Sebastian Köpcke (*1967), Volker Weinhold (*1962) | Photographers
Large and small, nature and technology exist in a curious contrast in this object. On the one hand, the small nut, on the other the steam engine, which exceeds human scale in its original dimensions. The performance of the steam engine exceeded by far the power of the animals used up to that point, like horses and oxen.
The steam engine stands for increased productivity. The mobile steam engine, the railway, already opened up trade routes in Saxony as of the 1830s and enabled rapid industrialisation of the region. Increased reach and speed of mobility as well as a still unbridled idea of progress characterised the nineteenth century.
This miniature steam machine symbolises all these technical achievements. Its tininess and its being embedded into a nutshell suggest the controllability of pioneering technology.
However, the object also leaves us with a whole series of open questions: whether it was originally functional can no longer be determined today without endangering the continued integrity of the object. It has been passed down that the curiosity may have been produced by a clockmaker in Saxony. However, there is no proof of this. There has been just as little concrete documentation to date that this both small and spectacular machine was in fact presented at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893.
The Volkskunstmuseum acquired the object in 2002 from the estate of a collector in Geyer in the Erzgebirge.
Producer unknown
MATERIAL & TECHNIQUE
walnut, metal, soldered, mounted, painted
DIMENSIONS
H 1.8 x W 2.7 x D 2.15 cm
MUSEUM
Museum für Sächsische Volkskunst
PLACE, DATING
Saxony, 1893
INVENTORY NUMBER
G 8970