Bringing Autochrome Back to Life
We've written previously about the Autochrome photographic process (see 'Mama Don't Take My Autochrome'), the first commercially available color photography. The process was invented by the Lumiére brothers in France, who also produced the first 'movies', and was quite popular until around 1930, when Kodachrome became available, which was much simpler to use, and produced a much brighter and sharper image. But Autochrome, like all other historic photographic process, has unique qualities that were lost with the techniques that superseded them: in the case of Autochrome, a dreamy, grainy, painterly quality that's simply gorgeous. Manufacturing Autochrome plates was a very involved, technical, industrial process, that required consistency in the materials used: fine grains of dyed potato starch, even finer carbon blacking to fill in between the grains, and a 'dry plate' photographic gel of consistent quality on glass.
"In 2017, Nejc was a student with a slightly unreasonable idea: make Autochrome. Invented by the Lumière brothers and introduced commercially in 1907, Autochrome was the first widely successful colour photographic process. Its colour screen was made from microscopic grains of dyed potato starch, with a photographic emulsion coated on top. Expose the plate, process it, hold the finished transparency to the light, and those tiny grains reconstruct colour. Beautifully simple in description, but absurdly difficult in practice.
Nejc quickly discovered that before he could make Autochrome, he first had to learn how to make photographic emulsion. That prerequisite became Zebra Dry Plates, and what was supposed to be preparation for an experiment eventually became years of emulsion making, tens of thousands of hand-coated glass plates, machinery, chemistry, sensitometry, packaging, shipping and, eventually, a factory. Autochrome, meanwhile, remained unfinished, until this April, when there was finally an image on the plate.
We sat down with Nejc to talk about the nine-year journey back to Autochrome, why potatoes are considerably more complicated photographic materials than they sound, and the much larger question now facing us: if we can make Autochrome, can we build the machinery necessary to make it available to everyone else? Was Zebra really a nine-year detour back to Autochrome?
Katja: You picked Autochrome as a student in 2017, and learning to make emulsion was only supposed to be the way in. Nine years later, the emulsion is a factory and the Autochrome finally arrived in April. From outside, Zebra looks like a very long detour back to an unfinished student project. Did the detour become the real work, or has the workshop always been the means of getting back to Autochrome?
Nejc: Calling Zebra a nine-year detour back to Autochrome is actually quite accurate, although I didn’t understand it that way while it was happening. Autochrome was the reason I started making photographic emulsions in the first place. In 2017 I was a student and the idea was essentially: I want to make Autochrome, therefore I need to learn how photographic emulsion works. That sounds wonderfully straightforward when compressed into one sentence. In reality, the prerequisite became a subject large enough to consume years. At some point the detour became the work. Making an emulsion once is one problem. Making it reliably is another. Making hundreds or thousands of plates which behave the same way is another again. Then you have glass, coating, drying, packaging, sensitometry, machinery, chemistry, customers, shipping. Eventually you look around and what began as preparation for an experiment has become a factory.
But Autochrome never really disappeared. It sat in the background as a sort of unfinished sentence. There were always more immediate problems to solve, and every one of those problems was also giving me another piece of the knowledge I would eventually need to return to it. When the plate finally worked in April, the strange thing was that I was simultaneously much closer to and much further from the person who imagined it in 2017. The student version of me imagined the photograph. He didn’t imagine the nine years of infrastructure required to make the photograph possible. And no, it wasn’t exactly the thing I imagined then. It couldn’t be. In 2017 Autochrome was almost mythical to me. Once you have actually made one, it stops being mythology and becomes materials: starch, dyes, carbon black, gelatin, silver halides, glass. In one sense that demystifies it. In another, I find it much more extraordinary now because I understand how absurdly difficult it is that all of those things work together at all.
Katja: Before building your coating machine, you had hand-poured something like a hundred thousand plates and refined the syringe-and-tilt method over roughly sixty thousand of them. Then you built a two-tonne machine. Teaching it meant turning decisions that lived in your wrist into numbers: speed, viscosity, temperature, flow. What did the hand know that was hardest to write down as a parameter?
Nejc: The hardest thing to translate was not a particular movement of the wrist. It was a correction. When you coat enough plates by hand, you are never really repeating exactly the same movement. You are continuously compensating without consciously describing what you are compensating for. The emulsion feels slightly different today. The glass is a different temperature. The bead is moving too quickly on one side. You tilted a fraction too far. You see the coating front behaving differently and your hand changes what it is doing before you have formulated the problem in words. That is the knowledge hidden in the wrist.
A machine cannot have that kind of intuition unless you first identify what the intuition is responding to. It forces you to separate one apparently simple act, “coat the plate”, into viscosity, temperature, volume, acceleration, velocity, angle, timing and so on. Then you discover how many of those variables interact. That was probably the most interesting part of building the machine. I had spent years training myself to compensate for an imperfect process. With the machine, instead of getting better at compensating, I could start removing the reasons compensation was necessary. There are still things that are difficult to translate. A human is exceptionally good at noticing that something simply looks or feels wrong. But the answer isn’t to romanticise that. If I can identify what I am noticing, I would rather turn it into a measurable parameter. The machine is, in some ways, a record of everything hand coating taught me.
And I should probably defend my poor machine on one point. I didn’t build two tonnes of machinery because I never wanted to pour another plate. I still enjoy hand coating. I built it because after tens of thousands of plates I no longer thought variability was something the customer should have to pay for just because it proved a human had been involved. Does mechanising a handmade process destroy something important?
Nejc: This is where I think “handmade” can become a slightly dangerous word. If somebody buys a handmade chair, perhaps the marks of the maker are part of the object. With a photographic plate, the coating is not really the final object. It is the material from which the photographer is going to make their object. A bubble isn’t my signature, dust isn’t craftsmanship, an uneven coating isn’t evidence that somebody cared more. I don’t think the customer loses anything photographically by having a thinner, cleaner and more uniform emulsion. They gain predictability. If there is an irregularity in the final photograph, I would much rather it came from the photographer, the lens, the subject, the development or chance than from the fact that my wrist moved differently on plate number 38,412.
What may be lost is a certain idea of handmade production. I understand that. There is something attractive about knowing somebody stood in a darkroom and poured your individual plate. I did exactly that for years, and it is part of Zebra’s history. But the machine hasn’t removed the hand from the process. We still make the emulsion. We prepare the glass. We operate the equipment. We inspect the plates. We test them. The machine only performs one operation better and more consistently than I can. If the highest expression of craftsmanship is deliberately preserving defects that you already know how to remove, then I don’t find that definition of craftsmanship very useful. And then there are the imperfect plates
Nejc: The distinction for Test Plates is quite simple for me: does the defect prevent the plate from doing useful photographic work? There are defects that compromise the material, sensitometric problems, serious coating failures, contamination, anything that makes exposure unpredictable. Those don’t become cheaper products. They’re a waste.
