- But what's crazy is that they're the same size.
- What?
You know what's annoying about optical illusions?
Hi, I'm Dylan Thuras, co-founder of Atlas Obscura,
and this is "Show & Tell."
This is a series that we started
because of this time we're in,
where we are all in our homes with our stuff,
and we thought this would be an incredible moment
to talk to collectors and other people
with interesting objects about what they have.
So, we're here today with a particularly interesting person.
He is a magician, a collector, and the co-owner of a store
called The Art of Play, which has all kinds of interesting
puzzles and bits of magic and cards,
and all kinds of incredible stuff in it.
So, I am thrilled to welcome to the show Dan Buck.
Thank you for being here.
- Hey Dylan, thanks for having me.
Right now I'm in San Diego, California,
inside a secret showroom, so to speak,
which we built out.
It's inside our shipping facility,
but it's a magical place
and I can't wait to show you around.
- So yeah, I would love to see
one of the secrets you have to show me.
I would love to see some things from your collection.
- Art of Play started as a playing card company.
We started with one deck and now we have hundreds.
The obsession has evolved, I should say.
But I'll come over here and show you my favorite decks
that we've designed and created over the years.
This is a really fun, whimsical deck designed by
an artist in the U.K. by the name of Jonathan Burton.
- So, obviously, one of the things that can change
in cards is the design,
the back of the card.
That can be carried through to the front of the card.
But what else is up for being played with
in a deck of cards?
- So, it's literally a blank canvas.
You can do whatever you want on the back.
There are a few rules we follow,
or have our artists follow.
It's necessary that all the backs of the cards match.
If they were all different,
it would be pretty easy to distinguish like,
"Oh, that's the ten of hearts,
that's the ace of spades."
So, that's one of the rules.
And then, the indices.
In order to play so many different card games,
the indices have to go in
usually the upper left hand corner.
And it's usually value over suit.
Apart from that, anything is possible.
For the king of Spades on this one,
we have an astronaut.
- These are beautiful. I love the art on these.
- This is called the ultimate deck.
We commissioned a design studio by the name of
Stranger & Stranger,
and we commissioned 52 different artists
from all over the world to each do their own take,
or their own spin,
on a playing card in the deck.
So, a quick side story.
Cardistry is the art of manipulating playing cards
in a really cool way.
- You did that with the appropriate level
of absolute casualness, you know what I mean?
You did it with the right level of,
"I forgot that I'm doing this with my hands."
That's very impressive.
- Yeah, cards have definitely become a part of me.
I do stuff and I normally have a deck
in my hands at all times,
just constantly fidgeting with it.
But I try not to for this video.
Because it does make noise.
- Entertaining.
Okay, let's keep going through your,
you have a lot to show us, so let's keep moving
through these cards.
- Yeah.
This one is Illusion d'Optique.
We hired a well-known artist
who does really fun optical illusions.
The back is really trippy, by the way.
- Yeah.
- We placed a different optical illusion
on every card.
- That's so fun.
- So this is fun to look at.
You can flip through it like a book.
But then, you can play it.
Because it has the appropriate indices in each corner.
So it works as a functional deck of cards, as well.
- Do you have a favorite optical illusion
that you particularly love?
- All right, I should show you this.
My colleague Adam Ruben created this.
It's based off a really old 2D optical illusion
called the Jastrow illusion.
You've probably seen it.
So it's two bowls.
This front one looks larger than the back one, right?
- For sure.
- But that's just because it's closer to the camera.
So if I move the back one closer to the camera,
now it's larger.
But what's crazy is that they're the same size.
- What?
Does it have to do with what's in them?
It doesn't have to do with what's in them, because
you just changed it. - No.
It works the same way as this.
This piece looks skinny and tall
and this piece looks wide and short, right?
- Do not tell me those are the same size things.
Do not tell me those are the same.
- This is really gonna mess with your brain right now.
- You know what's annoying about optical illusions?
What is annoying about them is
you get to this point in your life
where you've seen a lot of this stuff.
So, you already, like, I know those are the same size
but frustratingly, you can never make your eyes believe you.
It's both joyous and very disappointing
in your own brain to not be able to actually
overcome that fact of itself.
- Disappointing is a good way to put it.
But yeah I mean, that's kind of how we started,
with playing cards.
Then, the obsession grew.
Someone once described collecting playing cards to me
as collecting records.
You know, they have two purposes.
It's beautiful artwork,
and it serves a purpose.
Once you have a couple, you want a couple more,
because they're colorful,
they're different styles.
And before you know it, you have way too many playing cards.
- And now you have not just way too many playing cards,
but way too many puzzles.
So tell me about where you kind of expanded into.
Some of the other stuff you've gotten into.
- So, we love Japan.
We go there every year on an excursion
for a few weeks to just travel and try to source objects.
I think Japan makes the coolest stuff.
