Rothschild at BM

The British Museum in London has opened a new gallery to house the Waddesdon Bequest, A Rothschild Renaissance. This is a magnificent collection of nearly 300 medieval and Renaissance treasures left to the Museum in 1898 by Baron Ferdinand Rothschild. It also includes a few 19th-century fakes! Shown is a Huntsman Automaton (c. 1617-1620) by Wolf Christoff Ritter of Nuremberg. These automata were fun pieces at German drinking parties. If the automaton stopped in front of you, you had to drink its contents (CLICK).