Then there are cosmetic or local defects where most of the plate is perfectly usable. Historically I was extremely reluctant to sell those because I wanted every Zebra box to represent the standard I was aiming for. But throwing away a photographic plate that somebody could make a perfectly good image with is also difficult to justify, particularly when the customer knows exactly what they are buying and pays accordingly. So Test Plates are not a lower quality target. They are the consequence of having a quality target. And yes, I fully expect somebody to become nostalgic for the old irregularities. Photography is very good at becoming nostalgic for technical limitations approximately five minutes after we solve them. Maybe in twenty years I’ll have to build a machine that accurately reproduces the defects of my hand-coated plates.
Katja: Your plates are around ISO 2, roughly seven or eight stops slower than ordinary film. At that point slowness isn’t just an inconvenience. It changes what can be photographed. What becomes impossible?
Nejc: ISO 2 removes movement from your vocabulary very quickly. There are photographs you simply cannot make in the conventional sense. Fast action, spontaneous gestures, many kinds of street photography, anything where the decisive moment lasts a fraction of a second. The subject will be gone long before the exposure is finished. Even wind becomes a photographic decision. Leaves, water, clothing and hair behave differently when exposure is measured in seconds rather than fractions of seconds.
Portraiture is particularly interesting because the exposure becomes a collaboration. You cannot steal the expression in quite the same way. The person has to participate in making the photograph. They have to remain there. Even when they try to remain perfectly still, they don’t, so time becomes visible in their faces. I like that. But I don’t think slowness should be fetishised either. ISO 2 is partly an aesthetic characteristic and partly a limitation of the material. We shouldn’t pretend every limitation is profound simply because it is old.
The panchromatic work isn’t primarily an attempt to make Zebra into modern high-speed film. Panchromatic sensitivity is important because it changes how colours translate into tone and, of course, it is essential for colour processes such as Autochrome. Speed can improve as the emulsions improve, and I’m interested in seeing how far we can take that. But I have no ambition to make a dry plate behave exactly like a modern film. If that is what somebody needs, modern film already exists and is exceptionally good at it. The constraints are part of what makes plates interesting. The important distinction for me is between a constraint that creates a different photographic language and a defect that merely gets in the way.
Katja: Autochrome needs a panchromatic emulsion, and panchromatic material tolerates no safelight. So one of the most beautiful colour processes ever invented has to be coated in complete darkness. How do you judge an even coat when you cannot actually look at it?
Nejc: Complete darkness changes the psychology of coating more than I expected. With orthochromatic material, even under a very dim safelight, vision gives you reassurance. You can inspect the coating front, see where the emulsion is moving, see whether a corner has been covered. With panchromatic emulsion that feedback disappears. So you replace sight with repetition and physical information. You know the amount of emulsion you’ve dispensed. You know the position and angle of the plate. You feel how the liquid moves through the plate and through your hands. Timing becomes much more important. You learn not to interrupt a movement simply because you can’t visually confirm it.
In a strange way, making panchromatic plates manually asks you to trust everything you learned while you could see. And then you switch the lights on later and discover whether your confidence was justified. That is also one of the places where machinery becomes particularly valuable. A machine doesn’t become less accurate because somebody turned the lights off. Once the parameters are established, darkness is irrelevant to it.
Katja: Autochrome has one of those descriptions that sounds almost too wonderful to be true: microscopic grains of dyed potato starch, roughly ten to fifteen microns across, forming the colour screen. What does “ten to fifteen microns” actually mean when you’re trying to manufacture it?
Nejc: “Potato starch” makes Autochrome sound charmingly domestic. The reality is closer to particle engineering. You need starch grains within a very particular size range because every grain is effectively part of the colour screen. Too large and the structure becomes increasingly visible, and you sacrifice resolution. Too fine and you introduce other problems in processing and handling.
So getting to roughly 10 to 15 microns means separating and grading an enormous population of particles rather than finding some magical variety of microscopic potato. Then those grains have to be divided, dyed into the required colour components, brought back together in controlled proportions and distributed as densely and randomly as possible. The gaps have to be dealt with, the layer has to be flattened, and all of this has to remain compatible with the photographic emulsion sitting above it. That is one of the things I love about Autochrome. Before you have made any silver image at all, you have already manufactured a microscopic colour filter out of potatoes.
Katja: Could a different batch of potatoes actually change the colour of the photograph?
Nejc: The properties of the starch matter, although I wouldn’t describe it as simply “different potatoes equal different coloured photographs.” The colour is primarily determined by the dyes, their concentration, the proportions of the coloured grains, the spectral response of the emulsion and the processing. But particle size, shape, transparency and the way the starch accepts the dye can all affect the behaviour of the screen So a change in raw material can absolutely propagate into the final image. Whether the potato gets the blame personally is another question. There is an image on the plate. But it isn’t finished yet.
The first complete plate produced a colour negative. That matters because historically an Autochrome is a positive transparency. You hold it to the light and the image itself glows through its microscopic colour screen. Reliable reversal of hand-coated plates remains another problem to solve.
Nejc: I wouldn’t call the negative a failed Autochrome, but it isn’t an Autochrome in the strict historical sense either. The historical Autochrome is a colour transparency. Light passes through the developed silver image and the microscopic colour screen, so what you see is a positive colour image. Reversal isn’t really an optional final step. It’s fundamental to what an Autochrome is.
What we demonstrated with the negative was slightly different, but at that stage it was actually more important to me that we could see the screen and the emulsion working together photographically. The colour information was there and the plate was producing an image. After nine years of working on all these separate pieces, that was the first time we knew they could actually work together. Reversal is another problem, and that’s what we’re working on now.
I’m also not particularly interested in claiming that we’ve resurrected the Lumières’ Autochrome exactly as it existed in 1907. Even if you reproduce the published formula perfectly, you’re still working with different gelatin, different dyes, different glass, different chemicals and different equipment. There’s always going to be some interpretation when you’re trying to reconstruct a historical process. What interests me more is understanding the principles well enough that we can make the process work again, rather than simply trying to reproduce an artefact.
So the negative is evidence. Nine years ago, I was a student with what seemed like a pretty ridiculous idea: that I might be able to make a colour photograph from glass, silver and microscopic grains of dyed potato starch. Now there is an image on the plate. We just need to make it positive.
The next problem is scale. This is where the Autochrome project arrives at a very different point. For nine years, the central question was whether we could make it work at all. Now we have to ask whether we can make it repeatable. Making one plate by hand is an experiment. Making Autochrome available as a photographic material is manufacturing, and the process is considerably more complicated than coating an ordinary dry plate. The starch has to be selected and graded to an extremely narrow particle size. It has to be separated into colour components, dyed consistently, recombined in controlled proportions and distributed into a dense microscopic screen. That layer has to be processed and flattened before a panchromatic photographic emulsion can be applied over it.