These puzzle boxes are all from Japan.
Specifically, they're from Hakone.
Hakone is a small town
surrounded by a lush forest and huge crater lake.
So they have endless amounts of lumber,
which explains all this beautiful woodworking.
- When you say Japan and puzzles
this is exactly what I think of,
these incredible, beautiful, wooden puzzle boxes.
- I feel like a lot of the animal ones
are some of my favorites
just because the detail is so great.
- Oh, I love that.
- But they're also some of the easiest.
I call them stash boxes,
because they're not really puzzle boxes.
Like, for example,
to open this puzzle box,
you feed the frog-
this is not the magnet-
you feed the frog sake.
He drinks the sake, and then you can open the drawer.
And then when you put it back,
it locks.
- What's interesting about that is, like,
some of the puzzle boxes, all of the work,
all of the mechanisms is really visible.
But in that, it's totally invisible.
It's actually a very simple object, in a way.
But the complexity is all tucked inside
in a part you're not really seeing.
- Yeah.
This is one of my all-time favorites.
I'm pretty sure this is what
got me hooked into puzzle boxes.
And this was designed by Kumai,
the founder of the Karakuri group,
where all these come from.
It just looks like a normal dice,
but you'll quickly notice that
one of the sides is a little loose,
and that it should slide open
but it's locked closed.
After inspecting it a little more,
maybe you'll notice that it's not a traditional dice.
A traditional dice, the top and bottom
have to add up to be seven.
That's just how dice work;
I don't know why.
But you'll notice this is four and one, so that's off.
And then five and two, okay that kind of works,
but three and six, it's just not normal.
So maybe that gives you a hint.
But eventually, I discovered that
if you start with the one pip up,
and then count to six by bringing two to the top, the three
- Oh, my god!
- ... the four, the five, the six.
So there's an interior maze
where a ball bearing travels through,
and when you do it in that order,
it slides open.
It's so cool.
And everything's hidden.
The mechanism's totally hidden,
which I love.
You never really know how it works.
- Beautiful, elegant puzzle box.
That's so cool.
What other kinds of puzzles and things do you have
here in the shop?
So you've cards, you've got puzzle boxes.
- We've got puzzle boxes.
These are all little cast metal puzzles.
We call them pocket puzzles
'cause they fit in your pocket.
So this is one of the only ones that comes apart.
Because once you see it together,
you kind of know how it's done.
But I'll show you all on camera.
Watch how satisfying this is.
If you line them up just right,
they sort of just melt right into each other.
- I was given a puzzle once
that was just two little, almost trapezoidal shapes.
Very simple.
And the puzzle was like, make a pyramid.
That was the puzzle.
- Oh yeah.
That's the two piece pyramid puzzle.
Yes!
- It's the craziest thing because
you're like mashing them together in a million ways
and then you see it... - So good.
- ...and you're like...
It's another example of breaking your brain.
And you're really angry once you see it done.
That your brain could not do that for itself.
And I have never understood why that puzzle works.
- It's so true.
Yeah.
- I love puzzles like that.
I mean, keep going.
I love all of this stuff.
It's so cool.
- This is actually a bookcase of all the magic books
we collected growing up as kids.
Which is fun,
but the cool part is that, of course when we moved in
to this warehouse, we built this room
and this is the first thing we built,
the secret bookcase.
So, there's more back here.
- That's great.
I sort of had a suspicion.
How could there not be a secret bookcase?
- So yeah, this back room is just full of stuff,
as you can see.
There's so many objects.
So this beautiful automaton right here we commissioned
an artist in Seattle to build for us.
It took him four months.
And I'll show you what it does in a second.
He calls it The Singing Bird.
So, if I spin this...
- Wow.
- It's totally mechanical.
- It makes me really happy
that people are making
automatons as beautiful as this.
- There are still people out there
putting so many hours of work into something like this.
It's incredible.
- I also, I like the visible storage model.
You see the crank, you see all the gearing.
That long extension of the cables
is actually very beautiful.
- Yeah, it's beautiful.
Yeah, I agree.
This is to me the most interesting part,
seeing all the gears
and being able to see how it works,
but still not understanding what's going on
and why it's working.
- Well, thank you for taking us through the shop.
This has been really amazing.
How can people follow along?
They may not be able to come to the shop right now,
but is there somewhere they can visit to see more?
- Well, first, if you're ever in San Diego,
definitely look up Art of Play
when things get back to normal.
We do have a retail shop in downtown San Diego.
But for now, I think the best way to keep in touch
with us is on Instagram.
We're simply @artofplay.
Or, you can browse our shop at artofplay.com.
- Thank you so much.
This has been really, really cool.
I love all of this stuff.
- Yeah, thanks so much for having me on,
Dylan, this was a lot of fun.
- Likewise.
Thanks for watching "Show & Tell."
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