The Suffragettes civil disobedience and the toffee hammer
Automaton 20x12x25 cms, mixed media predominantly plywood
About a month or so ago one of the workers at the charity I volunteer for was asking for help to update notice boards and I saw that the women's history board was one of them.
If you asked most people could they name a suffragette then Mrs Pankhurst would probably be the only one, and she came from Manchester. One of the things that suffragettes did was civil disobedience, they broke a huge number of windows, and toffee hammers were their weapon of choice, small, easily hidden, and remarkably good at breaking glass.
One of the attacks in Manchester was by three ladies, who late one evening just before closing went into the City Gallery and set about breaking the glass on a number of paintings. They were apprehended and sent to court where their defence was that they had not intended to damage the paintings but only to break the glass. One was acquitted and the other two got short prison sentences.
There was some damage to the paintings but secondary to the glass having being broken, in subsequent gallery attacks elsewhere there was deliberate damage, the most well known is that of the Rokeby Venus by Diego Velázquez, which was slashed.
While researching I did find some good sources for our notice board and also came to think that this would make a suitable subject for an automaton.
It is a while since I made an automaton and I did make a few mistakes while working on this, gluing stuff together in the wrong order and making holes that should not have been there.
Were this to be going anywhere serious I would make a fair copy of it and the painting “The last watch of Hero” would be mounted somewhat higher and a little closer to the suffragette. This would mean that the hammer would hit the glass (acetate sheet) and not, as it now would if closer, foul the hammer with the frame.
Even so I am not unhappy with it as a simple automaton, time I think to make some more.
