Understandably, because it is 250 years old, the mechanical silver swan of Barnard Castle is not quite at its best.
“It does work but when it moves the neck has to be supported,” said the curator Vicky Sturrs, also doing a visual impression of how the swan’s neck would normally twist and dip down into a pool of water to grab fish.
The silver swan is a star of the Bowes Museum, an 18th-century French chateau in Teesdale containing magnificent art, ceramics, furniture and other items collected by John and Joséphine Bowes.
The swan was created by the silversmith James Cox and its fans would say it is one of the most fabulous examples of automata anywhere in the world, on a par with Cox’s peacock clock in the Hermitage, St Petersburg.
Before the pandemic the swan would be wound up to spring to life at 2pm every day. It brought crowds and gasps. But age and the lack of regular use during lockdowns means the swan is today more a sculpture than an automaton and needs restoration.
The museum is optimistic that it is on the verge of getting funding to restore the swan and get it back to normal service by the end of the year.
In the meantime the swan’s anniversary is being celebrated in a new exhibition titled the Magic of the Silver Swan, bringing together automata, art and other objects.
When the Bowes has the money, it hopes the public will be able to see the swan being restored. “The plan is to keep it here, and there will be some live restoration and some parts will go offsite,” said Sturrs, the museum’s director of programmes and collections.
“We’ll also have an automata workshop here for children and adults to make their own.
“You’ve got to take positives out of these situations and being able to think of it as a live conservation piece … that feels important.”
If the money comes, then the Cumbria Clock Company, which helped restore Big Ben, would be tasked with the restoration.
“It is exciting,” said Hannah Fox, the museum’s executive director. “The purpose of it also is to make sure we understand how the silver swan works and get people engaged with thinking about how it works.”
The swan is a lifesize replica in solid silver, weighing between 25 and 30 kilos. It has more than 700 components, excluding screws and fixings, with several thousand in the whole. It has 99 silver leaves, 113 silver neck rings and 141 glass rods.
The internal mechanism of the swan was designed by John Joseph Merlin, an eccentric Belgian inventor who created the first known rollerskate.
To see it in action is a genuine thrill, which is why the Boweses, avid collectors and socialites, fell in love with it when they saw it at the Paris international exhibition of 1867.
The novelist Mark Twain also saw it and was similarly enchanted, writing: “I watched the silver swan, which had a living grace about his movement and a living intelligence in his eyes, watched him swimming about as comfortably and unconcernedly as it he had been born in a morass instead of a jeweller’s shop.”
In 1872, the Boweses succeeded in buying the swan for their growing museum collection. They brought it to Barnard Castle where it has always been adored.
If Dominic Cummings, when he drove to the town to test his eyes during lockdown, had looked closely he would have seen swans everywhere.
“The swan is a superstar, yes,” said Sturrs. “I mean it’s on the drain covers in Barnard Castle, it’s on our paths and everything. We are swan mad!”
The silver swan exhibition includes works and archive material from contemporary artists including Yinka Shonibare, Rebecca Moss, Helen Pailing, Tobias Bradford and the late Bruce Lacey, a modern-day John Joseph Merlin described by Jeremy Deller as “Dr Dee reimagined by the Goons”.
It includes significant loans including, from the Science Museum, the first successful automatic calculator, Difference Engine No 1 made by Charles Babbage, a fan of Merlin who bought pieces made by him.
• The Magic of the Silver Swan opened at the weekend and runs until 7 January 2024.
