When I was a small boy just after the war, one could activate this swan by inserting a penny in the slot... I remember it as having a smoother action and, prior to catching the fish, it preened some feathers on its back... However, that's close to seventy years ago so I could be mistaken, given that I am unable to remember what I had for breakfast yesterday.
This automaton is on permanent display in Bowes museum, which is a stately home (mansion) located in the north of England. I've been lucky enough to see it in action 4 or 5 times over the years as I grew up near Barnard Castle. (That's the name of the town closest to Bowes museum). The automaton swan has fascinated me from a very young age & is definitely worth seeing if you' ever have the opportunity.
Me too. It's so breathtakingly beautiful! To create the effect of light dancing on the random movement of a fluid using solid gears that work like, well, clockwork is such a tremendous achievement!
It’s amazing that such things were created as far back as the early enlightenment (1700s). Though I suppose it makes sense - the technology that was utilised to create these beautiful objects was later used to usher in the machine age of the 1800s.
Too bad we can’t make these anymore. Not to the fine details these ones have from the same materials as these were entirely custom made down to the thinnest wires, nor with such accuracy.
@@d0lph1n63 I think we can make these, they’re just extremely costly and not what people want to spend their money on anymore. It’s not like the technology has been lost or anything. (edited immediately to fix a typo)
We can make them, it's just horribly expensive in terms of very skilled labour and materials. I met someone who's worked on refurbishing this and it took more than a year. That was with most of the parts being intact and "only" needing cleaning and reassembly.
From Bowes Museum's own website: "This musical automaton is much loved and over the last century has become the icon of The Bowes Museum. The Silver Swan dates from 1773 and was first recorded in 1774 as a crowd puller in the Mechanical Museum of James Cox, a London showman and dealer. The internal mechanism is by John Joseph Merlin, a famous inventor of the time. It was one of the many purchases that the Bowes’ made from Parisian jeweller M. Briquet, with John paying £200 for it in 1872. John and Joséphine first saw the swan at the 1867 Paris International Exhibition where jeweller Harry Emanuel exhibited it. The American novelist Mark Twain also saw the Silver Swan at the Paris exhibition in 1867 and described it in his book The Innocents Abroad: ‘I watched the Silver Swan, which had a living grace about his movement and a living intelligence in his eyes - watched him swimming about as comfortably and unconcernedly as it he had been born in a morass instead of a jeweller’s shop - watched him seize a silver fish from under the water and hold up his head and go through the customary and elaborate motions of swallowing it...' Joséphine, whose father was a clock-maker, seems to have had a fondness for automata. Whilst the Silver Swan is the best known, there are a number of others including mechanical toys, music boxes and watches with automaton movements at The Bowes Museum. Examples include an early 17th century lion clock made in Germany, whose eyes swivel, and a mechanical gold mouse, circa 1810, probably Swiss. Conservation in action The life-size Silver Swan rests on a stream made of twisted glass rods interspersed with silver fish which are controlled by three complex clockwork mechanisms. The age of the mechanisms as well as their complexity means the Silver Swan is very fragile and, like so many of us, it has been impacted by the pandemic, so we have begun a complex conservation repair of this important automaton. The conservation repair is very specialised and fantastically expensive. It happens rarely so we will be doing as much of the repair and conservation work in the Museum, enabling visitors to see it taking place on film and in public - it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. Visitors will see how the Swan comes apart, how the mechanism winds, the glass rods which rotate, see our team repair the Swan’s head and the fish it bends down to catch. The fascinating film of the conservation process, funded by the Friends of The Bowes Museum, will be playing in the Museum and sometimes visitors may be lucky enough to see this work taking place when they visit the Museum, if our team are at work." * I don't know what "affected by this pandemic" MEANS though. Did replacement/temp staff BREAK this historic piece? Well, they are raising cash to tear it down and restore it now...
I don't know the specifics of why the pandemic affected the Swan, but as a clock restorer, I can tell you that you need different lubricants depending on how often the mechanism is used. So it probably needs congealed lubricant cleaning off the moving parts, checking for wear and tear and finally reassembly and testing to ensure that it works correctly again
I very vaguely remember it had another move it would do, I think before it ate the fish it used to "scratch it's own back" but his neck looked like it failed to complete the action at the Beginning... Definitely no expert on this but could she possibly have forgotten/not known/ left out? Part of the winding up process ? Distant Memories.......🙈🙉🙊
Beautiful video. These objects still fascinate us through space & time. Upon re-watch I'm struck by the spectators, and imagine what it would have been like way back when. A lot of the same, maybe, chatting and then stunned silence. I share my wonderment with the child in particular.
Owned by The Bowes Museum, Bernard Castle, Co Durham. There is one thing wrong here which perhaps the inventor wasn’t aware of and that is that swans very rarely eat fish although they may ingest insects which are clinging to the plants that they eat.
Wrong. They eat a mixed diet of aquatic plants, insects, AND aquatic animals such as mollusks, amphibians, worms, and fish. Just let us all enjoy this masterpiece and go somewhere else to try desperately to appear 'smart'.
Hehehe Wonderful Swan mechanism The Chookys in the background were amusing I was waiting to hear the brook brook of an egg laid . Brook brook broooorrrk
I'm very curious and why this woman is Eva showing this beautiful unique in different otamatone. Without even knowing proper information about it. She said she thinks it was made by a clockmaker. But she's not sure. Why don't you do the research and pay attention.
Nobody knows who made it. Clockmakers and automaton makers weren't considered great artists at the time, being "merely tradesmen". If there was a name on a piece it was often the name of the seller or of the first owner.
