Sally Kindberg’s Museum of Dust – Little Tich Automaton

Recently I found a tiny envelope of dust collected in 2019. It was tucked into one of my many notebooks where I’d written about a day visiting the wondrous workshop of the House of Automata (aka Michael and Maria Start) in Scotland. Amongst many other intriguing items, a nineteenth century automaton of the music hall performer and clown Little Tich, famous for his tiny stature and Big Boot Dance, was being restored. The composer Stravinsky, who enjoyed visiting London music halls, had been so impressed by seeing Little Tich’s back flip somersault, he referenced it in his 1914 ‘Three Pieces for String Quartet’.

During my visit to the Scottish workshop, a delicate operation was under way to replace Little Tich’s hair and add new eyelids. I asked Michael why he and his wife find automata so fascinating. ‘They never grow old,’ he explained, ‘if something wears out, we replace it.’