Because that emulsion is panchromatic, parts of the production process must happen in complete darkness. It is possible to do extraordinary things by hand. Zebra exists because an unreasonable amount of photographic material was made that way. But if Autochrome is going to become something other photographers can actually buy, expose and use, we need to do what we eventually had to do with dry plates: take knowledge that currently lives in hands, experiments and individual procedures and turn it into specialised machinery that can repeat those procedures accurately. That machinery does not exist on a shelf waiting for us to order it. We will have to design and build much of it ourselves. And that requires a considerable amount of funding.
This is something we would genuinely like to ask the photographic community. We could continue developing the process internally and move forward as resources allow. That is the slower route, but it keeps development entirely within Zebra. The other possibility is crowdfunding. A crowdfunding campaign could allow us to build the specialised machinery needed to mechanise the Autochrome production process much sooner. More importantly, it could tell us whether there is a community of photographers who want this process badly enough to help us bring it back into practical use.
We are not interested in crowdfunding an idea that exists only as a rendering or a promise. There is already an image on the plate. The question now is whether we should build the machines that could put plates like it into other photographers’ hands."
Book Review: Encounters - Brough Superior in Austria
The telling of history is never over: there are always discoveries to be made, even of subjects thought sufficiently covered in books and magazines. A wonderful case in point is a new book exploring a very specific subject and period: the archive of a photographer in Vienna named Lothar Rübelt, whom you've never heard of. But you'll remember him because of the book 'Encounters: Brough Superior in Austria. The Vintage Years 1924-31' (JKK 2026) It turns out Lothar was such an enthusiast of George Brough's handiwork, he became a de facto agent and advertiser for Brough Superiors in Austria, where a considerable percentage of the factory's output landed: nearly 200 motorcycles from a total production of around 3000 machines.
Paul d'Orléans (PDO): Tell me the story of your relationship to Brough Superiors?
Hagen Thieme (HT): I became a BS Club Member in 2012 having bought my first Brough in Germany (an SS80 project). For me the main reason was their beauty, they are works of art and they stimulate a feeling of passion. Later I learned that the personal encounters I had riding and restoring these bikes were more meaningful than any other. Then in 2016 I bought my dream bike, a 680 OHV from New Zealand (AAT286): both bikes I had restored to road-going condition, meaning distance riding. I rode my SS80 from Germany to UK on the road last year.
PDO: Are you a lifelong motorcyclist?
HT: I picked up biking at the age of 25 with an old 1964 BSA my first (I am now 62), after that I collected BSAs, (mostly Gold Stars). At the age of 17/18 my father forbid biking, telling me I was to weak to handle heavy machines!
HT: I knew he was having good contacts (Encounters!) with his customers, and he was also a loving family man. I found so many letters between George (in fact also his wife Constance) and Rübelt. They exchanged thoughts for holiday trips etc. Rübelt also tried to promote the bikes he bought from George. There was a very close relationship between the maker and biker. I also learned that Rübelt asked George for help finding him a 4-speed gearbox for his bike in order perform better at a rally (his second 680 OHV only had a 3-speed box as standard).
PDO: What was/were your most exciting discovery(s)?
HT: Paul, there were lots. Michaela watched me in the archive, when I pulled the glass plate negatives out of their protective envelopes. I was the first to do so since 1990! When I placed them on the illumination table she watched my face! She described me having the 'Howard Carter Look' (he discovered Tutankhamun) many times. Finding the cover picture previously unpublished was one of those moments. The complete negative folder with the 47 negatives in them containing the Kilometer Lancé 1929 race, and really the top: a small folder written NOTTINGHAM across the top, containing the Rübelt trip negatives from August 1931. Those are the very private George Brough pictures with Peggy and her white rabbit etc. I KNEW Rübelt had done the journey, because I had seen letters suggesting it. So I looked for the Nottingham pictures and after finding some postcards Rübelt had printed of the trip, I knew they were there.
PDO: How many of the magnificent machines shown in Austria survived?
HT: Roughly 100 or so went to Austria (mostly SS80 and 680 and a few SS100) also about 90 of the cheap 5-15 model. Less than a handful survived plus a few components such as gearboxes and engine cases.
PDO: It think of that magnificent supercharged SS100 in the photos: do you know the story of who built it, raced it, how it did? [You might recall I discovered the supercharged 1700cc Zenith 'Super Kim' in Argentina - real 1920s supercharged motorcycles are extraordinarily rare].
HT: The Supercharged SS100 was built by Eddy Meyer with the help of Austrian engineer Proschko 1930. It was about to be raced in France but the French did not allow Eddy into the country, him having had special fuel in his truck, which was prohibited! The bike was built from the Pendine SS100 Eddy Meyer bought in 1927. Rumors have it that this bike might have survived with an Austrian collector. It does not have any supercharger bits on it now.
HT: I had 1000 copies made, for the 1000 extant Brough Superiors. It's bilingual, in German and English. I approached publisher Jörg Krawczyk: he was recommended to me during a bike rally for pre-war machines. He already had produced “The Family of Rudge” and “Amongst Friends in the Eifel”. We took the overall layout from these books (size, printing quality etc) and my concept was brought in. I did the whole story, the chapters and most of the wording myself, and he made the book to what it is. It is selling constantly with 200 copies already gone. This is not bad for a book premiered on August 15th this year (without eBay and Amazon). I do not have an ISBN Number for it either!
I guess it is very important for you to receive the book, because the spirit and heart in it is best appreciated reading and most importantly seeing these beautiful pictures.
Preface from 'Encounters':
"George Brough was a gifted motorcycle designer who was also noted for his business acumen. His machines enjoyed a high reputation and were no less expensive. They weren’t produced on an industrial scale but custom-made with utmost attention to detail. They were admired for their high standard of workmanship and finish. George Brough set no store by mass production but was convinced that a first-class product at a correspondingly high price would attract a loyal clientele and he was proved right. Between 1919 and 1940 at a small plant in Nottingham a little over 3,000 motorcycles rolled off the assembly line and then production ceased as a consequence of the Second World War.
of his own Brough Superior.
vist, Michaela Pfundner, that I could undertake a comprehensive study of this photo- graphic treasure trove. The originals of the photos and documents displayed in this volume can be traced to this extensive collection. On Rübelt’s death, Michaela Pfundner was granted permission to inspect and sort out this wealth of material.
