The Ricky Jay Collection Part III

[AUTOMATA]. WEEKS, Thomas (ca. 1740 - 1834). Engraved Ticket to Weeks’ Museum. [London], ca. 1790. Elaborate and large engraved entrance ticket to this showplace of automatons and mechanisms, which also retailed small decorative objects. An angel and cherub flank the central text. Matted; sight 6 ¾ x 10”. Initialed by Weeks in the lower right in ink. As Ricky Jay wrote in MAGIC: 1490s – 1950s (Taschen), “This elaborately engraved subscription ticket is embellished with sealing wax, and the initials of the proprietor, Thomas Weeks. He purchased many of his treasures at the sale of James Cox’s famous repository of automata that had delighted London audiences in the 1770s. Weeks promised to exhibit “active, separate, combined, emblematic” and allegorical mechanical figures.”