on Rowland Emmett:


Engines of Enchantment: The Machines and Cartoons of Rowland Emett- 29 July Until Nov 1 - Cartoon Museum, London,
Time Out gives the simplest summary:

A retrospective of cartoonist and creator of whimsical kinetic sculpture Rowland Emett. The exhibition includes three machines created for the 1968 film 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'. During the war Emett worked as a draughtsman at the air ministry, supplying drawings to Punch at the same time of increasingly romantic trains, trams and boats. In 1951 he was invited to turn drawing into reality with the construction of three engines for the Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Railway at the Festival of Britain. The show includes an original model of the train as well as associated drawings.

Apparently The Ontario Science Centre has the largest single collection of Emmett creations, which they exhibit every year. probabilityfunction made this video there in February. His Scott Joplin soundtrack works very nicely:



Simon Hoggart in the Guardian:

A few years earlier, Mum and Dad went to the Festival of Britain. We still have the record they made for half-a-crown in which they described for me and my sister what they'd seen and done. They rode, my Mum said in the fluting RP accent she lost years ago, on "a funny train, with a kettle instead of a funnel".
So it was another piquant moment when I went to the new Rowland Emett exhibition at the Cartoon Museum in Little Russell Street, London. There is Emett's own model of the funny train, kettle duly in place, alongside several others of his wonderful baroque machines. We tend to forget how incredibly popular Emett was between the 1950s and the 80s.

photo of Emmett riding one of his contraptions at Corbis.com
another from LIFE magazine

update. I have just added the new label 'humorous sculpture' and gone back through the archive and applied it some posts that previously went under other headings. enjoy.