As a result of a painstaking search of the archive we came across hundreds of large and small glass plate negatives and prints featuring not only the Brough Superior machines. As well as the motorcycles themselves, we thought about the people sitting on and standing next to these machines. Our purpose in this book is to set out on an absorbing voyage into the past of the roaring twenties, at a time when the motorcycles were new and their owners ever so proud. Nowadays the English Brough Superior Club - founded in 1958 - acts as the custodian of these first-class machines, which are such a rarity on our roads. Of the approximately 3,000 manufactured, about a third still exist, spread throughout the world in museums and collections, with the odd one still to be spotted on the streets."
For the USA / UK: contact Mike Smith at the Brough Superior Club here.
If you're in Europe, the book can be ordered from Hagen Thieme directly here.
Still Running: The Grampian Motorcycle Club
Story and Photos by Charlotte Croney
My documentary series 'The Grampian Motorcycle Club' lead me on a journey around the northeast coast of Scotland, where the Rivers Dee and Don meet the North Sea. My series explores themes of age, heritage and passion within vintage motorcycle riders.
Let me introduce myself: I am Charlotte Croney, a commercial photographer based in the UK. I explore all types of photography, from editorial to advertising, but nothing beats documentary. I love the opportunity to step into someone else’s world, hear their stories and capture something really real and personal.
My Grandad has always been passionate about motorcycles. When I was younger, his love of for two wheels was such a defining part of who he was that, to differentiate my two grandads, he became known as “Grandad Motorbike.” He started riding at just 14 and continued for decades, but as he's grown older, he he's had to stop riding. Seeing someone I know so well lose the ability to do something that has been such a huge part of his identity spurred my curiosity. I was interested in the relationships people build with their motorcycles, and what happens to that connection when they can no longer ride. My Grandad’s love for motorcycles has continued through his membership in the Grampian Motorcycle Club, and I became interested in how that same passion lives on for other people. I felt it was important to document these journeys; not just the motorcycles themselves, but the memories, friendships and sense of identity that have been built around them over many years.
For my project on the Grampian Motorcycle Club I wanted to document age, heritage and history surrounding the vintage motorcycle riders in Scotland whilst also exploring how biker identity is represented through photography. Motorcycle culture is often associated with ideas of freedom, rebellion and masculinity. This made me think critically about how masculinity is represented within motorcycle photography and whether my own work challenges or continues these stereotypes. This is why it was undoubtedly important for me to use this opportunity to find and photograph at least one female figure within the group, to not only dismantle the harsh sense of masculinity in biker photography - through the way I photograph - but also to dismantle it by who I photograph.
I wanted to move away from the stereotypical representation of biker culture that often focuses purely on rebellion and hyper-masculinity. Instead of photographing my subjects as distant or intimidating figures, I used close portraiture and more natural interactions to create a sense of intimacy and emotional connection. By photographing riders posed it creates a sense of stillness and so presents biker culture as more human and emotionally layered rather than performative or intimidating. I wanted my photographs to not simply record biker culture but actively shape how identity and belonging are understood; through my use of composition, direct eye contact, body language, and cinematic lighting.
And to add another layer of meaning within my photographs I was particularly interested in how nostalgia is utilized within motorcycle culture. Bikes often symbolize freedom, and I wanted to link this with the theme of age. A few of my subjects do not ride their bikes anymore and motorbikes once consumed their whole lives, and so I wanted to contrast the idea of a bike that symbolizes movement, independence, and escape with the stillness and physical limitations that come with aging. By photographing older riders posed beside their motorcycles rather than actively riding them, the images become more reflective and emotionally driven, suggesting memory, loss and the lasting emotional connection people have with their bikes as well as how the love of bikes can still exist without the ability to ride and the love can be lived through the community of the Grampian Motorcycle Club.
What I personally learned on my journey with the club is that riding is only one part of their relationship with motorcycles. Traveling around Scotland, I not only saw some very cool bikes, but also the amazing garages and sheds, where members spend hours working on them. I became fascinated by the knowledge and skill involved in diagnosing, repairing and maintaining their bikes, and how this hands-on relationship with the machines is another way their passion continues. One of my favourite takeaways from the project was understanding just how much the motorcycle community means to the people within it. Before starting the project, I understood my Grandad’s passion for motorcycles, but spending time with the club gave me a much better understanding of why that passion stays with people for so many years. I felt as though I had stepped into a community that had existed long before I arrived, with friendships and stories that had been built over decades.
One story that really stayed with me was hearing about Bryan and Tony spending so much time together in the shed that they ended up staying there until 1am, and when Tony woke up in the morning, Brian was still there. It sounds like a small, funny moment, but to me it perfectly captured the kind of friendship that exists within the club. I came away realizing that motorcycles are not just about riding; they create a community, friendships and memories that can last a lifetime.
The Man From Shinjuku - Pawel Kalinowski
It happens often: when presented with a new art project, our jaded eyes roll, because it's all been done before. But genuine creation is never done, is always radical, and is prone to bursting like a flowering weed through cracks in the expected. For example; Luftgekühlt, the air-cooled Porsche extravaganza, is cool for what it is, even within its boundaries of 'acceptable' creativity - 'outlaw' cars stickered with old racing graphics, rally cars that never existed, etc. We smile, we enjoy, but rarely do a double-take. But when something new demands a triple-take, and begs more questions the longer you look, then you've found a gem.
Paul dOrléans (PDO): So your primary business is graphic design?
Pawel Kalinowski (PK): I’m the founder and creative director for CarBone. We design and produce parts and interiors for classic Porsches. I'm also a classic Heuer stopwatches collector, probably the biggest in Europe. Probably it is a mental issue.
PDO: Isn't all collecting a mental issue?
PDO: I spent 5 weeks in Poland in 1987, so I caught the 'cześć' (hi/bye) on the seat of your strawberry Porsche - so charming and really different. Did you design all that?
PDO: Oh yeah, I stood in the queue for pivo (beer) every Thursday.
PK: So, Pan Tu Nie Stał basically means 'you were not here in that line'.
PDO: I love it, what a reference.
PDO: Nobody ever made a strawberry-themed Porsche, especially with that bouclé / fleece interior! It's really cheeky.
PDO: I also went to art school, and my bent on The Vintagent is towards art history and culture. I think it's really important to explore the impact of culture in both directions; motoring on culture, culture on motoring, and all the subcultures that develop around vehicles. That's been a fascination of mine, as explored in my books Ton Up! and The Chopper: the Real Story. So I'm fascinated with what's happening with Porsche culture now, with all these little spin-off subcultures: rally, outlaw, racer, etc. How interesting that this brand became a medium for expression and adventure - and Porsche the company is the lucky recipient. You can see something like that with Harley-Davidson; you've got Sturgis and so many spin-off subcultures that keep that brand alive. No other American motorcycle brand survived the 1950s, but H-D did partly because they had all this cultural support. So I really resonated with what you're doing - it's fascinating to me. I also write fiction, so I see you as creating manga or a novel with the Shinjuku project. Are you planning to create a corollary piece, like a book or animated film?
