We have been entertaining and inspiring visitors & makers with our collection of automata since 1981. Now based in Hastings, UK we have exhibitions all over the world.
We need your help to run our 2026 community engagement projects. As a non profit company all donations go towards our goals to share the magic of automata with our local and global community.
Simon Tait’s Mews – No.12 As an aficionado of this column you could be excused for thinking that automaton model-makers are a pretty exclusive coterie of ancient boffins shut away…
Simon Tait’s Mews – No.11 So what is the secret, then, of this success? Exhibitions all over the world, rich people falling over themselves to buy, interviewed celebs casually dropping…
A new one-off piece from Fi Henshall, the green spikey haired Harpy hovers over the tin town below. Fi is creating these new pieces as she works on designs for…
In 1984 Paul Spooner designed an elaborate machine which was to have been on display in a shopping centre in York. (This was four years before the Ride of Life).…
Simon Tait’s Mews – No.10 It’s Keith’s birthday so he goes to the computer centre to sort out a programme, pops in to the overall shop for a new pair,…
Keith Newstead has started making wonderful automata from the flotsam which arrives regularly at his local beach in Cornwall. The contents of containers lost at sea sometimes contain large amounts…
Interestingly, the motion derived from the smooth helical cam is jerky because the ratchet moves it in a series of 12 steps. The pin in the foreground moves back and…
Simon Tait’s Mews – No.9 Miami has never seen anything like it before. It’s not me saying that, it’s Dr Andrew R Hirschl, respected dentist of that parish, and he’s…
