Frederick Roland Emett
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Frederick Roland Emett (22 October 1906 - 13 November 1990), sometimes known variously as Roland/Rowland Emett/Emmett, was an English cartoonist and constructor of whimsical kinetic sculpture.
He was born 22 October 1906 in New Southgate, London, the son of a businessman and amateur inventor. He was educated at Waverley Grammar School in Birmingham, where he excelled in drawing, caricaturing his teachers and also vehicles and machinery. When he was only fourteen he took out a patent on a gramophone volume control. He studied at Birmingham School of Arts and Crafts, and one of his landscapes, Cornish Harbour, was exhibited at the Royal Academy.
An undistinguished career was interrupted by the Second World War, when he worked as a draughtsman for the Air Ministry, while perfecting his gift for drawing cartoons. On 12 April 1941 he married Mary Evans, the daughter of a Birmingham silversmith. It was Mary who would always manage his business interests. They had a daughter, Claire.
From 1939 he published regularly in Punch - drawings or watercolours of strange, bumbling trains with silly names. In 1951, at the Festival of Britain, Nellie, his most famous steam engine, was made into a copper and mahogany kinetic sculpture, and was one of the festival’s most popular attractions. He soon parted company with Punch, and after a spread in Life Magazine on 5 July 1954, his work was much in demand in the United States.
He turned more and more to designing, but not always building, what he called his things - always with silly names (e.g. 'The Featherstone-Kite Openwork Basketweave Mark Two Gentleman’s Flying Machine', a copy of which was placed in a glass cage in the Merrion Centre, Leeds). In 1968 he designed machines for the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. His larger works, such as Emettland, went on extended tours, ending up in prestigious venues such as the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
His works are fundamentally different to those of Heath Robinson, in that they are actually buildable, and would work. The works of the artist Jean Tinguely are a better comparison - "using assemblages of industrial detritus to burlesque effect".
He was fair-haired and fresh-faced and looked younger than his years, and bore a resemblance to Danny Kaye. In 1978 he was awarded an OBE, and died on 13 November 1990 in a Sussex nursing home.
Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
[edit] Notes
- A 30 foot square mosaic by Roland Emett, c 1960, can be seen on the side of the NCP car park in The Marlowes, Hemel Hempstead.
- Every December the Ontario Science Centre displays their collection of about ten restored, working Roland Emett creations, usually under the title "Dream Machines".
- His water powered musical clock, The Aqua Horological Tintinnabulator may be seen working in the lower floor of the Victoria Centre, Nottingham, UK.
