I’ve written in great detail in the past about the origins of cigar box juggling. The genre started with wooden block tricks in Japan and spread to the rest of the world, eventually being done with cigar boxes or wooden boxes. One of these original tricks is not well-known, but very entertaining. I refer to it as the cigar box knock away trick. The trick involves balancing a stack of boxes or blocks on a vertical box held in one hand. Sometimes a lamp, glass, or other object is placed on the top of the stack. The juggler then knocks away the bottom box of the stack using the one in his or her hand, catching the remaining tower of boxes in a balance on the held box. To make this more clear, let’s take a look at Dan Holzman doing his version of the trick in the following video.
Japanese juggler Gintaro (1875 – 1952) claimed that such tricks with blocks date back to the 17th century. He included this trick in his description of block tricks from 1906.
Description and illustration from Gintaro
Félicien Trewey (1848 – 1920) was a French juggler and variety artist who performed many block tricks similar to Gintaro and apparently did so earlier than the Japanese artist. The following illustration shows the knock away trick.
Illustration from Félicien Trewey
This appears to have been a popular routine / trick of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Below you can see the clown / juggler LaBelle performing it in 1914.
LaBelle 1914
Rosani (1868-1944) performed many cigar box tricks, including the knock away trick.
Rosani
Jim Harrigan (1866-1923), the original tramp juggler, performed the routine with a lamp on top of the tower of boxes.
This trick was written about by Joe Marsh in an IJA Newsletter from 1966.
Cigar box genius Eric Bates includes the trick in his act. You can see it at the 4 minute mark of the following video.
The cigar box knock away trick is very similar to the popular Japanese children’s game Daruma Otoshi. You can see the game being demonstrated in the following videos.
Kazuhisa Uekusa does something similar with poker chips and a bottle.
If you know of any other jugglers from history or currently who have performed the cigar box knock away trick, please let me 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).