The Double Surprises

In this New York Public Library video, assistant curator Charles Cuykendall Carter shows off Les Portes Fermées, ou, Les Doubles Surprises (The Closed Doors, or The Double Surprises), a new acquisition of the Pforzheimer Collection. The small nineteenth-century French toy book is comprised of seven miniature romance and trickery stories, each accompanied by an illustration with a door flap opening onto a surprise illustration that appears when the card is held up to the light.