Description

This spectacular book, the first to be devoted entirely to the period of the automaton´s apogee, is an essential addition to the library of the collector, the specialist, and all who are interested in automata.

An introductory chapter depicts the Paris in which automaton-makers lived and worked, its atmosphere, preoccupations and amusements. There follow the little-known histories of the seven leading makers, from their foundation in the mid-century to the decline of production after the First World War.

This information is the result of the author´s pioneering researches into commercial archives, the contemporary press, and personal documents of automaton-makers´ descendants.

Here for the first time names, dates and chronologies are accurately established to give a reference framework of inestimable value. In the automaton - happy product of the exuberant creativity of the artist and the exquisite craftsmanship of the artisan - sculpture, painting, music, costume and mechanics all play a part. The automata of nineteenth-century France embody their age in a wonderfully immediate fashion. In their gestures and attitudes the nineteenth century comes almost literally alive: in homely figures such as the rosy-cheeked nanny walking the baby, or the pretty seamstress at pains over her work; in ingenious larger-than-life creations - lustily acrobatic clowns, mystifying conjurors, melancholy Pierrots, Mephistopheles himself; and still other pieces express the era of great international exhibitions and colonial conquests, and its fascination with the exotic.

Over 150 automata are illustrated in colour photographs; and a substantial selection of pages from catalogues of the period in facsimile show many further pieces in monochrome.

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Livre sur les automates

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Livre sur les automates

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