Heath Robinson's House
16mm film Black & White Silent 1934 1:12
Summary: A short film introducing 'Heath Robinson's House', presented by a Mr Richardson.
Title number: 38
LSA ID: LSA/43
Description: A long line of people walks past an enormous open-fronted two storey, dormer windowed, model house, looking into its brightly lit interior, while a uniformed attendant looks on. Some large moving puppets, items of furniture and various moving parts can be seen, slightly blurred, inside the rooms. In the kitchen with its black and white tiled floor, a slightly grotesque maid puppet, in cap and apron, sits and pedals away at a contraption that through an elaborate system of wires, cogs and wheels turns some spoons in a bowl and some wooden spatulas in the upper container of a (clearly labelled) custard machine. Another uniformed maid, sitting facing the wall in the cheerfully decorated nursery, is operating a machine which hoists a naked baby in the air and turns it around, perhaps so she can wash it. Meanwhile behind her another contraption feeds two very small children in their wooden high chairs while a further device rocks a baby's cot in the corner. A curtain draws back to reveal a bedroom, and a bald male puppet sits up in bed, woken by some further mechanism. In the dining room below, the table is set ready for breakfast with a teapot, milk jug, toast in a toast rack and boiled eggs. Another maid in the corner of the room turns a wheel which simultaneously lifts the covers from the eggs and lowers the lady and gentleman of the house down through the ceiling from their bedroom and into their seats at the table. Outside, two large and sturdy women puppets placed among the visitors to the exhibition, are walking round and round in circles, pushing a heavy capstan like device, the purpose of which is unclear.
But then after two intertitles about the cameraman the film comes to an abrupt end.
Further information: The film records a three-dimensional model of a house with moving puppets designed by the cartoonist W. Heath Robinson exhibited at the 1934 Ideal Home Exhibition at Olympia in Earl's Court. The house was known as 'The Gadgets' and was presented as Heath Robinson's 'Ideal Home'. The film appears to be incomplete, ending with two intertitles suggesting that perhaps the camera team were filming secretly and were summarily thrown out!
The Ideal Home Exhibition, which is still enormously popular, has taken place at Earls Court almost every year since it was started by the Daily Mail in 1908 as a marketing event for the newspaper. It was devised as a showcase for new domestic inventions and modern housing design. It was sold on to another company in 2009.
William Heath Robinson (1872 - 1944) was an illustrator and cartoonist, probably best known for his humorous drawings of very complex mechanisms designed to perform very simple tasks. His name entered the language during World War 1, and was used probably even more widely during World War 2, to describe complicated, and generally makeshift, ways of doing things in a time of shortages. The OED defines 'Heath Robinson' as an adjective for something that is 'ingeniously or ridiculously over complicated in design or construction.' His work is clearly the inspiration behind some of the inventions in Nick Park's Wallace and Gromit films.
There is currently a Heath Robinson Gallery, displaying exhibitions of the artist's work, in West House, Pinner Memorial Park and there are plans for a Heath Robinson Museum to be built there with Heritage Lottery Funding. It is due to open in March 2016. Heath Robinson moved to Pinner with his wife and baby in 1908 and their other children were born there. The family lived in Pinner for several years and their house in Moss Lane is now commemorated with a blue plaque.
Keywords: Exhibitions; Building design; Houses; British Artists
Locations: United Kingdom; England; London; Kensington and Chelsea; Earl's Court
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