In 2014, New Brewery Arts and the Orders of St John Care Trust proposed that toymaker Robert Race be commissioned to make an original work of art on the theme of age, in response to an invitation for applications issued by the Baring Foundation.
After a series of workshops with elderly residents at Millbrook Lodge care home in Gloucester, the result was this automaton, called ‘Getting On’. I have only drawn the upper central part of it – in real life this section sits atop a large base containing further elements to interact with, including repurposed old carpenter’s chests, their drawers each containing their own little treasures. There are also further elements on each side.
Because it is a piece made specifically to interact with, I recommend watching this 7 minute video to see how it was made and how the residents engaged with the different sections when it was unveiled at the care home. In it you can also see the full scale of the work and see the other sections that are not in this drawing.
Several months ago, I spent a substantial amount of time looking into automata, in search of good examples to include in my little collection. I was looking through online photographs of possible candidates in museums, private collections, and Instagram accounts.
I came across a hugely varied range of objects and references. I read up on the history of automata and slowly started to assemble a shortlist of candidates. One of them was Tippoo’s (or Tipu’s Tiger), at the V&A Museum– a beautifully made, gruesome semi-automaton of a European soldier getting mauled by tiger, dating to the late 18th century. It is an extraordinary object, which contains a concealed organ inside the tiger’s body that makes the man’s arm lift up and down and ‘produces noises intended to imitate his dying moans’. You can read about its fascinating story in this article on the V&A museum website.
I also learned a bit about the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre, which opened up a whole world of contemporary automata I did not know about, and in turn led me to discover this lovely automaton by Tim Lewis of a cat drawing a bird caught in a cat’s (its own?) paw, and the rather compelling and eerie works of Nik Ramage – see these drumming fingers. These last two are more in the realm of art, but automata offer a wonderful intermingling of disciplines and worlds.
Then I happened to buy a little book by Robert Race called ‘Moving Toys and Automata’, with the idea of trying to make some at home. The book provides examples of different mechanisms for toys and explains how to make them with simple materials. I liked the approach and started looking into Race’s work a bit further.
As soon as I came across a video about the ‘Getting On’ automaton, I realised it was unlike any other plaything I had seen and was in a category of its own.
The video shows the residents in the care home making paper boats and other elements alongside visiting children – all of them equally engrossed in the activity, folding and gluing, genuinely taking delight in the simplest of mechanisms and crafts, not taking themselves too seriously and embracing some silliness. It also shows Race assembling and making the automaton and gives a good glimpse into the spirit behind the creation of ‘Getting On’.
Kate Organ from the Baring Foundation remarks that “It is playful but not patronising or childish; it is multi-layered and sophisticated but not obscure.” For reasons of my own, I would take ‘childish’ out of the equation, but indeed, it is not patronising and it comes from a place of exploration, humour, and shared experience.
It made me think about how I rarely hear about play and playthings of this kind in this context. One might hear of bingo nights, boardgames or jigsaw puzzles in care homes, but this is a different sort of engagement. This is the pleasure of making something work, setting it into motion and watching it unfold before your eyes.
I was also particularly taken with how many details went into making it. Different sections bear a selection of quotes and phrases:
- “We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing”, which seems to be attributed to George Bernard Shaw, though I have not found the exact source, and which Robert Race seems to have adopted as a motto.
- ‘Orb within orb, their sportive toil we view’, from the poem Skating by Joseph Addison;
- ‘Prize the doubt…’ referencing the poem Rabbi Ben Ezra by Robert Browning (which starts ‘Grow old along with me!’);
- And the all too relatable “What did I come up here for?”
All of these are integrated within the moving parts of the automaton, sometimes as elements of chain reactions that are as delightful for whoever is setting them in motion as they are for onlookers.
Together, the whole piece is a contained compendium of thoughts and references about the passing of time, complete with little mental (physical!) drawers and levers that we can choose to open or close, to operate or to leave still – a representation of what we are as we age, a collection of moments and movements, some of which are intrinsically linked to one another, and others which are standalone chapters.
Alice in Wonderland enthusiasts will recognise the crowning figure of Old Father William from the poem recited by Alice in Chapter 5. The Caterpillar, who is helping her work out if she has ‘changed’, asks her to recite ‘You are old, Father William’, which refers to a poem by Robert Southey called The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them. The original poem, published in 1799, is a dialogue between a father and a son, with the son asking questions and the father providing rather po-faced answers. It starts like this:
You are old, Father William, the young man cried,
The few locks which are left you are grey;
You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man,
Now tell me the reason I pray.
