IN my journalistic youth, it was standard practice to keep cuttings books as an easily referenced record of one's triumphs and embarrassments. As I was already in the habit of making personal scrapbooks and have retained them, most of my life is covered until, rather reluctantly, I began to rely on computer records instead. It is often easier to find something quickly in the cuttings books, which is why from time to time I use them to compare today's objects and prices with those in my earliest COUNTRY LIFE columns, then headed 'Around the Salerooms'.
Recently, I was reading an article on the Mutualart website (www.mutualart.com) about an American artist, Thomas Kuntz, who was born in 1965. He makes automata often representing the inhabitants of the 'Uncanny Valley', as he calls the border region between reality and the world of spirits and Guillermo del Toro, director of the film Pan's Labyrinth, is a collector.
Mr Kuntz's inspirations include Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, the 'father of stage magic' (whose name was adopted by Harry Houdini) and the best clockwork musical automaton dolls made by Vichy in Paris during the second half of the 19th century.
The latter rang a distant bell for me and a couple of moments with the cuttings books took me back to October 14, 1991, when, I now realise, I got the wrong end of the stick about one of Vichy's better-known models. Here is a belated erratum.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 04, 2024 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 04, 2024 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds