Automatons – The Director’s Cut…

The advantage of having a lot of bread offered at breakfast, is that it allows you to sample a lot of delicious homemade and locally made jams – fig, lenon curd, raspberry, apricot, quince – most with chunks of fruit, unlike the jams I have at home that have most of the texture processed out of them. I’m still not being very adventurous with foods for lack of being able to translate a menu. I’m acquiring some new favorites though – tourteau is round bread with a black crust with a creamy texture and just a hint of sweetness. “Italiennes” – the French version of a soft serve swirl, this one is chocolate and pistachio, always served in a sugar cone. I’m not impressed with crepes, but am becoming a fan of Prosecco spritzes, and cognac. I’m now buying water two bottles at a time…

I take a really pleasant stroll along the La Rochelle waterfront this morning to view the Atlantic. It’s really warm at 9 AM (32c – 89 degrees) and I really need to find a hat. I reach another marina, and decide it’s time to turn back and find the Automaton Museum.

The Automaton Museum is fun, though most of the figures seem pretty rudimentary. Most are under 18″ tall and make minimal movement. Half a dozen, like the Hurdy-Gurdy player shown here, were life-size. Some, like the Charcutier, made social commentary. A clown lost his head which would show up a minute later in a box. There were two cages of birds from 1905 that had been real at one time before reaching the taxidermist and being outfitted with mechanisms that would make their heads turn and produce song. They were pretty creepy.

I learned that automatons, or mechanical figures, became popular in the 12th century when they replaced human bell ringers in churches and cathedrals. Automata gained their peak during the 18th-19th centuries. Between the 16th-18th centuries they became associated with music boxes. The Vichy et Compagnie, founded by watchmaker Antoine Vichy in 1862, started producing mechanical toys. His son Gustave took over the business the following year, and exhibits his musical automatons at the Exhibition Universal in 1878, to great acclaim. The company was handed down father to son until it was eventually sold to Jouets et Automates Francais (JAF) in 1920. They were just one of many makers of mechanical toys during this period.

I took videos of some of the more interesting automatons, which you will find on my YouTube channel. My favorites were the man oiling his mechanical duck (made by Vaucanson in the mid 1700s), the magician, and the dim-sum waiter. Not shown here is a woman who could write.

There were a number of ornate vignettes with pairs or groupings of automatons that gave the appearance of interacting with each other. The detailing was pretty impressive.

The ticket for the Automaton Museum gets you into the Models Museum next door. It is filled with ships, cars, trucks and trains and is very dated, and the air was oppressively stale, so I did not stay long.

After shopping the farmer’s market for lunch, I went to the Musee de Monde Nouveau (Museum of the New World), where I would learn about France’s relation and fascination with the Americas from the 17th century to the modern day.