Magic tricks with audience participation often entail borrowing something and then transforming it, or making it disappear and reappear. Any magician should have a variety of devices to assist in these basic operations. The double-compartment bag described here can serve that purpose, and although it’s based on

80 Make: Volume 13

a design that’s hundreds of years old, I haven’t seen it widely sold, probably because it wouldn’t be easy to mass-produce cheaply. Thus, modern audiences are unlikely to have seen it.

To give you an idea of how the bag can be used, here’s a routine centered around it that I call “The Power of Negative Thinking.”

Photograph by Garry McLeod