishing Egg; p 405 To Vanish an Egg from the Hand; p 407 A Special Egg Vanisher; p 409 The Wandering Eggs; p 412 Another Method; p 417 New Egg and Tumbler Trick; p 418 An Illustration of Free-Trade Principles; p 425 Eggs from Nowhere, and Back Again; p 426 An Egg-Laying Hat; p 429 A Novel Egg-Bag Trick; p 432 The Ribbon-Producing Egg; p 434 The Bewitched Orange

On of the first gimmicked bags can be found in Codicile de Jérome Sharp by Henri Decremps (1788).

Vera Breda was doing the Egg Bag in Britain since 1818, according to Sidney Clarke in Magic Wand, V. 17 (1928), p 178.

Around 1891, Herbert Albini created a small egg bag, the size most magicians know today.

Then, Charlie Miller revived the trick when he was living in Indianapolis with Harry Riser. He described what he thought would work and Margy (Riser's wife) made one. Magic Inc. put in on the market, then Ken Brooke worked with Miller to create a routine.

Bag Variations:

• Albini Egg Bag
• Tarbell Egg Bag
• Sachs Egg Bag
• Miller / Malini Egg Bag
• Sterling Egg Bag
• Mesh Egg Bag

Publications

• Egg Bag: Harlan Tarbell, The Tarbell Course in Magic, Lesson 24 (1927).
• Egg Bag (David Tobias Bamberg): Harlan Tarbell, The Tarbell Course in Magic, Vol. 5 (1948).
• The Malini Egg Bag: Ken Brooke & Friends (1974).
• Egg Bag, Library of Magic, Vol. 13: Leo Behnke (1991).
• Egg Bag Book: John Novak (1999).
• Siamese Goose Egg Bag, Ron Bauer Private Studies Series, No. 15: Ron Bauer (2003).

References

• Tracing the Egg Bag, M-U-M (July 1991) by Milbourne Christopher
• http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~roy/magictalk-wisdom/discussions/egg_bags.html
• http://magicref.tripod.com/magref/magegg.htm
• http://magicref.tripod.com/magref/arteggbag.htm
• http://www.geniimagazine.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=275240