See it in motion here: https://youtube.com/shorts/zz6wvuI_AGo?feature=share
A fine 19th century singing bird automaton of large proportions by Jean-Marie Phalibois (1835-1900). Maker's stamp to the mechanism. Sympathetically restored and in perfect working order.
Jean-Marie Phalibois (1835–1900) was a renowned French maker of mechanical automata based in Paris, celebrated for his intricate singing bird automata and animated dioramas. Phalibois' bird automata typically feature realistic or taxidermy birds with vibrant feathered plumage (often with iridescent green, blue, or orange highlights), housed in domed wire cages, on tree perches, or inside elaborate landscape scenes. Powered by clockwork or going-barrel movements, they synchronise continuous birdsong with realistic physical movements, including an articulated beak, moving head, and fluttering tail-feathers
This shining example of J. Phalibois' craftsmanship has an iridescent bird sitting upon its brass perch within a gilded cage which boasts a fine rope twist and fleur de lis design throughout. The fluted gilt wood base houses the substantial ket which, when wound, springs the bird into song.
Dimensions
Height: 62cm
Width: 32cm
Depth: 32cm
About The Maker
In the 1870s and 1880s, Jean Marie Phalibois specialised in creating mechanical or animated pictures and scenes, particularly fashionable in that period. The report of a journalist who visited the third Paris World's Fair (Exposition Universelle) in 1878 gives an idea of this unique form of mechanics. In his review, he pays particular attention "Conversation on the Roof" by Jean Marie Phalibois, a mechanical scene that was very popular with visitors: "... Here is a night scene on the roof. Cats walk on the tiles, chimneystacks turn. A student in the attic sings a serenade to a young lady trying to please her. At the same time, a Spaniard in national costume, with a guitar behind his back, climbs up a rope to get to the young lady. The noise made by the cats, the wind and the young lovers wakes up the poor old man, who sticks his head out of his attic window and casts disgruntled glances left and right".
Soon after his participation in the Exposition Universelle of 1878, while continuing to produce mechanical paintings and "musical fantasies" on a large scale, Phalibois created the first automata – several papier-mache figures equipped with musical mechanism and the mechanism that set the figure in motion. Between 1884 and 1888, he produced automata in full human size, a rarity among Parisian manufacturers of the time.
Since 1887, the son of Jean Marie son, Édouard Henry Phalibois, had been playing an increasingly important role in the firm business. He possessed creative temperament, played the clarinet, and in the documents of the 1880s, he called himself a "musical performer". In 1893, J.M. Phalibois retired and on 23 January the same year, the firm and all its assets passed to Henry. Seven years later, on October 4, 1900. J.M. Phalibois died. In 1925, the son of Henry, Raymond Phalibois, took over the company. He stopped making automata and concentrated on the automata trade rather than manufacturing them.
In 1995, after one hundred years of history, Roullet & Decamp decided to close down. Its automata, including those made by Phalibois, became the basis of two museums; le musée de l'Automate Soulac-sur-Mer, Gironde and Museum of Window-Actors in Falaise, Normandy. All sides of Jean Marie and Henry Phalibois creative work are represented in the museum Collection repository: mechanical singing birds, mechanical scenes and pictures, separate automata and groups of them, as well as the famous "Whistler".
Today, works by Phalibois on the open market are rare.
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