Monday 3 August 2009

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.

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4 Comments:

Anonymous Wow Gold said...

Nice blog. I liked it.

3 August 2009 at 03:37:00 GMT-5  
Blogger Matthew Adams said...

I have a little collection of his cartoons called 'The forgotten tramcar'. I have always wondered (and hoped) if there had actually been any trams made like the ones in his drawing.

Word verification is slopho. One day someone will bring out the word verification dictionary. And now, since I have only just realised that the word dictionary contains the word diction, which I have always thought was to do with the pronounciation of words, I am starting to wonder if the main purpose of a dictionary is provide accurate diction of a word.

I have just looked up diction and it also means a "choice of words to fit their context"

3 August 2009 at 07:10:00 GMT-5  
Anonymous John C said...

Thanks for reminding me of Emmett's 'Lunacycle' which I had a photo of in a Magpie (the TV series) annual. His florid drawing style reminds me of Ronald Searle.

3 August 2009 at 07:50:00 GMT-5  
Blogger John Freeman said...

More info on the exhibition here on downthetubes, the British comics news site...

4 August 2009 at 01:45:00 GMT-5  

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