Frederick Roland Emett

Frederick Rowland Emett (22 October, 1906 - 13 November 1990) OBE, sometimes known variously as Roland/Emmett, was an English cartoonist and constructor of whimsical kinetic sculpture.

He was born 22 October 1906 in New Southgate, London, the son of a businessman and amateur inventor, and the grandson of Queen Victoria's engraver. He was educated at Waverley Grammar School in Birmingham, where he excelled in drawing, caricaturing his teachers and also vehicles and machinery. When he was only fourteen he took out a patent on a gramophone volume control. He studied at Birmingham School of Arts and Crafts, and one of his landscapes, "Cornish Harbour", was exhibited at the Royal Academy and is currently in the Tate collection.

An undistinguished career was interrupted by the Second World War, when he worked as a draughtsman for the Air Ministry, while perfecting his gift for drawing cartoons. From 1939 he published regularly in "Punch" - drawings or watercolours of strange, bumbling trains with silly names. On 12 April 1941 he married Mary Evans, the daughter of a Birmingham silversmith. It was Mary who would always manage his business interests. They had a daughter, Claire.

In 1951, at the Festival of Britain, "Nellie", his most famous steam locomotive, was made into a copper and mahogany kinetic sculpture, and was one of the festival’s most popular attractions. Two of his other trains were also created for the Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Branch Railway.

Emett soon parted company with "Punch" magazine and, after a spread in Life Magazine on 5 July 1954, his work was much in demand in the United States.

He turned more and more to designing, but not always building, what he called his "things" - always with silly names (e.g. 'The Featherstone-Kite Openwork Basketweave Mark Two Gentleman’s Flying Machine', a copy of which was placed in a glass cage in the Merrion Centre, Leeds). In the mid-1960s he was commissioned by Honeywell Corp. to create a mechanical computer, which was named the 'The Forget-Me-Not Computer'. In 1968 he designed the machines for the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

His water powered musical clock, "The Aqua Horological Tintinnabulator", was installed in 1973 and may still be seen working in the lower floor of the Victoria Centre, Nottingham, UK.

His larger works, such as "Emettland", went on extended tours, ending up in prestigious venues such as the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

The Ontario Science Centre, in Toronto, has a large collection of Emett machines, and shows them annually.

His works are fundamentally different from those of Heath Robinson, in that they are actually buildable, and would work. The works of the artist Jean Tinguely are a better comparison - "using assemblages of industrial detritus to burlesque effect".

He was fair-haired and fresh-faced and looked younger than his years, and bore a resemblance to Danny Kaye. In 1978 he was awarded an OBE, and died on 13 November 1990 in a Sussex nursing home.

Notes

* A 30 foot square mosaic by Roland Emett, c 1960, can be seen on the side of the NCP car park in The Marlowes, Hemel Hempstead.
* Every December the Ontario Science Centre displays their collection of about ten restored, working Rowland Emett creations, usually under the title "Dream Machines".

ee also

*Heath Robinson
*Rube Goldberg

Further reading

* "Early Morning Milk Train: The Cream of Emett Railway Drawings". John Murray, 1976.

External links

* [http://www.picturetrail.com/emettplus Emettplus Online Photos, accessed May 7, 2006]
* [http://www.mech.mcmaster.ca/~nyet/emett/ Rowland Emett: biographical information about the British kinetic sculptor, accessed May 7, 2006]
* [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,914642-1,00.html The Gothic-Kinetic Merlin of Wild Goose Cottage]
* [http://www.ontariosciencecentre.ca/ Ontario Science Centre] in Toronto