William Heath Robinson (1872-1944)

Known as the Gadget King, he is still remembered for his wonderfully humorous drawings of bizarre machinery for performing simple tasks such as raising one’s hat.  Indeed, his name has entered the English vocabulary for any unnecessarily complex system.  His humour though eccentric is always gentle, never unkind - the family proudly showing off the latest incredible gadget, workmen operating extraordinarily complex combinations of cogs and pulleys to perform some unlikely task with great dedication and seriousness, or soldiers outwitting the enemy in some highly ingenious way.

He was, however, also a serious artist and book illustrator who did some of his best work while living in the London Borough of Harrow.  A blue plaque marks the house where he used to live.

The Exhibition

Portobello Gold will be showing a selection of prints, entitled “The Portobello Collection”, of some of Heath Robinson’s more humorous images from the collection owned by the William Heath Robinson Trust.  The Trust was set up to conserve and exhibit the collection of Heath Robinson’s works made by his daughter, Joan Brinsmead. 

• Doubling Gloucester cheeses by the Gruyere method in an old Gloucester cheese works when cheese is scarce, (The Sketch, 15 May 1940), p197, pen & wash

The limited edition of numbered prints, scanned directly from the original works,  will be available at £100 each

The profits from the exhibition will go to The West House & Heath Robinson Museum Trust (HRMT), which has been set up to restore West House (once the home of the grandson of Admiral Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton) and create a permanent home for Heath Robinson’s original works in West House in the London Borough of Harrow.

 < Uncle Lubin: Second Adventure – The Air-Ship. “The Aeronaut”. Pen and ink, coloured for exhibition after publication..

http://www.heathrobinson.net