Rowland Emett

Rowland Emett will be familiar to many as the designer of Caractacus Potts' inventions in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He was the creator of automata and an accomplished cartoonist, a cross between Ronald Searle and William Heath Robinson, perhaps with Wilf Lunn as his idiot bastard son.

Emett designed the trains on the miniature railway that operated at the Festival of Britain in 1951.

His work is primarily concerned with a jokey visual entertainment rather than serious artistic endeavor, but there is always room for humour in art. He produced a number of public artworks and this collaboration with Honeywell computers that appeared at the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition:

 

Emett is currently the subject of a nice looking exhibition at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, which can be seen during installation here:

The Rowland Emett Society have very kindly provided the delightful soundtrack to the exhibition on Soundcloud. 

Blackbird

It's spring and there has been a blackbird singing from the roof of my garden shed for the past few weeks. I've been trying to hear it better but every time I open the door he spies me and flies away, until yesterday when I managed to record a little of his song. Birdsong is the original music.

(Apologies for wind noise and distant seagulls.)

Present and Correct

On my last trip to London I went to visit these guys at their Islington shop, which is itself a work of art. Kind of like a dream office where you don't have to do any actual work. For those who live beyond Zone 6 the Present and Correct online store sells a choice selection of old and new stationary, prints, games and books with an eye for the 'mid-century modern' aesthetic.