$12,500
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sold
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Description
27" (69 cm.) A lady with paper mache head, brown glass eyes, painted complexion and features, open mouth with row of teeth, brunette hair in up-swept coiffure, carton torso and legs in seated pose, detachable "flap" bosom, hinged right knee, painted shoes and socks, shaped fingers, silk costume in the romantic 18th century style is seated upon a wooden chair which rests upon a diamond-patterned parquet floor. The lady sits behind an elaborate wooden spinning wheel holding a distaff wrapped with flax and ribbon, her foot rests upon the wooden pedal, and a metal rod attaches the spinning wheel to her torso. When wound, music plays, she turns her head and nods, blinks her eyes, and her bosom heaves up and down as she pumps the pedal of the the spinning wheel, and the spinning wheel turns appearing to spin the flax. Condition: generally excellent, some retouch on face and hands, mechanism and music function well. Comments: Gustav Vichy, circa 1885, the automaton was featured in their catalog as "Fileuse" (Spinner), #457, noted as a deposed model G.V. and described as "paysanne Louis XVI" (peasant of the Louis XVI era). Value Points: rare deposed model, with six movements, two musical tunes, of which no other model is known to exist.