My First Musical Box (Dear Jacques)

My interest in automata was piqued many years ago. I had wanted  to test the limits of my technical skills and creativity without the background of a clockmaker or jeweller's skills and tools. Furthermore, to keep costs down, I sourced for materials from discarded projects, junk etc. Finally, I wanted to keep each piece as small as is possible.

I built my first musical box in 1989. This was a simple piece based on a hand-turn Sankyo musical movement, bought when I was visiting Japan.

I built a simple box from a wood base, with plastic card sides to enclose the musical box. I then discovered that the sound was muffled if the box was completely enclosed. Thus, I created an opening for the sound at the side. The opening was covered with a plastic net to keep out pests.

Over this box, I built a simple static scene of a forlorn French Napoleonic Drummer reading a "Dear Jacques" letter. A bucket symbolising split milk completes the scene.

The box was painted black and I pasted cuttings from magazines as collage and applied gloss varnish to seal and protect the paintwork.