All the rage after their invention in 1816, these artful instruments reach back in time while embracing the latest in technology

At the fair, the crowd lingered around Stephen Auger's kaleidoscope booth. Most strollers found the opportunity to peep as irresistible as peanuts. One woman grabbed the nearest tube, peered into the eye- piece and flicked open her purse to make a purchase without a moment's hesitation. An elegantly garbed advertising executive hovered at the crowd's edge, carefully scrutinized the wares and mysteriously returned three or four times before questioning Auger at length and buying one of each. "One guy methodically looked through every kaleidoscope not once but three or four times until he found the one with a perfectly flawless image," relates Auger, a 26-year-old artist based near Northampton, Massachusetts, who supported his studio work for two years by re-creating the kaleidoscope's marvels.

Even when made from crushable cardboard tubes, sheathed with paper more gaudy in color than the plastic chips that sometimes create the inner image, the kaleidoscope awakens a fascination in young and old alike that defies easy explanation. Perhaps the appeal is as simple as the observation made in Anqitues magazine in 1935 that such objects play off "that ungovernable urge of curiosity which prompts the average human being to glue an eye to a knothole in a fence, or to any other small aperture that penetrates concealing barriers." Certainly its spell is as intricate and complex as the meditative mandalas, endlessly changing, created as the viewer turns the kaleidoscope. It touches chords of the unconscious, archetypes that Carl G.Jung believed transcend civilization and culture. By its sheer impracticality, the kaleidoscope bypasses the mundane and worrisome routines of life; it pleases everyone except perhaps the crtistiest pragmatist.

Each new generation rediscovers the kaleidoscope's wonders and grows up with fond memories. "I can't tell you how many people have told me they remember getting a kaleidoscope when they had the measles." says Carolyn Bennett (p. 103), a 32-year-old former painter and art teacher who makes her living handcrafting kaleidoscopes in Media, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. She is part of a scattered but burgeoning group of kaleidoscope makers whose artful designs aim to please the more sophisticated and demanding adult eye.

Sir David Brewster, who invented the kaleidoscope in 1816, would have been tickled to learn that his little device that once was all the rage is now bouncing back (pp. I 00- 01). Brewster is the touchstone, the first and most comprehensive authority, for kaleidoscope connoisseurs. Brewster described a microscopic kaleidoscope, a miniature useful as "a female ornament" (Carolyn Behnett recently introduced one). He mentioned a kaleidoscope camera that registers the kaleidoscope's images. Peach Reynolds, a kaleidoscope artisan in Austin, Texas, makes a device that does roughly the same thing (p. 98). Brewster discusses the telescopic kaleidoscope, or "teleidoscope," a device with a clear lens at the end which turns small portions of the world into kaleidoscopic images. Both Carolyn Bennett and Peach Reynolds make and sell ones that work on this principle.

Brewster was a "natural philosopher," a rough equivalent of today's physicist. He studied a broad sampling of natural phenomena and earned his bread and butter by writing and editing until, at the age of 57, he received a principalship. For most of his prolific career, Brewster turned his mind and penchant for experimentation to the physical properties of light. His questions began as a child in Jedburgh, Scotland, when he built sundials, microscopes and telescopes. They expanded when he entered the University of Edinburgh and started experimenting with light. But Brewster was temporarily sidetracked when he toyed with the idea of entering the Church. Fortified with an honorary M. A. in divinity studies and a license to preach, he found to his dismay (so the story goes) that he suffered from fainting spells whenever he climbed into the pulpit.

In the early 19th century, science was aboil with new ideas about light. The undulatory, or wave theory, was eclipsing the corpuscular, or particle theory. The phenomenon of polarization-in which light, suitably reflected or retracted, exhibits curious effects when again reflected or refracted-intrigued scientists especially Brewster, who vehemently opposed the undulatory theory. He experimented with bouncing light between mirrors, theorizing that after a number of successive reflections the light particles would become more and more polarized. His work with adjoining mirrors formed the backbone of the kaleidoscope. The great leap came when "the idea occurred to me of giving motion to objects, such as pieces of coloured glass, &c. which were either fixed or placed loosely in a cell at the end of the instrument."

Behold, the kaleidoscope. The Greek roots of the name Brewster chose mirror its purpose: a device to create and exhibit beautiful images. As Brewster relates the tale (and he goes to great lengths to establish his place in history as the originator), the kaleidoscope enjoyed overnight success. Two hundred thousand instruments disappeared from the store shelves in Paris and London within three months. The kaleidoscope also appeared in scientific catalogs, but its place of honor was in the Victorian parlor as a pre-electronic equivalent of television, a dial-an-image pastime enjoyed by all ages.