PDO: I saw a 911 that you were hand-painting in Japan, with guys in a shop, is that them?
PK: Yes, they invited me for a world premiere of a car project by Yoshizawa-san, based on a Porsche 912. Sneaker designer Sean Wotherspoon was invited to redesign the interior of that car, plus the chassis, colorfully combining materials: jeans, corduroy, leather etc. A beautiful build. They invited me, and I've learned when a Japanese person from that crowd invites you, you do not say no. You have to go.
I found a home for Contact Layer during Tokyo Art Week, at at Le Garage, November 4-8. Even better, the installation will sit next to a staircase designed by Shiro Kuramata, which feels like a wonderful accident considering the design/cultural layer of the whole project. Plus I will meet a manga artist there.
PK: In Japan they understand this is not just for kids, this impacts everyone. It's incredibly popular so they understand how important it is, it's almost like national identity, it's not belittled. It's like, 'this is something we created and it's massive'.
PDO: There was a fabulous Art of Manga exhibit at the DeYoung museum here, with all the important manga artists from the very start of the genre. The show explored how critical this art form has become in Japan, it impacts everything, it's in conversation everywhere. And part of their culture is acknowledging the things that are important; a person can become a national treasure supported by the state, I mean this is inconceivable in the United states, here it's like 'you make your own money, you make your own reputation.'
So, given that you've laid the foundation for a story, it seems so natural to fill out that story. But when you tell that story, for better or worse it becomes fixed; I like the poetry of there really isn't a story in Shinjuku, you just installed suggestive phrases in the car, and let people's imaginations take over. Once you define the story well, it becomes fixed, but still leaves open the possibility of other characters, or even other viewpoints. Kind of like Rashomon (I worship Kurosawa's films) - the same story told from 7 perspectives.
PDO: So why Porsche in particular?
PK: That is a good question; probably because of my older brother. When I was six years old, he was 12, and he told me once a Porsche 911 is the best car in the world. From my perspective, being six years old, he was an adult. And you know, the location is crucial; in that story, we were in a communist country, with nothing, with no hopes. I remember the lines to get meat, I remember my brother in the line with our mother, crazy long lines. And everything was always about to be sold out. You stayed in line and you waited, because maybe there will be a miracle and something will appear. Money wasn't a problem, because there was nothing to buy. Because we had nothing, we didn't have hope for anything to change. My father spent two nights in jail because he made a pair of jeans by himself!
PDO: When I was in Poland in 1987, literally everyone we met had spent time in jail for something stupid like that.
PK: Just in case, just a friendly reminder!
PK: A fun fact, you didn't need any money but somehow everything appeared by itself. You could always find people who were able to help. The next chapter of that story is when I was 33, in 2014, my partner and I had a creative agency. We worked on boring stuff for big companies, for stupid money. Believe me, nobody needed this stuff, but they paid well. We used to design apps, we used to make websites - for KFC, Pepsi, Roche, all of those brands. But I felt 'this is not what I was born to do.' This is not my thing, but the money's good. Golden handcuffs.
PDO: So you pulled on a thread to see where it led.
We still do a lot of stickers for Porsches, and we don't have our own printer because I always say 'if you want to sell milk you don't need to have a cow'. Imagine all of those problems when need to fix your printer - that takes a specialist. We do 3D print a lot of parts, including aluminum and stainless steel, titanium, we print using resin, we send those parts all over the world, but we do not have a production printer, we just have a small shitty $200 printer to do simple prototypes.
So sticker printing was the first manifestation. We are strong at finding needs, or what would be cool, and people somehow think that our work is cool.
PDO: Because you're an artist and know what's aesthetically appealing.
When you're 20 years old you're different than 30, and now I'm in my 40s, and our business is stable. We hire bright people, and built from scratch a new structure for the company, and I am not in charge anymore. Our organism works without us, but we spent a lot of time creating those processes. We tried amazing ideas that didn't work, we had stupid ideas that worked, and finally I started having time for feeding that other part of me. That's when the Shinjuku series appeared.
PDO: What was the trigger for Shinjuku?
I'll tell you a secret - there will be a teaser of the next chapter of Shinjuku at Luftgekühlt in Atlanta on Oct 10, and I will show a car under a white cloth, but what is under the tarp will never be revealed. I'll project images from Contact Layer of Shinjuku from the interior, onto the windows.
PDO: I saw a photo from your installation, with the 356 covered in TV monitors, and there was another car with some kind of projection from the inside; very cool. I love the presentation of this story as an art installation, it's amazing.
I can tell you another secret: the last chapter of the Shinjuku project will involve a rally next year. The plan is just a few cars, we want to go from Europe through Mongolia to Japan.
PDO: Whoa, that's like the Peking to Paris Rally in reverse.
PK: The opposite way, yes similar. A big difference between a Slavic culture and American culture is when we say things like that, it is a statement, it will happen.
PDO: That's a fair criticism. We talk a lot, and sometimes it happens.
PK: I don't mean it is good or bad, it is just different, because our cultures are different. and it's the key to understand each other. I mean, you've probably traveled everywhere in the world, I assume?
PK: It helps to understand the cultures; why people are how they are.
PDO: We live half the year in Mexico, mostly because we love Mexican culture and are fascinated by this place that's right next door to the United States, and is looked down upon by both the government and by a lot of the Americans. But when you actually go there, you discover Mexico City is like Athens or Cairo or Rome - it's built on top of thousands of years of history. The Mexicans are finally taking ownership of their own history, with a real pride in their mix of cultures, and it's a really interesting time to be in Mexico; in Poland you know your medieval history, it's deep in your consciousness, but that's not really so true in Mexico because of the intense colonial period, where all that was erased. But there's 63 actively spoken languages in Mexico, and they're just really digging in on that. The United states is a country of immigrants with this terrible attitude towards immigration, it's kind of self-hating.
PK: I'm Slavic, I do not soften anything; Europe has its own issues the same way. It is a shit show. We have a saying in Poland, 'I am not tomato soup,' meaning I'm not for everybody.
PK: My latest project is about collecting those moments; when someone smokes cigarettes in a forest, or remembering the smell of the mountains. What you remember is never what you expect to remember, and often it's in insignificant details, but they're profound, like touchstones, like magic keys to the past. That is Shinjuku.
Till Next Year, Time Stops
The Rømø Motor Festival 2026
The Gathering
Cleared To Race
When the Beach Wakes
'Lonely Mexico' - By Moped in 1957
[Traveling by Batavus Bilonet G 50 Sport in 1957, as recounted in a period article by Hugo de Wijs]
"Why on earth did you choose Mexico for the most intense part of your trip?" Hugo de Wijs asks himself, highly surprised by his own choice, every time he reflects on it. It is perhaps missing the point: he goes on a journey to look at the United States. And since riding the same stretch twice is less than half the fun, you choose the outbound route through the South, because 'poor America' is endlessly more interesting than the well-polished northern part of the route.
