This post is about a traditional design for a folded Wallet or Purse that's at least 150 years old and appears in many of the classic old...

After seeing my last post devoted to Robert Harbin books, renowned origami artist and author Nick Robinson suggested that rather than...

Robert Harbin (1909-1978) was a hugely important figure in the worlds of both origami and magic, and really needs no introduction from me...

This is an old traditional fold, possibly of German origin, which is usually referred to as a Seed Packet. As with a lot of traditional...

In two of my first blog posts just over a year ago I talked about a couple of very early paper tricks, one in Giovanni Battista della...

The Testament de Jérôme Sharp (1786) by Henri Decremps was one of the first books to provide detailed descriptions of card tricks and...

When I did the Paper Buckle post last time I thought it would be nice to fill it out a bit by mentioning the related idea of the Playing...

Here’s an interesting little “paper recreation” which I’ve come across in two old books – an anonymous manuscript called La Magie du Pont...

This monthly posting schedule is proving quite hard to stick to. I do have a new article which is almost complete, but for now this is...

It's the end of the month again and I haven't managed to create a new post, so I'm going to fill in with a couple of simple Diamond...

This is heavily revised and updated version of my original post, with various corrections and additions made in the light of information...

Since today is Easter Sunday, I'll take this chance to draw attention to my Easter Chick model on the Diagrams page. He's actually been...

A couple of posts ago we looked at two tricks using folded paper in The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) by Reginald Scot, under the title...

First of all, Happy New Year to my readers (yes, both of you). I've been struggling to learn how to use this blog thing, as well as...

This is one of the first paper stunts that caught my attention when I started going through old magic books – probably because it often...

Apart from origami my other main interest is magic, more particularly close-up magic, and especially particularly card magic. I’ve been...

I’ve always enjoyed so-called “pure” origami, or simple folding without using scissors or glue. But there’s a whole other area of odd...