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An unusual singing bird box by Frères Rochat, ca. 1810. The bird is shown in a tiny cage, not concealed inside the box as usual. A singing bird box (boîte à oiseau chanteur in French) is a box, usually rectangular-shaped, which contains within a miniature automaton singing bird concealed below an oval lid and activated by means of an operating lever.
Blaise Bontems (15 March 1814 Le Ménil - 1893) was a French specialist in the manufacture of automaton singing birds and the first of a dynasty of automaton manufacturers, which included his son Charles Jules and his grandson Lucien. [1] Bontems' birds were famous for the realism of their song. [2] [3] [4]
A singing bird box made about 1890 by Bontems. Bird dressed with iridescent hummingbird feathers and case made of tortoiseshell. The famous magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin (1805–1871) was known for creating automata for his stage shows.
Cuckoo clock, a so-called Jagdstück ("hunt piece"), Black Forest, c. 1900, Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Inv. 2006-013. A cuckoo clock is a type of clock, typically pendulum driven, that strikes the hours with a sound like a common cuckoo call and has an automated cuckoo bird that moves with each note.
Singing bird box; Shanghai Gallery of Antique Music Boxes and Automata; The Musical Museum, Brentford, London, England has several examples by makers including Nicole Frères, Regina and Popper which may be seen and heard.
At Papa Roujol's, Robert-Houdin learned the details to many of the mechanical tricks of the time as well as how to improve them. From there, he built his own mechanical figures, like a singing bird, a dancer on a tightrope, and an automaton doing the cups and balls. His most acclaimed automaton was his writing and drawing figure.
It focuses on music boxes of all sizes, from small, hand-held wind-up boxes, to fairground organs or room sized orchestrions, including musical clocks and snuff boxes, singing bird boxes, player pianos (reproducing pianos, nickelodeons), and automatic musical instruments of any kind.
The monumental musical automaton clock of ca. 1880 by August Noll; A mechanical orrery (planetarium) and a Weltmaschine by "Priestermechaniker" Philipp Matthäus Hahn [10] One of the early clocks (Paris, 1680) using a pendulum as a time standard, an invention of Christiaan Huygens; Several large mechanical musical instruments (street organs)