All dolled up

Automata made in 19th-century France provided inspiration for the work of American artist Thomas Kuntz and a vintage dolls' house, furnished with period-appropriate pieces, stars in a charity auction

- Huon Mallalieu

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.