The Growing Candle Stick is an amazing juggling trick / routine that hasn’t been performed for quite a while, to the best of my knowledge. It was invented by Ferry Mader, who was born Ferry Xaver on May 29th, 1884 in Augsburg, Germany, where he lived his entire life. Against his parents’ wishes, he left home at the age of 19 to pursue a career as a juggler. He developed quite a unique repertoire of tricks and quickly found success on the stage. Ferry’s most famous routine was the kicking up of cups and saucers onto the head. To learn more about Ferry, click here.
Ferry’s other fairly well-known original trick was similar to the cups and saucers and but used candle sticks and candles. This was known as the Growing Candle Trick. Candle sticks and candles were thrown into an increasingly tall balance on his head, with the tower leaning more and more as it grew in height. Below is the only known photo of Ferry performing this original trick of his.
Here is an illustration of Mader doing the trick.
Like his cups and saucers trick, this was copied by many later jugglers, including Herbert Lohse-Bertini, Savios, Helmuth Gunther, Sagitto, Eston, Caprice (Carlo Kerzano), the Two Moowatts, and the Two Torres. Below are three videos and many photos of some of these jugglers performing this trick. I hope that this will inspire one or more modern jugglers to take up the challenge of adding this routine to his or her act. The first video, showing Helmuth Gunter, is published here for the first time ever online.
Herbert Lohse-Bertini
Caprice
Caprice
Caprice
Savios
Sagitto
Sagitto
Two Moowatts
Two Torres
Two TorresDavid 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).