World Wars

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

H G Wells picked on the tripod as something emblematic of, not evil exactly, but mechanised, unaccountable, destructive power. Twenty years later, Jacob Epstein picked on the same motif - he bought a real rock-drill from a Welsh quarry and created a robotic figure to sit astride it (albeit one that has a human foetus at its centre)

I found The Rock Drill a shocking piece when I first saw it. I was astonished to discover it was crafted before WWI, rather than as a furious response to it. I have read that it was first seen as a celebration of machine culture and human vitality. Epstein himself dismantled it after the war and crafted the head torso into something much more melancholy and mournful. I'm glad it has been reconstructed; I see it as prophetic, and just as necessary today

The junk-shop tripod I helped my s-i-l assemble today brought back these thoughts, despite its association with the precise opposite: human creativity and invention. You can even see the splashes of cheerful colour on the canvas-holder from a former owner's endeavour. With brass fittings and quality carpentry, it is a handsome piece of work in its own right, and worthy of her restless imagination. A tripod fit for mortal, not artificial, intelligence