Brewster's kaleidoscope is as compact as a seaman's spyglass and as informed by specific purpose in its overall design. Housed in a brass, leather-wrapped tube and capped at both ends with knurled trimmings, one kind fits snugly in the palm of the hand. The viewer simply rotates the end of the kaleidoscope to tumble the glass pieces. The "object cases"-flat, circular glass chambers filled with bits of colored or stained glass, pieces of lace, even feathers--are popped in and out of the end like a camera lens. Brewster counsels the viewer to place a live insect in an empty case and enjoy viewing it kaleidoscopically. He loved the kaleidoscope's evanescent and endlessly changing images: "When it (a figure] is once lost, centuries may elapse before the same combination returns."

Useful purposes were served as wellI

While the kaleidoscope enlivened countless social gatherings, it succeeded less spectacularly in fulfilling Brewster's prophecy that "it would prove of the highest service in all the ornamental arts. "For any job involving symmetrical pattems-the design of architectural ornaments, circular Gothic windows, ceiling moldings, carpets, jewelry-Brewster felt ihe kaleidoscope could be as indispensable as an easel. It never reached that stature, although it certainly was used by craftsmen even into the early part of the 20th century. According to a letter in the collections of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt Museum of decorative arts and design in New York City, the artists at a print works were basing new carpet designs on kaleidoscope images in 1919. "The man [artist] would look into it while turning and stop whenever he saw a design he thouglit would suit, which he would copy in watercolors. There were half a dozen men in a room doing this and each would probably make two designs a day, which were all sent to a head man to select from."

Unlike telescopes front the same era, not many 19th- century kaleidoscopes seem to have stirvived. Their relative rarity may testify to their favored status and repeated use. But Carolyn Bennett traces their dearth in part to that unquenchable desire to learn the magician's tricks. "The kaleidoscope is a very mysterious thing that you don't really understand until you take it apart. My theory is that a lot of old kaleidoscopes got reduced to piles of junk."

Those who have tinkered with one discover that the trick of the kaleidoscope are, like. magic acts, done with mirrors. if you dissect a dime-store variety, you will find a bent piece of reflective metal, forming two mirrored surfaces in a V-shaped trough. If you place your eye at one end and an object such as a pencil directly in front of the other end, you will see a kaleidoscopic image of the pencil. In simple terms, you're seeing one image that is in reality the pencil, two other images that are direct reflections of the pencil and several other images that are reflections of the reflections. The smaller the angle between the two reflecting surfaces, the more reflections and more complex the image. The wider the angle, the fewer reflections and the simpler the image. From this general starting point, the kaleidoscope crafter adds an object case with colored-glass pieces to create a varied and beautiful image, a cylindrical outer covering and perhaps a lens.

The cardboard and plastic beneficiaries of mass production are good fun, but suffer in comparison with quality instruments such as the Bush kaleidoscope, a classic American kaleidscope patented by Charles G. Bush of Boston in the arly 1870s. Apparently his model was extremely popular, for several have found their way into the Cooper-Hewitt and the Iives of modern kaleidoscope makers. A large-barreled kaleidoscope, a typical Bush is secured on a wooden pedestal. Multicolored hand-blown pieces of glass, chosen with an eye to complementary textures and movements, give it an inner realm that some find richer than any others of the 19th century.

One of the most lasting impressions made by the Bush was on Craig Musser (p. 106), a former advertising executive in New York. Long fascinated by Victorian antiquities and mandalas (he studied Sanskrit at Harvard), Musser fell in love with a Bush that belonged to a friend. He bought it, took it apart and began his search for others. Out of his genuine fondness for the design, he decided to build a replica. "I was working on an edition of eight after work and on the weekends, while I was still at the advertising agency. At that time, I didn't think I could make a 'scope any better than Bush's." That assessment changed as he continued to work on his kaleidoscopes with Bill O'Connor (p. 106), a master glassblower from North Haven, Connecticut.

O'Connor, who is now a partner with Musser in Van Dyke, Limited, the company that markets their Victorian-inspired kaleidoscope, shares Musser's penchant for collecting and eye for perfection. He explains, "I knew what a kaleidoscope was but I had never seen one so beautiful. Craig showed me the parts he wanted me to make, but in the process of working with the glass, I came up with some new ideas. We started off building a replica but very quickly began to refine it into something completely different."

