SANDY KEENAN wrote this for the New York Times the last week of 2014. I had just begun my hiatus and missed publishing this nice article on the home, and magic, of Joshua Jay……..

Bondage devices have a casual place in Joshua Jay’s studio apartment in Chelsea.

Right there, out in the open, you can see metal thumb restraints, handcuffs of every ilk and a full-body straitjacket with leather straps.

“I guess I never realized how many sex toys we have around here,” said Anna Kloots, 25, Mr. Jay’s fiancée and assistant, “but these are all way too valuable to use.”

Mr. Jay, 33, is a magician whose home is also his archive for books and props that belonged to his heroes and predecessors.

He displays a pair of white gloves that were worn by Richard Valentine Pitchford, the British conjurer who practiced under the name Cardini. Mr. Pitchford honed his card tricks in chilly World War I trenches and became so accustomed to working with gloves, then unusual among magicians, that he continued to wear them throughout his long career. (Mr. Jay has his war medals, too.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/garden/a-box-of-tricks-studio-size-.html?_r=0