Tentatively, Convenience's Reviews > The Dream Lives On... the house on the rock

This is a full-color picture bk of some of the great stuff in the House on the Rock in Spring Green, Wisconsin. I love it there. When I went there w/ some friends in 1992, my friend & instrument designer & builder Neil Feather was so impressed by the phenomenal collection of penumatically controlled mechanical instruments that he tried to get a job. Anyway, as a bk, this is a fairly standard promo thingie & it really can't do justice to what an amazing place it is.

I usually try to give an idea of the immensity of the collections by describing the rm that has (reputedly) over a million small hand-carved & painted circus toys in it. In any other museum, such a rm wd be the main feature - something so impressive that seeing it wd be a highlight of the trip - in the HotR it almost seems MINOR - esp in contrast to the rm where there's an orchestra of 80 mannequins all w/ air-powered instruments that can be activated to play a tune by dropping a token in a slot.

In the unauthorized bio of Alex Jordan, HotR's creator, there's some scandal about a carving that's (maybe) presented as being in ivory that's not REALLY in ivory. In other words, accusations of fraud apparently happened. Personally, I cdn't give a fuck whether it was carved in ivory or ivory snow, it's still an amazing carving. & that's what's so distinctive about HotR - all the people who made all this stuff were clearly highly talented & skilled & quite possibly NONE OF THEM have ever gotten their name for being so - probably b/c of social factors that never let them be acknowledged as great artists. Maybe Jordan ripped them off - dunno - but at least their work is collected here & available to be seen. GO THERE. It's a sacred place for people who respect craft.