Lithograph Showing Magician Adelaide Herrmann and Third Edition of “The Discoverie of Witchcraft” Offered With Potter & Potter Auctions

This first part of the Edwin A. Dawes Collection will be presented by Potter & Potter Auctions in late February. Nearly 450 lots of posters and vintage collectibles are offered. Particularly featured is a one-sheet stone lithograph published by The Metropolitan Printing Co. in 1905. The artwork shows English magician Adelaide Herrmann performing a magic show. Titled The Flight of the Favorite, the poster shows a Geisha character in one cabinet vanishing, only to reappear in a similar box some distance away. Called “the Queen of Magic,” Herrmann was born in 1853 in London. 

Collectors will also find a third edition and first issue copy of The Discoverie of Witchcraft. Written by Reginald Scot (1538 – 1599), the book includes famous wood-engraved illustrations of conjuring apparatus and the decapitation illusion. The book, with a gilt-lettered spine label, briefs on conjuring tricks and their secrets in English. Other notable lots on the block are Chung Ling Soo’s Smoke Vase dating back to 1910, Jay Marshall’s “Lefty” glove puppet, and a 1905 lithograph advertising the ‘Comedians de Mephisto Co.’ Visit Potter & Potter Auctions to view the complete catalog and register to bid in the upcoming The Collection of Edwin A Dawes, Part I sale.