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Conservation in Action: Musical Elephant Automaton

This year one of Waddesdon’s greatest treasures, a remarkable elephant automaton by Hubert Martinet, has undergone a programme of conservation work.

This is the first time in living memory that the automaton has undergone conservation level surface-cleaning, in addition to its once-a-decade mechanical overhaul, and it gave us the opportunity to investigate the materials and their history, the mechanism and even the musical box.

About the elephant

The elephant was owned by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild and displayed at Waddesdon by at least 1889. The base contains a musical box and when wound the elephant swings its trunk, eyes roll and the figures revolve. According to local newspaper reports when the Shah of Persia stayed at Waddesdon in 1889, he was so enchanted with the elephant that he asked for it to be played over and over again. He preferred this ‘magnificent toy […] to all the paintings, enamels, armour and Palissy ware’.

However, the elephants history goes much further back and stretches across Europe……

Find out more about the elephant and its history

DISCOVER MORE

Follow our Elephant on his very on Twitter account @WMElephant

Listen to Alison Steadman as she finds more about the elephant on the National Trust podcast 125 Treasures 

Read about the Elephant and 100 curiosities and inventions in the accompanying book, drawn from across the National Trust