The Silver Swan
Facts
This automaton dates back to the 18th century and can be found in the Bowes Museum in County Durham, England. It depicts a swan sitting in a glass stream, surrounded by silver leaves and silver fish.
The Silver Swan is made of 'chased' silver. This means the silver was shaped by hand, using tools. The swan contains 2,000 moving parts, 139 crystal rods, and 113 neck rings.
The swan was made by James Cox, who worked on the outside of the swan, and John Joseph Merlin, who built the inner workings of the automaton. The Bowes Museum dates the Silver Swan to around 1773, though its exact date of creation is unknown.
The swan is very old and fragile, especially on the neck which has snapped twice. As a result, the swan is only operated once a day. During the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, the mechanism seized up due to lack of use and was not restored to a functional state again until March 2024.
Why I love it:
I am incredibly fascinated by automata and have been ever since I first saw the Silver Swan at the Bowes Museum when I was around seven years old. The artistry that goes into crafting and placing those tiny mechanisms is truly remarkable. Ever since then, I have been fascinated with automata which later grew into a wider interest in animatronics.
Mark Twain once said of the swan, it "had a living grace about his movement and a living intelligence in his eyes". Since the technology existed to do so, humans have been determined to create mechanical life. This endeavour is both interesting and almost disturbing when you consider the potential consequences as technology reaches a level where creating 'life' becomes more and more possible.
The functional similarities between automata and clockwork bring me comfort. As a child, my maternal grandparents had a cuckoo clock in their hallway - just outside my bedroom. I remember listening to its rhythmic ticking when I couldn't sleep as I visualise its internal mechanisms each working in perfect time. Something about that consistency brings me a lot of comfort; I feel the same way about metronomes. Clockwork is predictable, an automaton will behave in the same way each time.
Would you believe this automaton is over 250 years old? The mechanism is still so smooth and the water movement is so vivid and realistic.