Rowland Emett (1906-1990) started his career as a cartoonist, working on Punch magazine, often showing quirky eccentric fast-moving railway scenes, which were alighted on by the organisers of the 1951 Festival of Britain who commissioned him to make a real life version, and his new career on inventive moving installations never looked back.

‘A Quiet Afternoon in Cloud Cuckoo Valley’, built in 1984, was his last such creation, incorporating many themes from previous works. It was yours to have for what seemed a remarkably low figure of an estimated low six-figure sum, for the amazing amount of inventive work that filled the ground floor gallery space at Bonhams auction house earlier this week.

‘It is cartooning, it’s only cartooning in three dimensions. These are just extensions of the sort of drawings I do….If you can make people laugh, then that’s something isn’t it.’ (Rowland Emett)