Sea-Ling’s Family Ties by Richard Gerlitz

One of Richard’s most intricate, but also amazing, creations based on upon Ian Ogilvey’s Blocks of San Yen. The original idea was created by Robert Harbin c. 1944 in the Demon Telegraph, but it had some snags which were ironed out by English magician and inventor Colin Hughes (who performed on stage as the Chinese magician San Yen).  Although George Davenport tried to secure marketing rights he was never able to  and it wasn’t until Ian Ogilvey of PROPS in the UK created a limited edition c. 1978 that magicians and collectors began to see the original version of this amazing item.

The first time you set this up you have to take it slowly and read the instructions two or three times. It almost seems impossible that this could work so smoothly, but once you have set it up and run through the sequence everything happens as it should and you are left with one damn fine illusion! Once you have set it the first time it gets much easier and with practice you could do it in five minutes or less. 

Effect: If you break this item down there are three main magical moments:

• You begin by showing three ornately decorated blocks from all sides and clearly show that the ribbon goes through all three. You can pull the ribbon from end to end or in between each block. There is no doubt that a single ribbon goes through all the blocks. And there are no funny moves either.
• You then separate the blocks and cleanly cut the ribbon attached to the center block. Again the ribbon is most certainly cut in two places. This block is placed on top of the other two and every one can see the ribbon sticking out of the top block and the bottom two.
• You snap your fingers and the ribbon in the top box vanishes (effect #1).
• You then pull the ribbon from the left hand side and the 100% severed ribbon from the right hand side travels too (effect #2).
• Finally, you pull the ribbon all the way out from the left and you again clearly have one long single ribbon (effect #3).
• The blocks are clean there is nothing added or taken away and you really have performed a miracle!

I can’t stress enough the first time I did this I was struggling a bit with how it would work. But thanks to the Richard’s amazing engineering – it just works. And it is perfect every time.

Highly Recommended for lovers of beautiful magic everywhere!

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