It is all difficult to establish. Hugo de Wijs wants to know for sure. Driven by a desire for discovery, he crossed Mexico in a short time on a Batavus moped to investigate all the wonders on his own.
End of the Swamps
"The trip began right at the border between the United States and Mexico, which I crossed at the border town of Laredo. I arrived in a beautiful twilight, the last one I would see for a long time; the sky is usually clear, and because of all the stories from Americans, I didn't entirely trust the darkness. For safety reasons, I stopped at the first village I encountered. I wanted to pass through the cities without much delay.
I was soon deep in a village, found a path, and went to sleep in my plastic tent, surrounded by the usual jungle that is so typical of the low-lying parts of a new country. That is a bad habit of mine, that it always gives me the feeling of a desolate desert. It was very quiet. I slept wonderfully.
Until one o'clock in the morning. Then I woke up suddenly. There was something that made me aware that I had heard something, but I didn't know what. Suddenly, I heard the sound of wolves howling—not direct threatening, but rather a warning.
Even worse than the wolves was the weather. It seemed like a sort of storm broke out. Shivering, I heard the dogs barking. I had some small weapons with me, which in the wild desert can provide a safe feeling, but the beasts were closer than in a zoo. They looked dangerous.
I must honestly admit that I was terrified. I decided to stay awake to protect the tent if they returned, but I realized that I could do very little against a pack of wolves. I had nothing but a small knife with me to defend myself against a pack of wolves—not a pleasant realization.
The rest of the night I stayed awake out of fear, and I didn't do anything else but wait. The next morning I saw that they had been quite close. Total panic had kept me awake, and then at last I fell into a deep sleep.
Mexico Was the Most Beautiful
The village where I stayed was a safe haven. It was a wonderful feeling to open my tent in the morning sun.
A friendly Mexican, who could speak remarkably good English (which is a rare exception there), told me that these were 'kayuka' wolves.
They are a sort of prairie wolf that, as long as they haven't eaten for a long time, can attack a human, but usually they target smaller children. The people in the area are terribly afraid of them. For a pack of wolves, the kayukas are not dangerous, but they are annoying. For safety, the man at the gas station advised me to sleep in populated areas from now on, as it had been a long time since the beasts had come so close to villages during this period. I finally felt a bit relieved.
Back to Riding
Now that is naturally very pleasant, but villages mean that I can do nothing on the road except sleep during my journey. And if you still want to travel through beautiful Mexico on a moped, then you can't just stick to a thirty-kilometer-per-hour limit. I rode for three days through an endless landscape, and realized that my adventure in the desert was starting to slide into the background. My focus was purely on survival.
Arm Land
Mexico is a remarkably poor country. It looks like Turkey. The people are poor. The roads are full of holes; the scenery is monotonous and bad. The population consists clearly of Indian types.
The clothing of the people is poor. Some people have holes in their pants. The houses are built in a long row. De kleding is arm. (Clothing is poor). In the desert, you find stretched-out flat land, almost always containing a small piece of soil with some corn, water, and rice, and a few small huts where people live from their fuel and cattle. They burn dried cacti or dry wood.
Transportation is done by buses; old vehicles that look like they could break down at any moment. Every time the bus rattles over the bumpy roads, a huge cloud of dust rises behind it. The open engine compartments, with a loose cover held down by thorns, look like they've been custom-made for the latest versions of the American "glamour" magazines.
Yet, despite the lack of care that characterizes the population, there is an incredibly friendly atmosphere that makes one feel instantly welcome. It is rare to find someone who doesn't smile or greet you warmly. In the evening, the villages come alive with music and children playing in the streets, creating a sense of "cosiness" (gezelligheid) that is completely foreign to our Dutch way of life. The poverty is forgotten in the warmth of human connection, which sometimes works miracles.
Hospitality
I remember very vividly an event that happened to me. It was my habit to look for a place to put my tent in the afternoon, in the villages or on pieces of land where the population (often small villages) gave me permission.
They immediately invited me to join them. With a friendly gesture, a woman offered me a plate containing a piece of chicken, beans, and rice. It looked delicious, and because I had eaten very little in the desert, I accepted it gratefully.
The fat lady, who formed the center of the family, nodded kindly at me to eat; bystanders, beggars, and anyone who walked past received a share from her bounty. It was a truly wonderful experience.
When it was over and we had eaten enough, I packed my things, thanked them in the few Spanish words I managed to scrape together, and said goodbye. Later that day, I saw the family riding by in an old car. They honked and waved until they were out of sight.
The people are poor. But in a certain sense, they are rich. And when I look back on my trip...
Summary of the Bike
There are factories that make mopeds, but they are not very successful, although the land at the end of the modern agricultural areas is full of them. I was riding with my red BATAVUS BILONET G 50 SPORT, and it was a top product from modern industry, standing out sharply against the background of a poor Mexican village.
But that didn't matter. A man approached me who spoke English and said he was from the local municipality. He told me that I had to stop taking photos of everything. There was a bad light on Mexico, he said, if I only took pictures of the old, broken buildings.
IJMS 2026: 'The Lover'
[This essay was delivered at the 2026 IJMS Conference in Shelton WA]
I had the realization just last week that I think of my motorcycle in the same way I think of a lover. Not as a sex partner, though we'll get to that later, but as someone or something I yearn for and fantasize about; an object of desire. It was one of those 4am wide awake moments when that thought appeared, and I had to write it down, because I needed a keynote speech, and after 20 years of writing about the world of motorcycles, the scope of possible subjects was overwhelming. But there it was, handed to me in a dream.
You know the feeling: I wanted nothing more than to be on a motorcycle, to experience that landscape in the way that's only possible on a bike. And I reflected in that moment that, just as with a best friend or lover, your motorcycle is the one you want to do things with. It's your ideal companion for adventure. I wanted that adventure, and was jonesing for a bike, and observed myself acting like I was missing my sweetheart. Which is an absurd thing to say in an academic conference, yet here we all are, and I know every one of you knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Sadly, Bill betrayed me. I believe the academic term is "cock-blocked". I think he's buying it for himself! Motherfucker stole my Italian beauty. But I forgive him; it would have been a geographically inconvenient affair.
The man who got me into motorbikes, the one who infected me with the bug and really made me fall in love with everything two wheels, was Jim Gilman, who in one generous afternoon laid the foundation for the rest of my life, and led to me being here. I met Jim in the 1980s anarchist punk scene in San Francisco, at Bound Together Books, which is still there by the way. There were a lot of motorcyclists in that scene, like Lee the speedfreak, who put hardtails on a string of 1960s Triumphs, claiming he could outrun and out-handle any cop, sliding around corners with panache like a flat tracker.
