My first automaton
I’ve been interested in automata for a long time. I used to visit Cabaret Mechanical Theatre when I passed through London in the late 80s and early 90s (it’s now based in Hastings). More recently, I visited the MAD museum in Stratford-upon-Avon, which reawakened my interest. I got the book ‘Making Simple Automata by Robert Race’ and whilst I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, all seemed a bit complicated; the materials used (although I had many of them and the appropriate tools) weren’t my creative comfort zone.
In 2021, I started making sculptures from polymer clay. I was making lots of different puffins, and I finally decided to try making an automaton in June 2023. It’s something I had been thinking about since a visit that first visit to the MAD Museum in 2013!
I made a prototype out of a carboard box with some bamboo skewers and cardboard cams and a polymer clay puffin – it worked but wasn’t very elegant. I thought I would make a polymer clay box for the base and refine it but life got busy and it got put on the back burner.
See some of my automata that I actually finished here
