Houdini’s Milk Can Lithograph Takes Center Stage in Select Secrets Auction by Potter & Potter Auctions

Harry Houdini’s death-defying mystery was advertised with a vibrantly colored lithograph depicting Houdini in his famous Milk Can escape in 1908. This one-sheet color stone lithograph by Houdini (also known as Erik Weisz) (1874 – 1926), printed in Cincinnati & New York by Russell-Morgan Litho., is a leading lot in Potter & Potter Auctions’ Select Secrets sale. This is a rare copy, just one of perhaps five examples extant. Houdini is portrayed crouched down inside the galvanized metal container with water pouring down over his body. A vignette at the lower left shows the can in its locked state before Houdini’s death-defying escape. Houdini debuted the Milk Can in St. Louis in 1908 in a bathing suit after the galvanized container had been filled with water by his assistants. Sealed in by an inspection committee from the audience, Houdini, chest heaving and breathless but still very much alive, would step out triumphant every time.

A rare half-sheet stone lithograph depicting Howard Thurston and Harry Kellar side-by-side is another notable lot in the sale. Thurston was presented Kellar’s “Mantle of Magic,” a sort of royal honor that could be bestowed from one magician to the next with Mephistopheles looking on at Ford’s Theatre in Baltimore in 1908. Although a fantasy, this gesture captured the American public’s imagination in the early 20th century. A fairy tale ceremony disguised Kellar’s hard-fought business transactions with his successor Thurston, shown as an Asian prince. This image of the “new” magician became an important part of magical history. View the complete catalog of the Select Secrets auction and register to bid by visiting Potter & Potter Auctions.