Home run

An exhibition shows legendary illustrator Heath Robinson had the housing crisis licked

In 1934, London’s Ideal Home Show featured an exhibit called “The Gadgets”. It was the brainchild of Heath Robinson, the Islingtonborn illustrator and humourist, and consisted of a house inhabited by puppets which had been rigged with all kinds of labour and space-saving contraptions. Here’s a maid in the kitchen operating a pedal-powered custard machine. Here’s a bald man in bed who’s about to be lowered through a trapdoor into the dining room where his breakfast is waiting (morning, Gromit!). The dotty inanity of Robinson’s domestic designs will be the subject of an exhibition at the Heath Robinson Museum in London, which will include rarely seen photos of the gadgets plus original artwork from Robinson’s 1936 book, How to Live in a Flat. Some of them might seem ridiculous (the collapsible spare bedroom, complete with wall on casters) while others (the sunken bath, the one-bed attic conversion) seem positively prescient. Stay tuned for the imminent custard machine revival. —

Heath Robinson’s Home Life, 24 November–17 February 2019;

heathrobinsonmuseum.org