History and culture: Exhibition of antique dolls and mechanisms "Christmas surprise" in Moscow

Till January 29, 2017 the exhibition of antique dolls and mechanisms from the collection of David Yakobashvili "Christmas Surprises" was opened in the All-Russian Museum of Decorative and Applied Arts (Moscow). The exhibition includes some thirty exhibits, including automata (mechanical dolls), organetty (mechanical wind musical instruments), gramophones and music phones of XIX-XX centuries.

Musical mechanical instruments and dolls is a very popular in past centuries direction of arts and crafts, which brought together an exact science and creative imagination.

In XVIII-XIX centuries appear automatons and multi-figure compositions, where each doll takes a role. Mechanical dolls of workshops by Jaquet Droz, Vaucanson, Mayarde, Vichy, Lambert, Bertrand and others copied plastic living people, surprised and amazed spectators incredible similarity of their movements. These dolls with porcelain faces and hands, dressed in expensive fabrics, with complex arrangements and musical devices in the enclosure or rack were not designed for children to play, they served as entertainment for adults. They have gained as an expensive "mechanical fun" and were showed to friends.

Thus, the exposition features automatons, made in the workshop of "Vichy" (France) in the XIX century – these are "Ballerina and two black musicians" and "Fiddler". Among other exhibits you can see automaton "Jumbo the Elephant", made in the workshop "Rulle" (France) in the late XIX century.

The exhibition also features several phonographs, including a gramophone company «His Master's Voice» (United Kingdom), organetty of the German masters of the early XX century and Swiss music box. Musical devices of this kind were used in waiting rooms at railway stations in Switzerland since 1887.