In 2021, I visited La Rochelle, an attractive seaside town on the Bay of Biscay in France. After a delicious lunch in one of the waterside restaurants, I popped into the Musée des Automates & Modèles Réduits (Museum of Automata and Scale Models – https://museeslarochelle.com) to take a look at their collection.
This museum opened to the public in 1984, with more than 30 years of work by the museum’s original creator, Michel Gaillard, to build up this collection. In addition to some prestigious antique pieces (for example made by Jouets et Automates Français (JAF), or Decamps …), there are some large animated displays. There are apparently more than 300 moving figures: mostly antique, with some animated window displays and historical scenes. I thought that I would share just a few impressions of what’s on offer.
Here is part of a reconstruction of the “Montmartre” district of Paris, which is used as a setting for some of the automata from the first part of the 20th century.
One of the shop windows shows a French butcher’s shop, with an automaton which I guess was used for advertising in the days before television took over the job. It reminded me of a modern work by Paul Spooner “Little Reinhold’s Wonderful Sausage Machine”.
It’s fun to speculate what this piece “Groom de service” made by JAF in 1923 was used for. I imagined it on the counter of a bar serving plates of salted snacks to keep the customers thirsty.
Of course there was a magician.
This work made me wonder a bit. It’s an automaton showing an automaton-maker at work. Its title loosely translates as “Vauconson making his famous mechanical duck. I took a quick peek in Wikipedia to find an article in French about a digesting or defecating automaton duck, created by Jacques de Vaucanson around 1734.
Here is a link to an automated translation of the French Wikipedia article https://translate.google.com/website?tl=en&u=https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canard_de_Vaucanson&sl=fr for those interested in defecating ducks.
This clown balancing on a ladder together with a pig balancing a ladder on its nose, was made in 1895 by another famous automatist called Leopold Lambert. Follow this link https://mus-col.com/en/the-authors/10280/ for a short biography.
It was an interesting visit for me even though I know nothing about antique automata. The entrance fee also includes a visit to the adjacent museum which has a collection of model ships and a model railway setup.
The museum is within walking distance of La Rochelle town centre at 12-14 rue de la Désirée, 17000 La Rochelle
Other Automata Museums in France
If you search for “musée des automates”, you will find several matches in France.
- The Musée des automates in Lyon https://museeautomates.com/
- La Magie des Automates in Lans-en-Vercors https://www.magiedesautomates.fr
- Musée des automates in Falaise https://www.automates-avenue.fr
- MUSÉE de l’Automate Souillac https://www.musee-automate.fr
I will certainly be popping in to see what they have to offer, the next time that I am in the vicinity.
Images
Download the images from here https://www.wordwise.de/La_Rochelle_Images.zip