Concentrating on the image

While the Victorians seemed to pay more attention to the outward appearance of the kaleidoscope than to its inner visions, Musser and O'Connor took the other tack. They wanted a spectacular and sparkling image, one whose siren song lured the viewer back, one "so beautiful," as O'Connor's neighbor explained after gazing into their kaleidoscope for half an hour, "that it iurts to look anymore."

It took one year of experimentation and another year to complete the lampworking of the 30 to 40 pieces required for each of the 50 kaleidoscopes in the second edition (like prints and other artworks, kaleidoscopes have been issued in editions). "We strove for colors of gems, pure and rich, and paid particular attention to the the shapes. We wanted minaretlike pieces that really looked Arabian," explains Musser. These hair-thin ampules (p. 108) contain glass, finely crushed pieces of coral, pulverized shells, and sand intermixed with mineral oil so that as the viewer tumbles the pieces, the slilmmering particle-laden fluid rises and falls. Musser and O'Connor have choreographed a kaleidoscopic ballet not only with the minarets but with crystalline shards, tightly wound twists, helices, shepherds' crooks and horses' manes as well.

"When I was little, I would go to my mother's friend Marian's house and play with her antique kaleidoscope. That's how I got inspired," says Judith Karelitz (p. 103), a New York artist who works with polarized light and published an edition of 100 polarized-light kalcidoscopes in 1971. If the Van Dyke Kaleidoscope improves on tradition, the Karelitz Kaleidoscope is all 20th century. Made from transparent Plexiglas, polarizing filters, doubly-refracting materials and mineral oil, it stands at the opposite end of the spectrum. But, like Musser and O'Connor, Judith Karelitz has added an'other dimension with a sensibility that views the kaleidoscope as yet another artistic medium, like sculpture. Constructed from a clear Plexiglas cylinder with a red reflecting Plexiglas triangular prism instead of mirrors, the kaleidoscope's exterior is as revealing as a window-walled skyscraper. The eye focuses on an object case where paper-thin designs made from clear, colorless, doubly-refracting materials are suspended in mineral oil. The rotating eyepiece enables the viewer to change the colors of the image without changing the design. With these industrial materials, a luminous and watery world is created, a dreamy state of muted colors and soft-edged sham. Like fast-moving clouds, the shapes drift and float into one another only to emerge later in what looks like a different plane.

The Karascope: variation on a theme

Judith Karelitz was a pioneer in the new world of kaleidoscopes, a vantage point from which she has witnessed the recent resurgence. When she began in the early '70s, she sensed that she was exploring in a vacuum, although, she says, "I have a feeling that among the sculptors of the world, many have once made a kaleidoscope. She has also designed a unique and inexpensive kaleidoscope-inspired device called the Karascope. Based on many of the same polarized-light principles of her other work, the Karascope lacks the traditional kaleidoscope's symmetry, and the image instead seems to spiral toward the viewer's eye. Through arrangements with New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian Institution, differnt versions of the Karascolpe are on sale across the country. Other kaleidoscope-type devices have joined it on the store shelves, including two by artist Ernest Trova ancl Ed Baynard. For Judith Karelitz, who is delighted with the many thousands that have been sold, this miniboom is as curious as the prospect that anyone can make a living by hand-crafting a kaleidoscope.

A handful, probably no more than 25 people sprinkled from coast to coast, derive much, if not all, of their income from kaleidoscopes. The reality jolts even those who do it ."You know when they asked you what you want to be when you grow up? I never thought I'd say kaleidoscope maker, laughs Carolyn Bennett, who has paid her bills for the past five years by selling at crafts fairs and to shops.

Anyone who makes ends meeet as a kaleidoscope maker owes his or her livelihood to the crafts movement. Spawned in the'60s by a sensibility that rejected the anomie and anonymity of mass production, and carried through the '70s by people who embraced its simple and wholesome lifestyle, the movement encompasses artisans who are resurrecting traditional crafts. Although it is dangerous to generalize about a group as iconoclastic as kaleidoscope makers, may are woodworkers and stained-glass artists who gravitated to the devices's fantastical qualities.

What began as a loosely organized grass-roots movement, with Saturday fairs on the local town common, now borders on big business - total receipts at one of America's largest annual craft shows, held in rural Rhinebeck, New York, were estimated at $4.5 million last year. Dorothy Marshall, a kalekdoscope maker in Eugene, Oregon, who got started in the early '70s, laments the trend. "The crafts movement is getting intergrated and mainstreamed. Just like the Bauhaus. She fears that this brand of growth will crimp creativity, producing more variations and fewer new themes. But Eric Sinizer, owner of the Light Opera, a specialty shop in San Francisco, believes that it will expand the universe of kaleidoscope connoisseurs.