Andress, Charles | According to Kellar, "The Last of the Old Masters in Magic"

Andress, Charles

"54th Year of Pleasure Making." Andress and his Novelty Gift Shows. [Cincinnati & New York: Strobridge Litho. Co., ca. 1917]

Color lithograph poster (27 3/8 x 7 1/2 in.; 696 x 192 mm). Light horizontal creases and wrinkles, one more pronounced and a bit abraded. Matted, framed, and glazed with Plexiglas.

"Uncle Charlie" Andress was born in Canada but spent his career mostly playing smaller American towns. The lack of specificity in the poster, which promises that the useful presents that will be given away during the performance were "all purchased from the merchants in this city," allowed it to be be used anywhere. And yet it is a striking design, centered around a bloody image of self-decapitation and boasting an apparition, a demon, and a pair of portraits of Andress, one contemporary, the other as a boy magician and ventriloquist.

REFERENCE:

Illusions 145; Magic, p. 73