Details
Image(s)
TitleMusical Automaton 'the Fruit Seller'
Creator Gustave Vichy
PlaceParis (France)
Year ca. 1885
Object number0873
Object nameautomaton with playing comb, automaton with cylinder
DescriptionThe Fruit Seller carries in his hands a tray containing 3 fruits: an apple, a pear and a peach or orange. After starting the vending machine, music begins to play and a fruit opens on the tray. Inside the peach is a little white mouse running around. The automaton moves its head back and forth, blinking its eyes and looking down. After a while, the peach closes and the apple opens, containing the head of a monkey. This one blinks its eyes, looks left and right and opens its mouth. When the apple closes, the pear opens in which 2 porcelain dolls spin around. The light-hearted playfulness of the fruit mechanisms contrasts with the demeaning, caricatured depiction of the fruit seller. Typical of Vichy automata is the acorn-shaped starter button.
Accompanying textsThe musical movement changes between melodies automatically. The melody label is located below the tray. Due to discoloration, the titles of the three melodies (2 of which are apparently waltzes) are now illegible.
Gustave Vichy (1839-1904) was a French automaton maker. Although he was trained as a clockmaker, he began devoting himself to automata very early on and ran a successful business with his wife Marie Thérése Burger - a seamstress who made clothes for the mechanical figures. The Vichy firm produced various fashionable formats of automatons: entertainers such as clowns and acrobats, as well as "exotic figures. The latter category included racist representations of people of color, indigenous peoples, and people from colonized nations. An original sales catalog advertising this automaton (Silber & Fleming department store, London, 1884) used the now widely rejected term "negro" to describe the figure. The term was commonly used at the time to refer to enslaved people and it was embedded in racist "scientific" views.
Gustave Vichy (1839-1904) was a French automaton maker. Although he was trained as a clockmaker, he began devoting himself to automata very early on and ran a successful business with his wife Marie Thérése Burger - a seamstress who made clothes for the mechanical figures. The Vichy firm produced various fashionable formats of automatons: entertainers such as clowns and acrobats, as well as "exotic figures. The latter category included racist representations of people of color, indigenous peoples, and people from colonized nations. An original sales catalog advertising this automaton (Silber & Fleming department store, London, 1884) used the now widely rejected term "negro" to describe the figure. The term was commonly used at the time to refer to enslaved people and it was embedded in racist "scientific" views.
Dimensions
geheel height: 70 cm
geheel width: 43 cm
geheel depth: 43 cm
cilinder length: 6.2 cm
cilinder diameter: 1.6 cm
geheel width: 43 cm
geheel depth: 43 cm
cilinder length: 6.2 cm
cilinder diameter: 1.6 cm
Digital references