$2,115
Automaton of a Blackforest Potato Eater, signed on the underside P. A. Muller a Pau, Fecit 1922 , the papier-mache figure in painted polychrome Bavarian costume, with articulated eyes and jaw, wielding a fork in his right hand and resting on a tree stump, a pulley in the base causing him to lift a potato from plate to mouth, his eyes to roll and his jaw to drop, the potato moving continuously on a piece of wire from the plate, through the mouth and the tree stump and back again, ht. 10 in. Literature: This Potato Eater is illustrated in Chapuis & Droz (1958), Automata, A Historical and Technological Study , p. 126. Chapuis attributes the restoration to P.A. Muller, an early collector of automata, although it seems likely from the inscription that Muller was the maker.
Auctioneer:
Skinner
Date:
2005-11-03
