Mer-chan’s on a research and sourcing trip to Amsterdam and Zurich. Please write to us and tell us what we have to see. All requests for studio visits may not be able to be accommodated due to excess mountainside singing and dancing, but we’ll try!

One of the things we’re most looking forward to is the Jaquet-Droz Automatons at Neuchâtel’s Art and History Museum. There are three automata dating from around 1775: a draftsman who draws wonderful little pen and ink drawings, a musician who plays an organ and bobs her head to the music, and a writer who drips his quill pen into ink and writes anything that he is programmed. We’re both fascinated and creeped out by these androids.