Musical machines and living dolls: the Murtogh D. Guinness Collection.

In today's world of radios, CDs, and iPods, we are saturated with reproduced sound. But this was not the case hundreds of years ago. In 1617, after describing his vision for an automatic musical instrument, the English physician Robert Fludd (1574-1637) enthused: "Thus it becomes possible to have music without a musician or action of any living being; it will be a splendid, graceful and impressive marvel for those partaking or in the presence of a festive meal to hear unexpected music from some corner of the dining hall." (1)

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"Impressive marvel" aptly describes all the forms that mechanical musical instruments ultimately took--music boxes, barrel organs, mechanical pianos, automatic banjos, and more. They fascinated Murtogh D. Guinness (1913-2002), as did automata--the clockwork-driven costumed magicians, clowns, and monkeys that were the animated entertainment counterparts of mechanical musical instruments. Born into a prominent Irish brewing family, Guinness was just six years old when he was given a small cylinder-playing music box that captivated him and marked the start of a lifelong journey to collect antique automatic instruments and automata. (2)

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He grew up in London and began collecting in earnest in his twenties, traveling extensively and internationally in search of the finest surviving objects. After moving to Bermuda and then Barbados, he finally settled in New York City in the 1950s, where he eventually housed his collection in adjoining town houses on the Upper East Side. He had custom-made cabinets and shelving built for his holdings, which he enjoyed sharing with other enthusiasts. Visitors recall a virtual wonderland. His friend Arthur W. J. G. Ord-Hume, himself an authority on mechanical musical instruments, describes the music rooms as being "expensively fitted out with sliding shelf units on which were displayed some of the finest and rarest musical boxes in the world today ... a delight where once Murtogh knew you and shared your interest, you could roam and play at will." In addition, the "room full of automata ... enthralled many." (3) Until the time of his death in 2002, Guinness continued to add to, study, and research his collection, and it was his wish that it be given to an appropriate public institution after he died. In 2003 his Lutece Foundation gave the collection to the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey. With its focus on art, history, science, and theater, it was a perfect fit, since each of these objects embodies aspects of those four disciplines. (4)

As do all collections, the one amassed by Guinness reflects his particular preferences. He did not concentrate on the earliest spectrum of mechanical musical instruments and automata, which were largely made for royalty and the aristocracy, such as the rare Renaissance ship automata, the elaborate European musical clocks of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the one-of-a-kind animated figures of the eighteenth century. Instead, he focused on shaping a collection that best represented the heyday of mechanical musical instruments and automata: the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when they were made in the greatest variety and largest numbers for sale to--and the amusement of--a rising middle class.