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Posts Tagged ‘shooting gallery target’

Autumn Reading: Step Right Up! Classic American Target and Arcade Forms

Posted in art, Artifacts, Books, Reading & Writing, tagged antique shooting gallery, C.W. Parker, carnival game, Richard Tucker, shooting gallery target, Step Right Up!, Valerie Tucker, William F Mangels on December 17, 2014| 1 Comment »

After Hurricane Sandy, Coney Island got lucky when a rare vintage 1940’s Mangels shooting gallery from Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park was brought out of storage, restored, and installed at Coney Island USA’s Surf Avenue storefront. As far as we know, it’s the only one of its kind in operation that is open to the public. Since many shooting galleries were sold for scrap iron during World Wars I and II, you’re more likely to come across cast-iron and sheet-metal targets in the shape of birds and beasts, cowboys and Indians, and soldiers and torpedo boats in folk art collections than as a game in an amusement park.

Richard and Valerie Tucker’s passion for collecting figural cast iron began in the`early 1980s with the acquisition of a row of doves from a William F. Mangels’ gallery manufactured in Coney Island. Thirty years later, they own hundreds of shooting gallery targets from a variety of manufacturers. Step Right Up! Classic American Target and Arcade Forms is a sumptuous coffee table art book with more than 225 color images of American and European targets along with a sampling of carnival banners, signs and game pieces. As the first and only book on the subject, the volume is valuable to collectors and of special interest to fans of carnival art and antiques.

In addition to Mangels, the 144-page book has chapters on C.W. Parker of Kansas, William Wurfflein of Philadelphia, the John T. Dickman Company of Los Angeles and Chicago manufacturers Evans, Hoffmann, Mueller, and Smith, as well as miscellaneous targets and a few European targets. Essays by specialists on the manufacturers supplement illustrations from the Tuckers’ archive of catalogs, trade cards and other ephemera which are a great resource since the majority of targets have no trade marks.

Step Right Up! Richard and Valerie Tucker

Card Suits by WF Mangels. Private Collection. Photo: Kimberly Gavin/Kimberly Gavin Photography

One of our favorite target makers is C.W. Parker, who started out as a shooting gallery operator and soon got into the business of supplying traveling carnivals with a wide variety of attractions. Parker had a showman’s flair for borrowing design ideas from his fellow manufacturers and fashioning them into commercially successful shooting galleries and carousels.

No complete Parker galleries are known to exist or even to have been photographed, says Bob Goldsack, a Parker historian who wrote the book’s chapter on the self-proclaimed “Carnival King.” Parker’s highly detailed and mechanized targets included owls and eagles with flapping wings, whippets chasing rabbits, and the now politically incorrect circus animals, Indians, and Lincolnesque figure holding a sign that says “Hit Me” in a gallery advertised as “A New Political Shooting Gallery.”

A lecture and book signing by the authors will be held at the American Folk Art Museum, 2 Lincoln Square, Columbus Ave at 66th St, in Manhattan, on December 18 at 6pm. Admission is free of charge.

Step Right Up! Classic American Target and Arcade Forms by Richard and Valerie Tucker. Schiffer Publishing, 2014. Hardcover, $45

Indian by CW Parker. Photo: Kimberly Gavin/Kimberly Gavin Photography

Up for Auction: Coney Island Parachutist Shooting Gallery Target

Posted in Amusement Game, Artifacts, Auction, tagged antique, cast-iron target, Coney Island, Parachute Jump, parachutist, paratrooper, shooting gallery target, William F Mangels on March 23, 2012| 3 Comments »

Cast Iron Paratrooper Shooting Gallery Target. Made by W.F. Mangels Co., Coney Island, NY. Morphy Auctions

This rare and delightful cast iron shooting gallery target made by Coney Island’s William F. Mangels is on the auction block at Morphy Auctions. The April 20-21 sale is in central Pennsylvania with online bidding via Live Auctioneers.

The catalogue description says “Made by W.F. Mangels Co., Coney Island, New York. Professionally made mounting stand. Two piece casting. Minor crack on the head of the parachutist. Superb surface and paint. Rare carnival shooting target. Condition (Excellent). Size 18″ T. Estimate: $2,000 – $2,500.”

