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sought out by Broadway directors and rock stars. He’s old pals with Alice Cooper, created stage effects for Ozzy Osbourne and The Doors, and most recently delivered levitations and vanishings for the forthcoming musical Merry-Go-Round, composed by the Sherman Brothers, who previously wrote the songs for Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins.

“We turn away much more work than we take in,” Gaughan says. Hours to spare are essential, he says, so that he has ample time to make magic for himself. That means restoring and re-creating the wonder of magic history. In the dusty storage space and office behind Gaughan’s shop lies his own incredible museum of illusions past. A glass showcase filled with exquisitely crafted “ball and vase” tricks from a century ago sits near stacks of magic boxes, collapsible metal urns, tables with secret storage compartments, and piles of unidentifiable mechanisms from long-lost illusions.

“I like looking at these mechanisms and asking what the maker could possibly have been thinking,” Gaughan says. “I can usually figure out what something does, but why it does it — what the illusion was that required the mechanism — is often a mystery.”

Not far away from a display of original Houdini handcuffs is Houdini himself, or rather a life-size animatronic model of the famed magician sitting in a re-creation of his study from 1922. Press the button and the Houdini robot signs an autograph. “It’s very close to his real handwriting too,” Gaughan proudly points out.

Every surface, every shelf, in these cramped quarters is packed with apparatuses and ephemera that once delighted audiences. It’s a cabinet of curi-osities that even P. T. Barnum would line up to see.

In fact, if Barnum were alive, he’d be thrilled to encounter the Android Clarinetist in Gaughan’s shop. Built in Holland in 1838, it was bought by Barnum for his own museum, which eventually burned to the ground. The Clarinetist made its way to a University of Michigan warehouse where it sat in disrepair for 100 years until Gaughan got wind of it.

“It was a wonderful mechanism but it was so rusty and broken that it looked like it came off the Titanic,” Gaughan says.

Several years of maker surgery brought the Clarinetist back to life. Its new owner is quick to point out that this is no music box stuffed inside a mannequin. The fingers are articulated, enabling it to actually play Beethoven and Weber compositions on its custom instrument.

34 Make: Volume 13