Dear Friends, as a follow up to the tradition of annual New Year exhibitions we invite you to the thematic exhibition in the All Russian Decorative Art Museum. The exhibition of antique dolls and mechanisms from David Iakobachvili’s Museum Collection will be opened on December 10, 2016. More than thirty items, including amusing automatas, organettes, gramophones and various mechanical musical objects will be exhibited.

The exhibition will feature automatas of the XIX century, made in Vichy workshop (France): "Ballerina and Two Black Musicians" and "Fiddler". The automaton "Jumbo, the Elephant", a prototype of which was the famous elephant named Jumbo from the Phineas Taylor Barnum circus, will be exhibited there as well. It was created in the "Roullet” workshop (France) in the end of XIX century.

Several exhibits are testifying that the masters the XXth century gave a tribute to their predecessors.

For example, the mechanical composition "Master, Constructing Mechanical Duck" (created by Laurent, Grenoble, France, circa 1950) was dedicated to the inventor Jacques de Vaucanson and his famous mechanical duck, created in 1739.

The Swiss music box representing a scene of circus performance with moving figures, made by Marie Madeleine Zeppelin in 1900 is exhibited among other items as well. The automata mechanism is driven by electricity and produce tricks of lighting.

Several gramophones, including the world famous brand "His Master's Voice" (UK) and organettes made by German masters in the beginning of the XXth century among the exhibits. As well as the mechanisms that were demonstrated in the waiting lounges at the railway stations in Switzerland in the end of the XIX century, such as a Special Music Box produced by a Swiss workshop. Moreover, the outdoor barrel organ made by Vincent Linares and a few vintage automata clocks, including a clock mounted inside the picture with animation mechanisms and pendulum and an automata clock of the world famous firm "Phalibois".

More details are on the site of the All Russian Decorative Art Museum: http://www.vmdpni.ru/exhibitions/temp/index.php

The exhibition will be open until January 29, 2017.

Photographic report from the exhibition opening will be published soon in our Photo Gallery.