In MMD 031125 I asked some questions concerning an unknown music
automaton under the subject 'Tiffany "Flower Girl" Musical Automaton'
(Fig.1), labeled on its back as shown in Fig. 2.

Shortly after that posting was published I got some replies; the
most interesting of them came from Jere Ryder and Nick Hawkins.  Both
explained that this Flower Girl, signed as Nr. 5, seems to be "another
of the 'faked' automatons that have been popping up all over the
world."

Because I am not the owner of this Flower Girl Nr. 5 (a friend of mine
who lives some hundred kilometers from me owns it), I had to wait until
now before I could continue to investigate this automaton.  Now I can
inform you about the outcome of my recent investigations.

After I had removed the plush covering from the back side of the glass-
fronted picture box, there came out a box of pine wood, primitively
nailed together, and an 8 mm back side of chip-board nailed to the pine
wood sides (Fig. 3).

In order to investigate the movement I removed the framed glass front.
The decoration around the flower girl is mostly from natural materials
as dried leaves, flowers, blossoms, branches and grasses.  The head of
the doll seems to be from papier-mache.  The mouth, eyes and eyebrows
are painted with water-color (Fig. 4).  Fabrics for the dolls robe and
for decoration seem to be old but are aged in addition.

Without any problem I could loosen the robe which was fixed to the
background with some glue.  The legs and feet are connected primitively
on wires (Fig. 5).  On the left leg wire is soldered a branching-off
wire which holds at its far end one of two butterflies.

The movement itself is covered by a thin pasteboard in order to avoid
that the dolls robe is pulled into the movement. On this pasteboard is
printed "Brooke Bond PG Tip" (Fig. 6). If anybody could identify by
this label a product or the country where this product was produced,
please let us know it.  Might be it could give some trace to where that
fake was made.

Behind this pasteboard there is the movement: a small 18-note Sankyo
musical movement (Fig. 7).  Fixed to the arbor of the barrel of this
movement is the simple mechanism which animates head, arms and legs of
the doll.  The movement is fixed with modern screws to a wooden block
glued on the back of the box.

After I had made a long-shaft winding key and fit it to the winding
arbor of the movement, the doll was animated and the Sankyo movement
played the well-known melody. "All children of the world".

My investigation proved what Jere Ryder and Nick Hawkins had found just
from looking at the pictures which I published with my MMD posting from
November 2003: Flower Girl Nr. 5 is a fake!  In comparing it with Jere
Ryder's posting in 020327 MMDigest, entitled "Fake Monkey Automatons",
it seems to be pretty certain that all these fakes come from the same
workshop.

At the beginning of April, 2004, I got an email from the owner of
"Flower Girl Nr. 3."  Now I am waiting for some more information, but
most probably this is another fake from the same workshop.  When I get
more information I will post it again.

Christian Greinacher
Germany

 [ See Christian's article and photos at
 [ http://mmd.foxtail.com/Pictures/  -- Robbie