Modern Living: The Gothic-Kinetic Merlin of Wild Goose Cottage

If asked to name his profession, Rowland Emett would probably answer "Fantasticator." No other term could remotely convey the diverse genius of the perky, pink-cheeked Englishman whose pixilations, in cartoon, watercolor and clanking 3-D reality, range from the celebrated Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Railway to the demented thingamabobs that made the 1968 movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang a minuscule classic. It is no wonder that he has been dubbed by admiring Americans the British Rube Goldberg. But that, with all due deference to the late Rube (who was a great admirer of Emett), is to compare...