{"id":1840,"date":"2011-10-28T09:07:33","date_gmt":"2011-10-28T13:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.arts.umich.edu\/ink\/?p=1840"},"modified":"2011-10-28T09:09:51","modified_gmt":"2011-10-28T13:09:51","slug":"singing-bird-pistols","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/2011\/10\/28\/singing-bird-pistols\/","title":{"rendered":"Singing Bird Pistols"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2011-05-31\/christie-s-5-8-million-singing-bird-pistols-lift-hong-kong-sale-to-record.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"Click to see a Bloomberg article on the auction of these pistols.\" src=\"http:\/\/i1239.photobucket.com\/albums\/ff508\/monkeyangel1900\/Screenshot2011-10-27at82934PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"576\" height=\"323\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>If, in a twist on the Snow White fairytale, Snow were to carry a gun, I imagine it would be something like one of these\u00c2\u00a0singing bird pistols made by Fr\u00c3\u00a8res (French for brothers) Rochat in the early 1800s &#8211; beautiful, harmless, and adorned by a singing bird.<\/p>\n<p>Despite appearances, these two pistols are actually music boxes that move and play music thanks to an extremely intricate mechanism.\u00c2\u00a0When the pistols are &#8220;fired,&#8221; rather than a deadly bullet, a small bird, adorned with real feathers, &#8220;shoots&#8221; out and rests on top of the pistol&#8217;s barrel. \u00c2\u00a0Click\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.christies.com\/singing-bird-pistols-en-1422-3.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> to watch a video of the pistols in action.<\/p>\n<p>The singing bird pistols, though heavily decorated, are made to look and function very similarly to real pistols. Like regular pistols, to &#8220;fire,&#8221; each singing bird pistol must be&#8221;cocked&#8221; and the trigger pulled. Unlike regular pistols, however, they must be wound up first, much like an old fashioned clock. The music box mechanism is based on old watch-making techniques, and contains several hundred small parts.<\/p>\n<p>The brothers Rochat were famous for their intricate singing bird music boxes, particularly their snuff boxes. Each creation had a small realistic mechanical bird that could sing on command hidden out of sight. For more information on Fr\u00c3\u00a8res Rochat, click\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.freres-rochat.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>High-end collectors treasure the surviving Rochat music boxes. These singing bird pistols, which are the only known set in existence, sold for around $5.8 million at auction. Very few other singing bird pistols have survived, and the four other known pistols are currently housed in museum collections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If, in a twist on the Snow White fairytale, Snow were to carry a gun, I imagine it would be something like one of these\u00c2\u00a0singing bird pistols made by Fr\u00c3\u00a8res (French for brothers) Rochat in the early 1800s &#8211; beautiful, harmless, and adorned by a singing bird. Despite appearances, these two pistols are actually music [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1840"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1840"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1865,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1840\/revisions\/1865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}