Davenport, Ira Eustis, & William Fay | The last Davenport brother revives Dark Séance

Davenport, Ira Eustis, & William Fay

Davenport Bro. and Fay. Dark Séance. Buffalo: The Courier Litho Co., [1894]

Color lithograph poster (26 1/2 x 19 in.; 676 x 483). Light fold creases. Matted, framed, and glazed with Plexiglas.

Ira Erastus and William Henry Davenport, nineteenth-century magicians from Buffalo, New York, performed illusions that were intended to appear to be the result of supernatural agency rather than theatrical techniques. They were the first major performers to exploit the spiritualism movement, and theirs was the first act to present a spirit séance onstage.

"It is not well known that Ira Davenport came out of retirement almost two decades after the death of his brother, William. He combined forces with William Fay, a professional conjuror who had been the Davenports' manager. … The pair announced a tour for the 1894–95 season" (TTW). This revival tour failed, largely because their effects had by then been exposed many times by skeptics of spiritualism and by other magicians; however, the "influence of the Davenports on the subsequent history and performance of magic can hardly be overestimated" (Gibecière).

REFERENCE:

Exemplars, pp. 196–97; LP&FW, pp. 229–30; TTW 26; Jay, "Davenport Brothers & Fay," in Gibecière, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Winter 2005): 131–36; Magic, pp. 244–45