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SLEIGHT
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The Thumb Tip

The most useful object in magic and the one most often bought and abandoned — a silk pushed into a fist that is afterwards empty.

Difficulty
Beginner
Performs
Close-Up, Street, Parlor, Stage, Walk-Around
Type
Vanish

What they see

The effect from the front

A silk handkerchief is tucked into the top of a closed fist, pushed down with a thumb, and is gone. The hand opens, turns over, and shows front and back.

It works the other way just as well. An empty hand produces a silk, then a longer one, then a streamer far too long to have been anywhere.

Spectators rarely describe the thumb tip afterwards, because they have not seen one. They describe a handkerchief vanishing, which is the point of it — this is the prop that does other tricks rather than one of its own.

Provenance

Where it comes from

Thumb tips appear in dealer catalogues by the late nineteenth century and were probably in use earlier. Who first made one is unrecoverable; they are the kind of utility device that gets invented repeatedly by people who never write it down.

What changed over the century is the material — metal, then painted tin, then soft plastic and modern hard shells in several skin tones. The move to matched tones is the most important thing that has happened to the prop, and it is recent.

Learning it

What it takes

Mechanically trivial and psychologically difficult, which is why so many sit unused in drawers.

It will not withstand a stare. Everything depends on when hands are in motion and when the audience is looking elsewhere, and the beginner's mistake is the long, careful, deliberate load that everyone watches. Learn the vanish, then spend the real time on what happens either side of it.

Fit matters more than price. A tip that does not match your thumb will be fought every time you use it, which is why these are sold in sets rather than singly.

What you need

Props for the The Thumb Tip

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