By David Cain
The IJA Newsletter was published from 1949 until 1981. The Newsletter contained mostly news of juggling sessions, visits among members, dates and places of working jugglers, notices of sick and convalescing members, address changes, obituaries, IJA business, announcements of conventions and officer reports. One of the most interesting parts of the IJA Newsletter were remembrances of members of jugglers from the past that they saw. Unfortunately, with the exception of the 1976-1978 Newsletters, they have not been digitized. I’ve spent the past decade or so hunting down and compiling a complete set of the Newsletter. Many are in horrible condition and barely readable. Nevertheless, I’m now reading through them to find new discoveries that would be of interest to the general juggling community, or at least to those with an interest in juggling history. Therefore, I’m going to start sharing those interesting tidbits here in a series of articles. I hope you enjoy my discoveries. These are all taken from the 1964 and 1965 IJA Newsletters.
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George H. Fielding was often cited by his contemporaries in the 1890s as being the first juggler to perform 6 ball juggling. Whether this claim is true or not isn’t known, but we had little information about him other than that claim and what we could draw from this one image of him.
Esteban Valez did find out about some mental health challenges Fielding had, which you can read about here, but we didn’t know much of what he performed. I found the following description in the May 1965 IJA Newsletter, which was written by old-time vaudeville juggler Horace Morton Lorette, who was known as the Original Dancing Juggler, about Fielding.
“About 1890 I saw him when he was featured in “The Black Crook”, an outstanding extravaganza at Gilmore’s Auditorium in Philadelphia. In clown he was a big hit, doing nice work with cane, high hat and gloves. Also with hat and cigar balancing and catching hat different ways, tossing cigar a turn from mouth to mouth, etc. A fine routine with tube and two silvered balls. Tossed six balls nicely, first time I had seen that done (seven at that time was a trick for the future). His manipulation of 2 champagne bottles was outstanding and to this day, I never saw anyone who could handle them like he did. A good 3-ball routine, and he was the first juggler I ever saw do the two and one spread wide apart. Many jugglers now do this move, some with two and one, some with two and two, not only with balls, but also clubs, plates, hoops and other props. Nice moves rolling a 5-inch black solid ball across body and back. One move was in rolling ball from right hand all the way across to left hand, a bottle held in left hand, ball rolling to extreme end of bottle which he turned so that ball stopped on end of bottle. Nice bouncing of three and four balls. Present day jugglers surpass him in some of his work, but in his day he was great and new to the public. He was one of the real pioneers.”
Some interesting things to take notice of were Fielding’s contact juggling work and very early ball bounce juggling. As far as I can determine, Fielding, William Everhart, and Kara were the first three jugglers that we know of who performed ball bounce juggling.
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Joe Marsh wrote in the August 1964 IJA Newsletter about the German juggler Toscanelli, whom you can read about by clicking here. He gave us the new facts that Toscanelli was a school teacher in Germany before moving to the UK and working as a juggler. He also reported that Toscanelli was “working the ball-control moves with a glass ball”. This refers to the contact juggling tricks that can be seen in the video below. Doing so with a glass ball predates Michael Moschen’s work with a clear ball by about two decades. This is a significant discovery.
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Numerous notes in the 1964 newsletters reveal that Diane Shelton was trained and mentored by well-known vaudeville tramp juggler Homer Stack (1891-1987). You can read about Diane Shelton by clicking here.
Diane Shelton
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In the October 1964 IJA Newsletter, Tommy Breen recalled seeing Josef Blank performing the following trick in 1908. “Using seven large disks taken from backs of Bentwood chairs, [Blank] started with two disks in his right hand, one disk in his left hand, one disk under each arm, and one disk under each side of his chin. He proceeded to get all seven disks in the air and then finish the trick with the disks in their original positions.” Click here to learn more about Josef Blank.
Josef Blank
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The next two stories appeared in the October 1964 IJA Newsletter in response to a request for funny and true juggling stories.
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Finally, from that same issue, we have the report of an amazing routine performed by Charles Charlene, also known as Charles Jee, in 1909. He would balance a top hat on his nose and flip it in half and full turns between his nose and forehead in time to music that he played on the violin at the same time. You can learn more about Charles and his wife by clicking here.
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).