While in Pittsburgh (my ninth festival in 20 years) I noticed how much our props have changed since I started juggling, and how much we depend on our props. 

My conclusions: 1) Props are more durable, more available, and less expensive than ever. 2) This change in props has shaped recent juggling like nothing else. 

In fact, I believe the recent growth in juggling is due overwhelmingly to the revolution in materials over the past 30 years. Virtually every prop now available has been rebuilt, rematerialized and strengthened in that time, with the result that props break less, are less expensive and are easier to find. 

Check out the historical record. In our grandparents day, many props, and especially clubs, were custom-made. A juggler might order six clubs, and pick for performances the three that came closest to matching each other. Clubs and other props were usually made of lightweight woods or metals, and would bend or break if dropped too many times. If you were throwing an expensive, hard-to-replace, fragile prop, you'd want to focus on tricks you did well, and not risk learning new tricks. In fact, you wouldn't try to learn a trick that involved a lot of drops. Foot kicks with a bamboo club? No way! 

Fiberglass began to be used 30-40 years ago, because it was unbreakable. Then plastic became the medium of choice. Starting in the 1970s, prop makers were able to switch to cost-saving mass production techniques for many products, using new materials (usually plastic-based) which were more durable. Now, using durable, easy-to- replace, relatively cheap props, jugglers can attempt (and miss) more challenging tricks until they learn them without worrying about breaking a vital prop. 

Of course, other factors have helped popularize juggling. Most people have more leisure time. Interstate highways, cheap gas and air tray-el allow us to attend festivals with less cost and/or in less time. Prism paper is cheap enough for us all to have flashy, professional-looking props. VCRs and videos allow us to observe far- away jugglers, and even break down and learn their moves in slow-motion. But overwhelmingly, the greatest factor has been changes in virtually every kind of prop that encourage a greater variety of tricks. 

Let's look at props individually: 

Clubs: The advent of the plastic club in the 1960s by Jay Green, with glitter paper decoration and the softer handle, allowed creation of a whole new category of tricks, including club bounces and foot juggling. Stu Raynolds' fiber- glass clubs were (and still are) completely unbreakable, but were three-to-six times more costly than plastic clubs and were tough on the hands. But both Green and Raynolds were custom builders, and waits of weeks or months for new clubs were common. 

Brian Dube' is credited as the first person to bring pre-made clubs to a festival (1977), and is credited with making them available through catalogue sales. Dave Finnegan at Jugglebug also made clubs and other props widely available through toy store and magic shop sales. Mass production techniques have also made mis-matched clubs a thing of the past. In fact, club standardization allows any two jugglers to throw with each other, a feat not encouraged in the era of custom-built clubs. Plastic clubs also allow new jugglers to learn by borrowing equipment without fear of major damage or expense. 

Rings: Rings were made of wood, plywood or heavy rigid plastic until the early 1980s, as Edward Jackman reminded us in Pittsburgh. Lighter, less breakable rings encouraged both numbers juggling and a greater variety of tricks. White and colored rings also allow jugglers to appear more professional. Lighter weight encourages more ring juggling because they can be juggled longer without being tiring. 

Devil Sticks: My first devil stick (1978) was wood wrapped in cloth, with cloth-wrapped hand sticks. My second one was taped in plastic, but I was told to paint it for better traction. The advent of rubber-coated hand sticks gave much better traction and made many tricks easier. Plastic end caps also appeared, which kept the end of the stick from being torn up. Rubberized sticks also have allowed for prism paper to go on the stick itself, making it more attractive for performance. 

Diablo: Rubber beats bamboo hands-down. It doesn't break, and it spins longer. I believe the current popularity of diablos is due to the new material. Hard plastic diablos were sold for a while in the 1980s, but they were also subject to breakage. 

Bouncing Balls: Silicone balls bounce better than any other ball, and have made five ball and seven ball bounce tricks possible. They were not available until the 1980s. Before then, lacrosse balls were commonly used. Serious bounce juggling became much more common following the introduction of silicone balls. Silicone balls also give a professional appearance. 

Other Props: Other changes include creation of acrylic crystal balls, lighter and less fragile than glass crystal globes, and nylon for scarves. Since nylon scarves are cheap, light and fall more slowly, they have been invaluable in teaching juggling to large groups at one time. Nylon bean- bags stuffed with plastic beads are actually washable, so that props can look like new for longer. (Ever had a birdseed-stuffed beanbag sprout after it got wet?) 

The availability of plastics and silicone has not been without cost, however. In particular, we have lost the rubber spinning ball that was a standard for many great jugglers for years. However, rubber balls were replaced by plastic at the factory, and the plastic balls were lighter and less durable, so they couldn't spin as long or balance as well. The remarkable jugglers who still use rubber balls are rarely imitated, since their props are not available. If a prop maker were to bring rubber balls to a festival, I wager that in two years at most they'd be used in a winning act in the championships. 

It's also interesting to notice what props haven't been rebuilt successfully. Cigar boxes, hats, canes, and other unchanged props may be less popular because of this.

Some prop makers have experimented with plastic cigar boxes, but their superiority to wood was not evident, since the boxes can still break. For canes, PVC pipe was tried, but it broke more easily than wood. The things we climb upon (unicycles, rolo-bolos, rolling globes, slack ropes, tight wires, stilts) are also largely unchanged.

Of course, the ready availability and reasonable expense of these props have kept them in use. 

And the prop story is not over. As industry creates new materials, jugglers will be trying to use them in props. Materials we've seen used lately include props to juggle inside (Greg Kennedy's "salad bowl" for rolling balls and the triangle in which Michael Moschen bounces silicone balls), props to wear (Fred Garbo's inflatables, Flying Karamazov Brothers synthesizer- linked costumes), and props used in new ways (Darned Good and Funny's juggling of PVC pipe in the Teams Championships in 1990, and the giant chimes manipulated by Jorg Muller in Pittsburgh). The next materials are probably things which we haven't even thought about!

I wrote this because jugglers are among the most creative artists I know, always willing to experiment (even in the grocery store, yes?). Nonetheless, we usually believe that all the skill is ours, and fail to recognize that that our bodies and coordination aren't the whole story. Our artistry is also dependent on the things we juggle. Keeping that in mind should make us a little more humble, and acknowledges our great debt to the people who make our greatest tricks possible - the prop-makers! 

(Henry Slack thanks Neil Stammer for his original suggestions for this article, as well as Todd Strong, Toni Shifalo, Charles Shapiro and Andy Ford for their help. As Professor Henry Huggler, Slack has performed around Atlanta for 20 years, but is otherwise reputably employed as an engineer. He invites those with comments on his thoughts to submit them as "Letters to the Editor" in a future issue.)