By our treehouse there was a whirligig whose propellor drove an inverted eggbeater. When the wind blew it made a charming rattling sound but eventually its gears gave out and it’s now been retired. I like old fashioned eggbeaters so much that I considered becoming a collector. I’ve since moved on to other hobbies, including making this wooden item.

This drawing appears in a notebook from 2021-22. I saw it the other day and thought I’d make a working model of it. I find that something is always lost in the translation from two to three dimensions even if movement and the third dimension are gained.

Above is the result and the reckoning of gain and loss is as follows:

Gains

(1). There’s something extra going on between the mechanical royal couple as they look towards then away from each other.

(2). The textures and quality of the materials is more complex. The piece of pine that the base is made from was cut from a newel post once installed in the stable block of a house in Ynys Môn – known as Anglesea until 1983.

(3). There’s a more readable connection between the action of the machine and an actual eggbeater’s action.

(4). The red wooden handle is a good likeness of my eggbeater’s.

(5). Making the wooden parts was quick and enjoyable.

(6). Aspects of the design remind me of some admirable works of Kazu Harada, specifically ‘Hamlet’ and ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’.

Losses

(1). There’s something about a drawing you can’t reproduce in a volumetric object. It’s why there’s no 3D version of Micky Mouse that gets his ears right. In the drawings his ears are circular from all angles which suggests that they ought to be spherical. That doesn’t work either.

(2). Less is more; there’s more freedom to make assumptions from a simple drawing than from a solid object.

(3). There’s always a clumsiness in the transition- so many more aspects to control.

(4). More time wasted. The object took about two days to make, the drawing about two minutes.

(5). Getting the paint effect as free as the pencilled drawing was impossible. It took three attempts to paint the heads before I realised that.

(6). If Kazu Harada thinks I’m copying him he might not like it.

Paul Spooner, 2026

Height: 15 cm
Width: 10 cm (15 cm inc. handle)
Depth: 3.5 cm

One Only