Prior to the Van Wyck club, clubs were painted by the performers themselves and were often decorated with bands of nickel, brass, or copper nailed around the clubs or set lengthwise along the body. Aside from being tremendously heavy and of suspect balance, this construction led to injuries from metal splinters.

 

Van Wyck's introduced lighter, foil decoration. But his greatest contribution was to take the club away from the haphazard production of the local wood turner and place more control over the balance of the club.

 

Previously, performers might order twice as many clubs as they needed in order to select a set with proper balance. But Van Wyck made the club sturdier without increasing the weight. The interior construction was at first solid white pine. In 1887 he introduced hollow clubs weighing just 24 ounces, and later brought the weight down to 18 ounces. The price was $1.50.

 

Before Van Wyck, the handles were merely glued to the neck and a good knock on the floor either broke off the handle or split the club wide open. Van Wyck added a wooden nut inside the handle.

 

He continued to make clubs through 1942. The last performer he provided with clubs was Eddie Johnson, an IJA founder, on March 10, 1942. Before he died in 1952, Ed Van Wyck passed along the mantle of club making to Harry Lind of Jamestown , New York.

 

Harry Lind

In the family of American juggling, Harry Lind was the grandfather, the patriarch of a growing clan. He was an indispensable manufacturer of clubs, counselor, inspiration and one of the prime movers in founding the IJA.

 

He was born in 1879 in Jamestown, New York, where his Swedish mother ran a rooming house for Swedish immigrants and where his Danish father worked as a bookkeeper. Both parents were staid, God­fearing people and were undoubtedly shocked by the decision of Harry and his brother, Eugene, to enter show business.

 

Lind's devotion to juggling was a return on a gift it had given him - it had saved his life. As a young boy working in a furniture factory, he was riding in a freight elevator when a broken cable whip-snapped down on him, putting him near death for a month and partially paralyzing him.

 

His therapy was to swing one Indian club gently in his weakened hand, then increase the arc. He slowly regained the use of his arms, in spite of the doctor's verdict that he'd never use them again.

 

He made his debut on Oct. I, 1900, at Nate Fenton's Pekin Restaurant and Concert Hall in Buffalo, New York.  Between shows, he was sent by cab to repeat the performance at Fenton's Main Street Saloon and Concert Hall. This was not only his first professional show, it was his first public show ever.

 

Lind's act was one of the first full club swinging routines in vaudeville. He also did three and four club juggling. Harry and Eugene, who was a flute player with a minstrel show, traveled in circuits together for some 18 years until Eugene contracted tuberculosis. Both men returned home and Eugene later died.

 

Lind had several other partners in his acts through the years, but none lasted more than a year, due apparently to Lind's demand for practice and perfection. He had brought his parents' work ethic to his chosen profession and few others could live with the demands he placed on them and himself.

 

When he retired in 1919, he tried his hand at interior decorating and soon opened his own manufacturing shop with machinery purchased from Van Wyck. His shop in Jamestown became a gathering place for jugglers.

 

It was crammed with a dozen machines running on 18 motors, filled with club parts, and so many wood shavings that he was able to heat his shop with them.

 

Lind fine tuned the weight control of clubs. He had more of a woodworking background than Van Wyck and was able to choose wood stock by grain and density to achieve more uniform balance.

 

Both the Van Wyck and Lind clubs were made of a three-piece construction. The two pieces of the Van Wyck bodies consisted of a hollowed cup joined by glue to the upper part of the body, with the handle then inserted and fastened with the wooden nut and glue. Lind's two pieces were like slats or ribs running lengthwise, to which the handle was wedged. He then covered the body with canvas and wrapped the neck with glue-impregnated cord.

 

The canvas was occasionally painted and the handles were oiled and polished. The ribs of the body were basswood, from the linden tree that was common in his area. The handles were maple or ash.