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Living room – All kinds of mechanical instruments that once belonged in the home – music boxes, pianolas, automata, and other trinkets that could turn a middle-class drawing room into a space full of music.

Street – instruments like barrel organs and barrel pianos that could (and in some cases, still can!) be heard outdoors on a sunny day.

Royal instruments – highly luxurious objects that were owned by very wealthy people, including monarchs, in the past.

Amusement – Here you will find instruments typically used in leisure spaces, such as the huge fairground organs and novelty pianolas with extra tricks and treats.

Highlights – This is a space for putting a spotlight on objects that are thought to be particularly rare, interesting, or special.

Depot – This tile allows you to take a digital look at our depot.

Repertoire – Here you can discover some of the recurring classics of mechanical music repertoire – from ‘Daisy Bell’ to the ‘Blue Danube’. As with our instruments, the digitisation of repertoire is an ongoing project. But you can already find plenty of tunes here to get you started!

Sound installations – This is a space for showcasing new mechanical and self-playing musical machines conceived and brought into existence by contemporary artists.

If you already have an idea of what you are looking for, then it’s useful to know that there are specific names we use for instruments and groups of instruments, that you can use. Our collection is searchable by categories, which you can view below.

Some of the categories refer to the sound source (like organ pipes). Because all organs use organ pipes, you don’t need to look further than this category to find all kinds of mechanical organs!

Other categories are dedicated to a broad ‘type’ of object, like ‘automata’ or ‘clocks and watches’, in the case that these objects can have more than one kind of possible sound source.

‘Music boxes’ is a separate category because there are other distinct kinds of objects (clocks and automata) that also use a playing comb but are not identified as music boxes.

Here is a short glossary of useful search terms. Click on the search field ‘category’, and search away!

mechanical free reed instruments – the mechanical reed instruments are very diverse. You can find mechanical harmoniums, reed-playing clocks, portable organs with reeds, a toy trumpet, and even a music box that uses reeds instead of a playing comb!

mechanical hammered string instruments – this category is home to barrel pianos, orchestrions where piano is the main instrument, and string-playing musical clocks.

mechanical instruments with bells – bell-playing clocks, watches and carillons. This category contains some of the oldest instruments in our museum, and even a bell-playing clock with bells made of glass!

mechanical instruments with organ pipes – not only street, dance, church and fair organs, but also clocks with organs inside.

mechanical instruments with playing comb – various kinds of music boxes, but also clocks, automata, paintings, and even a child’s wooden chair, all of which use a playing comb as a sound source.

mechanical instruments with whistles – mechanical instruments that use a slide whistle, like our mechanical singing birds.

mechanical plucked string instruments mechanical plucked string instruments – here you can find mechanical zithers and a mechanical banjo.

music boxes – so many types of objects and trinkets were fitted with playing combs that we have categorised all knickknacks, accessories, and things with a playing comb as music boxes. This includes sewing kits, snuff boxes, liquor bottles, a clothing brush, and a coat hanger. Can you guess them all? The important exceptions are clocks with a playing comb and automata with a playing comb, which are categorised separately under ‘musical clocks and watches’ and as ‘musical automata’.

musical automata – this category houses all standalone figures with moving parts that also play music, either with a playing comb or with a slide whistle.

musical clocks and watches – a wide array of wall clocks, table clocks, long case clocks, carriage clocks and pocket watches which make music with many different sound sources.

orchestrions – a specific type of instrument which is characterised by having multiple different sound sources – like a whole orchestra in a cabinet! Some are more dominated by piano strings and others by organ pipes.

If you want to see only images, without description, check "Images Only. Search results can be displayed in a photo gallery or in a list.