A week or two back I visited Snowsparkle's blog and she was recounting how she had set up a contraption of strings and pots as a bear alarm when she was camping. Impressed, I said that Heath Robinson would be proud of her. She confessed to never having heard of Heath Robinson, so I am posting a couple of his pictures.He loved drawing the most convoluted machines made of strings, pulleys, weights, buckets, whatever. The machine above is some sort of potato peeler. The one below is picking up cigarette butts from the street.
I suspect he is the spiritual inspiration for Wallace and Gromit.
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What great old drawings!
ReplyDeleteand shades of Dr. Seuss!
ReplyDeletethanks for the special delivery of this information!!! These drawings (and contraptions) are beautiful and fun and clever.... you don't know how i needed something like this just right now... well, first I took a walk and got a vanilla ice cream cone.. but your tonic here was far more salvific. Plus, mention of Wallace and Gromit!!!! (my personal favorite is "the wrong trousers"!!!). What could be better? Well, maybe a big, big hug from you... big hugs back to you Lee! thanks!
ReplyDeletesnowsparkle
(ps being mentioned in your blog in the same post as Heath Robinson has got to be one of the great highlights of my online life.... blushing )
Aren't they great?
ReplyDeleteHe was also a very good striaght illustrator, I've got a reprint of A Midsummer Night's Dream he illustrated, very fine, somewhere between Beardsley and Arthur Rackham. He also did some lovely humorous pictures of the restoration by the monks of Prinknash Abbey, a relatively modern monastery in Gloucestershire; I've got them on postcards somewhere, if I find them I'll scan them and post them.