The Magic of Creation
Over two centuries ago, a wunderkind by the name of Pierre Jaquet-droz enthralled European royalty with figurines that could draw, write and play music. Ahead of their time, these automatons have come to inspire the path of whimsical creativity the watchmaker has embarked upon, as Karishma Tulsidas finds out in Switzerland
ome on dear, do your thing, and don’t let us down,” the octogenarian caretaker tells the Draughtsman, one of the three Jaquet Droz automatons that reside at the Musée d’art et d’histoire de Neuchâtel (MAHN), before it begins its task. The dolls sit in a mini amphitheatre within the museum, facing their audience as they perform their dedicated tasks. There are three of them: the Writer, the Musician and the Draughtsman, and they were all constructed in the 1700s by Pierre Jaquet-droz. Let that sink in: these mechanical robots performed their magic tricks more than two centuries ago, before the first president of the US was elected, before Beethoven composed Fur Elise, before even the invention of the modern fire extinguisher. Now, automatons have existed since the Middle Ages, but they remained rare objects, given the level of mastery required to construct them. Crowds came in from all over the country to La Chaux-de-fonds to view these mechanical masterpieces, and Pierre travelled around Europe to present them to royal courts. Jaquet Droz would go on to gain international renown, even as far as being the first Swiss watchmaker to exhibit its works in China’s Forbidden City. Built between 1768 and 1774, these complex, animated dolls could write, draw and play the piano. The secret is the set of irregular shaped cams that are essentially the “motherboard”: they retain the memory of the action, and are connected to the hands of these artists. The Draughtsman can trace four different drawings, including a dog, a portrait of Louis XV, a royal couple and a chariot carrying Cupid pulled by a butterfly. His eyes follow the movement of the pencil, and every now and then, he dips his quill in the inkpot. The Musician plays five melodies that were composed by Pierre’s son Henri-louis and you can see her chest heave as she performs her task. Lastly, the Writer, the most complicated of them, can write phrases of up to 40 characters. Every now and then, he releases a gust of air from his mouth to blow off the lead dust. When both Pierre and Henri-louis passed away within a year of one another, the company died a natural death in 1790, only