Clockwork

Appropriately for the Christmas season, a Manhattan gallery was showing some of the most elaborate grownups' toys ever made: automatons produced largely in the 18th Century by Swiss and British craftsmen. There was a gold caterpillar that, when wound, inched along a tabletop in a pretty fair imitation of nature. A gold mouse, ridged with pearls, scurried, stopped, spun and darted about as if in real fright. An emerald-green frog jumped and croaked.

Eighteenth Century automatons were born of the realization that clockwork is a power source that can be used for more than just telling time. Such triumphs of ingenuity as Venice's famed Clock Tower, where the hours are struck by a pair of huge mechanical Moors, could be, and were, imitated in watches and snuff boxes made for the dandies of the day. Casanova thought himself half naked without several such showpieces about him.

Those who traveled less than Casanova embellished their drawing rooms with fragile fancies: a clock mounted on a chariot drawn along the mantelpiece by galloping gilt horses, or a monkey with a lorgnette in one hand and a tiny cigar in the other, smoking with bestial relish, or a dueling pistol which, with a pull of the trigger, released a tiny singing bird.

Last week's show was made up of collectors' items and almost none of it was intended for the Christmas trade. This, in a way, was a pity. Shoppers working their way down Fifth Avenue from the gallery could hardly hope to find baubles so fine, even at Tiffany's or Cartier's.

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