About.com Rating

Here’s a literal twist on traditional metal bending. “Silvertone” is a booklet that teaches sculptures that you can make from flatware. To your audiences, you have magically bent a spoon or fork into a sculpture using just the power of your mind. Perhaps one can call it metal bending with an artistic flair. Traditional “spoon bending” - the art of bending metallic objects with only the apparent telekinetic power of one’s mind and with no handling or physical effort from the practitioner, is a branch of mentalism.

Switching In

The “Silvertone” booklet teaches you how to make three sculptures with spoons and the rest are with forks. Of course, due to the tines, forks offer far more possibilities and detailed designs. The work on making the actual sculpture occurs ahead of time and during a performance, it’s switched in. The book teaches you several sleight of hand methods for accomplishing this.

While the switching should work adequately for the simpler sculptures, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to take an ordinary fork and suddenly reveal a detailed sculpture. Because you have a fully formed sculpture that you’re ringing in, you aren’t, in most cases, able to rely on the various metal bending illusions that make it appear as if the cutlery is melting in your hands and gradually forming its new shape. You’ll have to experiment and see how the illusion appears and make adjustments. But I’m skeptical about seemingly forming some of the detailed sculptures as spectators watch. It’s too abrupt.

14 Sculptures

The 12-page booklet teaches a total of 14 sculptures. The ones at the end with the forks, which depict people, are quite detailed. The pre-show bending process requires basic tools that most will have in a toolbox or in a household hardware drawer. The book features photos so you can see the process of bending the cutlery as well as performing.

The kit comes with a few spoons to practice with. The cutlery has to meet certain requirements - they have to be bendable with tools, but stiff enough that spectators can’t easily unbend them with their bare hands. The book outlines the type of cutlery to look for and these should be found with only a minimal amount of work for purchase. Other than what you produce at the end of the routine, the spoons are not gimmicked.

I like the idea of bending cutlery into artistic sculptures but it’s important that the illusion of bending a spoon or fork into them is convincing. Done right, you’ll start with a regular spoon or fork in your hands and at the end, have a sculpture with nothing else in your hands. The sculptures in this book are intriguing, but you’ll have to experiment on the “magic” part of seemingly forming them with your hands.