In the days of my youth, Father William replied,
I remember'd that youth would fly fast,
And abused not my health and my vigour at first
That I never might need them at last.
Alice’s version of the poem turns Southey’s Old Father William on its head (quite literally), and transforms what was originally a didactic, pompous poem, into a gleeful explosion of satire and nonsense, which starts like this:
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."
It is the poetic equivalent of blowing a perfectly executed, resounding raspberry.
“That is not said right,” said the Caterpillar.
“Not quite right, I’m afraid,” said Alice, timidly; “some of the words have got altered.”
Carroll’s Old Father William was chosen by Robert Race because he is a ‘good heroic figure for old age’, with his eel balancing tricks and his general disregard for what might be ‘proper’ for an ageing man.
It’s striking that we don’t often get to talk about ageing without it being framed as something to avoid or prevent – ageing seems to be a terrible sin we are all doomed to commit. We are rarely invited to engage with it in a playful way, and care home residents are completely absent from most conversations in society.
That is why I take such delight in seeing those children and care home residents interacting in the video, giggling and putting on paper hats. The act of playing like this may be a gentle variety of raspberry blowing, but no less meaningful.
Robert Race was kind enough to let me ask him some questions a few months ago. What follows is an interview, edited in parts for clarity.
INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT RACE
- Do you have a large collection of moving toys and automata (not made by you)? If so, can you describe some of your favourite ones?
I do have quite an extensive collection of automata, mostly by UK makers, and a large collection of moving ‘folk’ toys from around the world. I collected many of these on trips to Indonesia, Mexico, India and Japan. Some of my favourites feature in Making Moving Toys and Automata, and in my earlier book Making Simple Automata.
I love this push-along from Mali, which uses a really simple but effective friction drive made from recycled cans. I bought it in the early 90s at shop in Bristol run by the Joliba Trust, a charity that supports grassroots development in Mali. The shop is long gone, but the Joliba Trust is still going.
- What is your background and how long have you been making toys?
I took a science degree, taught science in a secondary school and then ran a teachers’ centre. After 9 years I wanted to do something different and was lucky enough to have a house with an outbuilding suitable for a small workshop. I had no particular skills, but had always made models, toys for the children, etc. I decided to try making dolls’ houses, miniature furniture and some simple toys and puzzles. I gradually became more interested in making simple automata.
- What excited you and pleased you as a child, and what did you seek for fun? How, if at all, has that changed with time?
I always had quite broad interests – sports, natural history, reading. My father was a furniture designer (Ernest Race) so I was brought up with an understanding that all the manufactured objects around us are the result of deliberate design and choice of materials and processes.
- What excites you especially when you are making a toy/automaton, and what are you aiming for?
What excites me the most is to make a moving toy that combines a simple mechanism with a quirky or amusing idea, and fully exploits the properties of the materials used.
- What role do you think humour plays in your approach to toys/automata?
Maybe movement in an inanimate object is always a little disturbing – humour helps to make the disturbance pleasurable rather than alarming.
- What role do you think aesthetics play in your approach to toys/automata?
What I admire in the best of the folk toys in my collection is a spare but vigorous imagery combined with a sensitive choice and treatment of materials. I aspire to creating the kind of beauty that they achieve.
- There is an unassuming, ad-hoc quality to lots of the toys in your book Moving Toys and Automata […]. As a seasoned toymaker, do you often find yourself looking at objects as possible parts of a moving toy?
I think I do – in particular perhaps with the broken and worn.
- How often do you set out to make a toy with a specific idea in mind, and then go and find the materials? And conversely, how often does the idea for a toy arise from the shape or the feel of an object?
Both these things happen – difficult to say which predominates.
- How did the idea for Getting On come about? How important was the practical, community-based aspect of this project?
I was approached by New Brewery Arts at Cirencester who wanted to apply to the Baring Foundation who were offering funding for art projects on ageing involving artists over 70.
New Brewery Arts made the bid in conjunction with the Orders of St John, who run a large number of care homes. From the inception the idea was that I should run some workshops for care home residents, and produce a piece of art that could tour the care homes.
- What do you get out of making a toy move? And why do you think we humans delight in this?
It appears to me that play is fundamental to art, technology and indeed the whole of human culture. It is a bit of a mystery, but moving toys do move us.
I’d like to thank Robert for his time and patience. I hope he continues making delightful, thoughtful objects such as ‘Getting On’ for a very long time. You can take a look at other automata made by Robert Race on his website.