William F. Mangels, the Coney Island-based inventor of such early 20th century thrill rides as the Whip and the Tickler, also held the most patents on shooting gallery targets. From the early 1900s until 1969, well after other manufacturers had gone out of business, Mangels’ Coney Island shop turned out cast-iron and sheet-metal targets in the shape of birds and beasts, stars and moons, cowboys and Indians, and soldiers and paratroopers.

The target also evokes memories of riders on Coney Island’s landmark Parachute Jump, which closed in 1964. Originally designed by retired Naval commander James Hale Strong to train military paratroopers in the 1930s, parachute towers were modified into amusement attractions when civilians clamored to ride. Coney Island’s Parachute Jump first wowed visitors at the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair. Afterwards, the ride became the star attraction at Steeplechase Park.

Update: The price realized for the target was $1,020.

Rare & Vintage: Auction of French Fairground Art

Posted in Amusement Game, art, Artifacts, tagged ball toss figure, fairground art, shooting gallery target on September 28, 2011| 6 Comments »

Ring toss figures, circa 1935. Cornette de Saint-Cyr Auction of Fabienne & François Marchal Collection of European Carousel and Fairground Art

I used to work a Pitch Till U Win, but it didn’t have the character of the hand-carved and painted ring toss pictured above. Featuring caricatures of a gendarme, sailor, artistocrat and grouchy old lady, the game is equipped with a mechanical device that makes the legs of the figures come to life in an eccentric dance. With a pre-sale estimate of 12000-15000 euros ($16,257-$20,321), this antique game is beyond my budget, but it’s fun to window shop. The ring toss is part of a magnificent collection of fairground art, including rare carousel figures, decorative items and games on the block at the Paris auction house Cornette de Saint-Cyr. Collected, researched and restored over a 40-year period, the Fabienne and François Marchal Collection of European Carousel and Fairground Art will be sold in three sessions on September 28 and 29.

Ball toss game with Prussian soldier, circa 1910. Cornette de Saint-Cyr Auction of Fabienne & François Marchal Collection of European Carousel and Fairground Art

As a carny kid who grew up working the Pitch Till U Win, Slot Roll Down and Bumper Joint, which have since disappeared from the American midway, I have an abiding interest in vintage carnival games. In the early 1980s, an elite group of dealers began exhibiting primitive carnival wheels, ball-toss figures and shooting gallery targets at the fall antiques show in New York. Viewing these exhibits, I felt pleased and proud that these midway games created by unknown artisans had been transformed into much-admired folk objects. The high prices shocked my frugal mother, who first went on the road during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, successful concessionaires were adept at building their own games, freely borrowing ideas from the fellow down the midway and the catalogs of supply houses catering to the carnival trade. My mother, who grew up speaking French, would have appreciated these hand-crafted French fairground games.

Shooting gallery target, car travels along roller coaster track, early 20th century. Cornette de Saint-Cyr Auction of Fabienne & François Marchal Collection of European Carousel and Fairground Art

In regard to the history of his fairground art collection, François Marchal writes at length in an essay in the auction catalog. I dusted off my high school French and attempted a translation with the help of Google: “Apart from some oral testimony, the sources of information were very rare. If the history of the carnival was known, the objects, rides, games and decorations seemed to have escaped any investigation. In a way this was our good fortune. A promising field of exploration was thus offered to us. In the years after World War II, bulky outdated equipment was no longer of interest to anyone. This accelerated the dismantling of lavish rides inherited from the Belle Epoque.”

“The most amazing games invented for taking a break and enjoying oneself were abandoned and left to rot in squalid sheds,” Marchal recalls. “We were able to collect numerous pieces for next to nothing. It is true that these pieces were often faded and decrepit, sometimes ruined. So we gradually learned to restore them, Fabienne working more on the structure and me on the polychromy.”

Porte de tir à surprise, Au Beau Tambour des Zouaves. Cornette de Saint-Cyr Auction of Fabienne & François Marchal Collection of European Carousel and Fairground Art