In my youthful naiveté I thought anarchism was the natural habit of bikers, that every motorcyclist must hate cops and stupid laws like I did. That was before I read Hunter S. Thompson's Hells Angels, and before I went to Sturgis. Anyway, Jim Gilman was a journeyman printer, and hauled a surplus Multilith 2000 into my mother's garage in the Sunset District. We printed political posters and band flyers and books of poetry by Peter Plate, the original slam poet, who liked to perform his readings while naked. He had terrific delivery, a great body and an impressive penis, so why not? Peter Plate didn't ride, but Jim Gilman did: he’d unearthed an old Earles fork BMW R50 from under a staircase, with its original paint turned matte and the pinstripes all gone, and the big Denfield dualseat ripped. In other words, the perfect anarchist motorbike. I'd only ever ridden my little Honda Express before University, but Jim was kind enough to let me try his BMW one afternoon. I rode through Golden Gate Park out to the Great Highway and Ocean Beach, loving the smell of the sea and the rockle-tockle feel of the old Beemer, and was gone for over 30 minutes, while he stood in the street worrying. But I had the time of my life, and it changed my life forever. Two things to remember there: letting a newbie try your cool motorcycle will probably change their life. And if you let me try your bike, I'll be gone a while. I mean, if you had the hots for someone else's lover and they let you have a go, would you rush it? No you would not.
Or even, given the soundtrack to our interior movie, we are living a song, continuously creating as we ride, a song moving through a landscape. And while I’m recalling my own song right now, you are invariably picturing yours. The sound of your particular motor, with its own mix of cylinders and revs, accompanied by your exhaust note, perhaps mixed with intake noise if you ride vintage, like me. You may have an aftermarket exhaust, which reminds us that the motorcycle can be tuned. And if it's tuneable, it must be an instrument, ergo it makes a song.
And while others hear snatches of your tune, the only person who hears it all is you, and maybe your pillion. (Did you see Pillion the movie? Whooeee). Perhaps that's why I enjoy carrying a passenger so much, to share that magic experience, that song, and the seduction of moving through a landscape on a fair day, the way the whole scene washes past and through you, the way we digest it with our eyes and ears and breath and skin, absorbing the whole of it, all that air and vision and sound. That’s what I miss when I'm not on a bike, even when I was a young tearaway possessed by going faster; it was always the landscape, the vista, and swallowing the world whole like a hungry whale, a filter feeder, taking it all in, wide fucking open.
Most of what we swallow passes through but the best of it sticks and becomes memory, and that feeds us, and heals us. Feeds our souls. Experience that a few times and it leads to years of habit, and obsession, because there is no experience like it available to us humans. It is the most connected we can feel to a machine.
We don't talk much about intimacy with machines, unless we're selling lifesize dolls, but we probably should; they occupy such a huge part of our lives. Most machines - despite sophisticated user interface design - are utter failures as regards intimacy. I've often said the motorcycle is the second most intimate machine humanity has invented. The first is the vibrator. But, do we fall in love with our vibrators? Do we collect vibrators to the point of exasperation of our partners, and peril to our bank accounts? Do we change our leisure time orientation and our housing choices for our love of vibrators? Do we build museums, and write books about vibrator subcultures? No, we do not (ok, there are a few). But we do all of those things for motorcycles. And that's profound.
[As an aside, in 2017 we published the first-ever study of women's orgasms on motorcycles, called The Sex Machine. Someone please follow up on this research.]
So digging in a on (to quote Melissa Holbrook Pierson) 'what it is about motorcycles', and why I think motorcycles feel like lovers. We know the answer, and like love, it's complicated. Partly it's that motorcycles are the only machines in general use that become an extension of our bodies. That creates an amazing bond over time, and is why the French call motorcyclists Centaurs: when we ride we become half-person, half-bike. The emotional component is harder to define, but I think it is fundamentally connected with vulnerability. For example, when new writers want to submit an article for The Vintagent, I ask them for two things: take chances, and be vulnerable. Why? Because what's expected is boring, and because a writer's vulnerability is the exact point of connection with a reader. I think the same applies to motorcycles, because they are the most vulnerable of experiences: a vehicle inherently unstable unless in motion, offering no protection for a rider, who is totally exposed to the elements and to other kinds of vehicles that will kill you without remorse. Cars are designed to reduce sensation, so you don't hear noise, don't smell the trees, don't feel the weather, and require ever less effort. Motorcycles are the opposite; as they make you so vulnerable, they force you to amplify your senses, and feel the world as a matter of survival that is conversely extremely pleasurable. Danger is an inherent part of the experience, and that's OK.
That vulnerability is what leads to intimacy. And intimacy leads naturally to love. And for the geekiest among us, love leads to scholarship.
My particular kink is really old motorcycles. Because they add whole other layers to the experience, like a sense of responsibility for the machine, pride when it all works as it should, and an inexplicable feeling that I am riding the one of the most beautiful industrial design objects ever made. When vintage motorcycles got really expensive after the Guggenheim's Art of the Motorcycle exhibit in 1998, I used to defend the price of a Brough Superior SS100 saying, 'well, you can't ride a Rembrandt.' But apparently you can. Except in our case the artist is Edward Turner, or Fabio Taglioni, or Massimo Tamburini, who should also be celebrated for their genius. It's for all that, the mix of emotion and vulnerability and excitement and responsibility and focus and beauty, that makes motorcycles change where we live, and empty our bank accounts, and find new friends, and sometimes break our hearts. Just like a lover.
The Mysterious Modernist - Carlo Mollino
“Everything is Permitted” - Carlo Mollino
Getting a handle on Carlo Mollino’s life and work defies easy summary, as he did so much, so well, in so many diverse fields, with the only Venn overlap being Mollino himself at the center of it all. His only nod towards having a proper business was a small brass plaque outside his father’s engineering firm, where he kept a desk most of his life. I’ve come to think of Carlo Mollino as an aristocratic genius vampire, or maybe just Italian Batman, with a public life of a wealthy bon vivant who saw art in speed and machinery (naturally, growing up in the heyday of Futurism), excelled in every field he chose, yet kept enormous secrets, especially his ‘Batcave’ garconnieres, where no-one was admitted but a string of Cat Women whom he photographed seminude, in costumes he collected; bridal dresses, sexy lingerie, and even a Paco Rabanne metal-disc shift.
Mollino graduated from Regio Scuola Superiore di Architettura in 1931 while working at his father’s busy civil engineering firm. He interned for Erich Mendelsohn in Berlin, and studied art history for six months in Ghent. By this time his virtuosity as a draftsman was recognized, as well as his uncanny ability to draw simultaneously with both hands – on different drawings. A man in league with the Devil. During the war years, Mollino, who never expressed a political opinion nor participated in the war effort, spent his time developing the first modern book on skiing technique (Introduzione al Discesismo, finally published 1950) which he wrote, illustrated, and photographed in the days before ski lifts.
