Buchinger, Matthias | A Buchinger botanical transformation drawing for Alice Lee

Buchinger, Matthias

Autograph calligraphic botanical transformation drawing for Mrs. Alice Lee signed twice ("Matthew Buchinger") 

One page on two overlaid sheets of paper (overall 177 x 110 mm, irregular), the top sheet bearing the image of a sunflower-like specimen with two cut-out windows, the lower sheet bearing the patron's name ("Mrs. Alice Lee") and two autograph attestations ("Lynn, Novbr. th 20; 1733, This was Drawn & Written by Matthew Buchinger born Without Hands or Feet, in Germany, June the 3d 1674"), the second sheet with pull-tabs at head and foot to allow the text to appear or disappear from the windows; very browned, with tears and chips, pull-tabs no longer functional.

Ricky Jay speculated that, when the drawing was operable, "the center of the flower and the rectangle near the bottom of the tree both had images that could have been altered by pulling on the tabs connected to the drawing" (MB, p. 105). The tears in the top sheet allow the second sheet to be seen enough to show that Buchinger wrote his attestation twice, so that the same text would have been visible in the lower rectangular window regardless of which way the tabs were pulled. But it cannot now be determined what other text might have appeared in the flower. If this was a wedding presentation, for example, the tabs might have have changed the designation "Miss Alice Lee" to her married name. Jay also believed that this "very early version of a metamorphosis, or transformation, drawing … may be the oldest example extant of this type of moveable ephemera" (MB, p. 105).

REFERENCE:

MB, fig. 47