The Art of Play: The Muriel Farr Automaton, 1890

The Victoria & Albert Museum

Though automata had been produced as early as ancient times, they were never more opular than in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. By the Nineteenth Century, collectors of automata regarded French makers as the best, notably Roullet et Descamps, and Vichy and Lambert (the maker of the piece above).

Automata in the Nineteenth Century depicted attractive or amusing young women and men or animals for the most part. However, there was a small, but devoted group of collectors with a taste for grotesques ranging from demons, wizards, cigarette-smoking monkeys and racial stereotypes.

These complicated clockwork figures were anything by playthings for children, they were collector’s items prized for their artistic and scientific achievement and mostly collected by wealthy gentleman as status symbols. Most children (and, really, adults) only had a chance to see these novelties in shop displays.

Regardless of the venue, automata fascinated all who saw them—continuing the love affair that humans have with inanimate objects that replicate natural human emotions. It’s the same relationship that we have with robots and other contemporary amusements and technologies.

This figure shows such an automata stripped of her adornment. This piece, made between 1890 and 1900 by Leopold Lambert (with head and arms by Jumeau) is a mechanical and musical figure of a young Caucasian girl standing with her arms bent and raised. Her bisque head is set from inside with blue glass eyes, and her ears are pierced for earrings.

Her head , arms and hands move, but it has not so far been possible to identify exactly what the doll's actions represent, as her props and identifying costume do not survive. It is possible that she may have been smelling a perfume or a flower, or looking closely at something—a mirror or jewel perhaps. We’ll never know.

This figure was owned by one Muriel Farr as a child, but how a child came to own such a costly automaton is unknown. Since Muriel did not attain the automaton until 1918, it is thought that she was bequeathed the figure by a wealthy relative.