The Limit of the Marvelous
Ladies and Gentlemen! Yes, ‘tis true, dear friends, “Kar–Mi” (aka Joe Van Victorina, aka Joseph Bryant Hallworth – a Chelsea, Mass. child prodigy who performed as a teen with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show before cobbling together a classic American medicine show featuring snake–charming, fire–eating, fortune–telling) would indeed swallow a loaded gun barrel and, while it was down his throat, shoot a cracker off a man’s head. Around the time (1914) that this poster was appearing on barns and fences across the US, his demure wife “Miss Victorina” swallowed a record 16 swords at once.
Perched upon this eye–popping Ringmaster podium, what sort of circus could you conjure from our Ordered Disorder collection?
A riotous flight of variegated doves from this church–cum–birdhouse?
Substitute sterling silver for swords?
Traverse a tightrope on this scarlet Sting–Ray?
Saw your honey in half as she smiles from this handsome old trunk, or disappear her altogether inside this transparent display case?
These life preservers and Beukers bottles are both begging to be juggled, and this book press; mirror and ropes [86] cry out for a modern day Houdini to transform these quotidian tools into objects of enchantment.
Should such caprices exceed the Limit of the Marvelous for you and your happy home, do not despair! Lifetimes of loving use have given this three–ring circus of utilitarian stuff a luminous sheen of glamour, a glorious glow just as they are!
By Kevin Dann