Testament de Jérôme Sharp, Professeur de Physique amusante… Pour servir de complément a La Magie Blanche Dévoilée…

FIRST EDITION, XIX, [1], 328pp., music score frontispiece, repaired, stamp of the REFORMIERTEN KIRCHE IN WIEN to title, with elimination stamp, numerous engraved woodcut text illustrations, occasional pencil annotations, staining to upper corner of last few text leaves, later boards, rebound, 8vo, Paris, Chez L’Auteur; Granger; Bailly; Lagrange; Lesclapart, 1786

Very rare and important work where the author reveals the tricks of charlatans.

Decremps was the first to demystify the scammer by explaining all his experiments (card tricks, cups and game bags, etc.) and listed the cheating techniques, such as false shuffling, cutting jumps, second dealing, etc.

This is the third of Decremps’ works attacking state magicians, including the most famous of them, Joseph Pinetti, purported physicist and magician of the court of Louis XVI. Decremps’ first work, La Magie Blanche appeared in Paris while Pinetti was still playing there in 1784, and he reacted by introducing in his shows an actor pretending to be Decremps, who tried without success to explain how the tricks worked. Incited by Pinetti, the audience would then throw the actor out of the theatre.

In 1785 a supplement was published, followed by this work, Testament de Jérôme Sharp, in 1786, then the Codicile de Jérôme Sharpp in 1788. The fifth and final Les petites aventures de Jérome Sharp appeared in 1789.

Decremps works did have a devastating effect on Pinetti as well as on other practitioners of mystic art, despite the fact that Decremp’s explanations were largely guesswork.

[Hall, Old Conjuring Books, p. 156-158, 174; Ruegg, Bibliography of French prestidigitation, p. 31-32, D. Price. Magic, 1985, p. 40]