Ernst Plank magic lantern · Nuremberg, c. 1890, with 18 slides

An Ernst Plank magic lantern, Nuremberg, circa 1890, in the japanned tin-plate body with brass lens barrel and the original tall chimney. Plank was the most prolific of the Nuremberg toy-and-optical makers, and this is a middle-grade domestic model—not the tabletop toy, not the professional biunial, but the sort of thing a comfortable family would have owned.

Converted to an electric bulb by a previous owner in what looks like the 1950s; the conversion is reversible and the original brass kerosene burner comes with it in a fitted box. Includes eighteen period slides: nine hand-tinted narrative sets (a fairy tale, a comic sequence), six geographic views, and three mechanical slippers with working slip mechanisms.