RosenThe Rosen Association, Seattle

The heritage collection · RA.1913.2

The Copyist

A seated clerk who dips his pen and writes, in a fair hand, the first Article of the Association.

The Copyist’s hand at his desk. A slant-topped writing desk with a sheet of paper carrying four lines of upright copperplate. The clerk’s hand, in a buttoned cuff, holds a steel pen to the page; an inkwell with a feather stands at the top corner of the desk. NO. 8
Atelier drawing 8, 1913The Copyist’s hand at his desk, with the first two lines of Article I. The cam stack that guides the pen is drawn separately, as drawing 9.

1913

The Copyist was the first piece the Association made together, two years after it was constituted, and it was made to answer a question that the eleven makers had argued about all winter: whether a house of different trades could make one thing that showed no seams between them. Tobias Rosen made the movement. Harald Moen made the cam stack. Joseph Lindqvist made the desk and chair, Cora Bellweather made the hair, and Euphemia Aske made the eyes, which follow the pen.

The clerk sits at a slant-topped desk, dips his pen, and writes four lines in an upright copperplate: No piece shall leave the house without a true account of its making, signed by its makers. He blots the page, looks up, and waits. The text is stored on sixteen brass cams on a single shaft, four to each line: three that guide the pen’s path across the page and one that sets its pressure. It has not been changed since 1913.

He is wound on the first Monday of each month and writes once, in the entrance hall, at noon. The house has kept every page he has written, 1,362 of them at the beginning of November 2026, in boxes beneath the desk.

Object record

Object type
Writing automaton
Made
The House, Seattle, 1912–1913
Makers
Tobias Rosen, movement; Harald Moen, cams; Joseph Lindqvist, desk and chair; Cora Bellweather, hair; Euphemia Aske, eyes
Materials and techniques
Brass, steel, mahogany, bisque, human hair, glass; hand-cut cams
Dimensions
118 cm high seated; desk 74 × 52 cm
Accession number
RA.1913.2
Certificate of provenance
No. 41
Location
The House, Seattle. Shown on any visit
Record
Cataloged 1952; revised 2026

Records in the heritage catalog are compiled from the Register of Provenance and the makers’ own notebooks. Where the two disagree, the Register is preferred and the disagreement noted. Return to the collection