By David Cain
(Author’s Note: I’m very thankful to Scott Cain for his enormous help in tracking this subject and allowing his research to be shared here.)
The very first props acquired for the Museum of Juggling History were a set of three clubs made by the first retail juggling club maker, Edward Van Wyck. It all started with an email from Alan Howard in 2012. He remembered that I had said something years before about wanting to get a Van Wyck juggling club if one ever came available. Edward Van Wyck started making and selling clubs in 1895. His workshop in Cincinnati, Ohio is about thirty minutes from my house. For both historical and geographical reasons, I’d long wanted one of these very rare props. Alan was emailing to say that he’d been contacted by a juggler in California who had four Van Wycks for sale and wanted to see if I was interested. I jumped at the chance to obtain these tangible pieces of juggling history by contacting the seller and making arrangements to purchase the clubs.
The Van Wycks clubs that started the Museum of Juggling History
I started thinking about how many clubs Edward Van Wyck had made over his twenty-four years of club manufacturing and how few had survived. In my thirty-one years as a juggler (at that time), these were the first I’d ever seen. From that single purchase, the idea of starting a museum was born. Now, fourteen years later, the museum fills six rooms with wall to wall, floor to ceiling props, images, and memorabilia. But it all started with those Van Wyck clubs.
Van Wyck made clubs from 1889 to 1919, when he sold the club-making part of his business to Harry Lind while Van Wyck continued to make circus props and other juggling props. You can see an advertisement for Edward Van Wyck’s clubs circa 1900 below.
Scott Cain, with assistance from myself and fellow juggling historian Erik Åberg, have attempted to track all of the known Van Wyck clubs that still exist today. To the best of our knowledge, 104 of these precious juggling treasures are still around. Amazingly, we have photos of 101 of the 104 of these hollow, wooden clubs. As you will see, they differ greatly in size, shape, and decoration. What truly identifies them as Van Wyck clubs is their construction. The following illustration shows how they were designed.
Most of Van Wyck’s clubs feature a ribbed handle, but this was not universal for his clubs. Likewise, not all clubs with ribbed handles were Van Wyck clubs. Let’s take a look at the photos we have of existing Van Wyck clubs.
As you can see in the following photo of some of the Van Wyck clubs on display in the Museum of Juggling History, the size varied quite a bit, from giant to standard to miniature. Some were decorated with painted canvas, some had mylar decorations, and some even had mirrors embedded into them.
Below, you can see some photos of jugglers from over a hundred years ago using Van Wyck clubs.
Ollie Young
Ollie Young
Ollie Young
Louis Knetzger
The Two Ingrams
Harry Lind
Allaire and Lind
Jessie Millar
Frank Gregory
Meldon
If you know of any more examples of Van Wyck clubs that still exist, please let us know.
David Cain
David Cain is a professional juggler, juggling historian, and the owner of the world's only juggling museum, the Museum of Juggling History. He is a Guinness world record holder and 16 time IJA gold medalist. In addition to his juggling pursuits, David is a successful composer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and singer as well as the author of twenty-six books. He and his children live in Middletown, OH (USA).