Mollino also finished a book on photography he’d begun in 1934, called ‘Il Messaggio Della Camera Oscuro’; a message from the dark room. Mollino photographed intensively all his life, at first his architecture and interiors, in Surrealist setups with friends, and of skiers. After 1950, he turned exclusively to photographing women, and from 1962 until his death in 1973, shot only Polaroids of Turinese streetwalkers in his final apartment, which he never slept in. These 1500 unique works are pure Carlo; erotic of course, but strangely majestic, and distinctively staged within his peculiar interior design. If published in Vogue, these photos would have been the equal of Helmut Newton or Stephen Miesel, but Mollino showed them to no-one, and was decades ahead of that curve.
Because of Carlo’s disinterest in money, his father Eugenio, proud of the 300 structures he’d built around Turin, called his only son a ‘feckless good-for-nothing’. Yet who remembers a single building from the upstanding Eugenio? The memorable ones are usually burned at the stake. Carlo was not sacrificed, but did upset a few people, and certainly caused head scratching. It’s no wonder his greatest oeuvre, the one discipline he pursued consistently his whole adult life - his photography – he kept hidden until his death, for others to discover, and be scandalized by. Today Mollino is remembered for his photos as much as for his magnificent furniture and architecture. He is barely remembered for his car, and not at all for his bus.
Furniture
Nube d’Argento (1954)
Sports Car Fever
DaMolNar Bisiluro (1955)
The Record Breaker
For Carlo Mollino's fascinating engagement with a Wall of Death, read here.
Lost in the Supermarket
Like birds, whales, and my fellow gringos, I fly south for a dose of vitamin D in Winter, down to San Jose del Cabo, the geological tip of California and the traditional finish line of Baja desert racing. I’m not usually a big-box shopper, but stocking up for a week’s supplies means hitting La Comer, the retail chain that sells everything - including motorcycles. Unless you’ve been south of the border, you’ve likely never heard of an Italika; they’re ‘hecho en Mexico’ and the country's largest producer (ok, monopoly), with about 400,000 units sold last year (in 2016: Italika sales for 2025 were 1.7M). Italika originally used Korean-sourced engines, but make their own design now; their cruisers, sportbikes, scooters, dirt bikes and quads mostly employ the same 150cc four-stroke single-cylinder engine, but their ADV- and sportbike-styled machine use 250ccs – woo! Most importantly, they’re cheap; around a $Grand for any variety, and double that for the big ones. They’re parked right by the checkout line at Mega, eclipsing the candy bars for my impulse-purchase attention. Even Suzie Heartbreak thinks we should buy one!
$999: a new Italika ‘Trabajo’ DT150 Clásica
$369.95: 1967 price for a Wards Riverside 125
37,000: Montgomery Ward employees laid off in 2000
[This column was originally published in Cycle World in June of 2017]
The Dream of Speed: Streamline Moderne Motos
I was recently commissioned to write an article for Mecum Auctions’ monthly magazine about John Goldman’s remarkable collection of Italian masterpieces, which included his extraordinary 1939 Miller-Balsamo 200 Carenata. I’d first seen Goldman’s Carenata when it won Best of Show at 2023 The Quail Motorcycle Gathering, but had previously encountered another Carenata (one of perhaps 4 in existence) at the 2018 Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este. Goldman, a San Francisco architect, is especially fond of Streamline Moderne design, a passion that opens a fascinating window onto one of the twentieth century’s most influential aesthetic movements.
It's an Industry Thing
Republished from Paul d'Orléans' 'Wandering Eye' column in Cycle World
[Note: this column was written in 2017, and while the situation hasn't changed much in the USA, motorcycle sales in Europe are actually on the increase, and the same is true in India. The rest of the world carries on as always, buying small utility machines (based on the Honda C110) in their millions, although in China, one of the biggest markets in the world, the ubiquitous small motorcycles are almost exclusively electric. I republish this mostly for my thoughts on design, which remain consisistent - ed.]
Motorcycle sales have been on a downward slope for a generation now. Has the world changed, or has the industry changed - or, even, have bikes themselves reached a stage of maturity? The internal-combustion motorcycle seems to have reached a point of diminishing returns technologically, as even a small capacity machine is capable of double any speed limit, with good suspension and brakes. Electric motorcycles are different; they face big hurdles compared to an internal combustion bike, with issues around riding range and battery size. They can be made wicked fast but not for long.
By the numbers:
149 custom builders featured in Gestalten's The Ride (2013) and The Ride: 2nd Gear (2015)
1,923 Harley-Davidson XLCRs cafe racers built in 1977-78, and considered a failure
800 Ducati 900SSs built in 1975-76, which saved the company
No Longer Unique: a Pair of Perreaux
By Francois-Marie Dumas, Jean-Pierre Kreder, Pierre Jobard: with a forward by Paul d'Orléans
The oldest vehicle exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum's 'Art of the Motorcycle' was presented as built in 1871: the Perreaux steam velocipede, built by Louis-Guillaume Perreaux. Well, 1871-ish: the original Perreaux was indeed built in 1871, but the machine loaned for the exhibit (by the Musée de l’Île-de-France at the Château de Sceaux near Paris) was likely a second-generation version, rebuilt c.1874, after the original model exploded the tubing from the boiler, which was not strong enough to withstand the steam pressure. Historians of Perreaux's remarkable creation suggest this existing machine was revised, using various improvements Perreaux had patented in 1872, '73, and '74, finishing its current state. Whether the original chassis was re-used I don't know: if the original pedal-cycle on which the steam engine is mounted (typically credited to Michaux, but apparently not a Michaux cycle) is the same as the 1871 prototype, then perhaps 1871 is still an appropriate date? In any case, Perreaux then turned to building a tricycle version using the same type of motor, but the only survivor of his motorized inventions is the machine we see today.
The story of the Perreaux's explosive history wasn't told in the Guggenheim catalog, because it wasn't known: there's been a lot of research around this motorcycle over the past 28 years, including a whole book published on Perreaux, by Claude Reynaud. So, let's say the remarkable Perreaux seen at the Guggenheim was built ca.1873, very early indeed in the history of motorcycles. The only extant motorcycle claimed to be older than the Perreaux is Sylvester H. Roper's steam velocipede, built ca.1867 in Boston, and on display for many years in the Smithsonian Museum. The only reason the Roper wasn't included in the Guggenheim exhibit was the substantial bond required by the Smithsonian to loan it: $1Million, which was a lot of money for a motorcycle in 1998, and in fact represented a significant percentage of the exhibit's entire budget. So, the curators said 'thanks but no thanks, we know of one almost as old, in France...' There is some disagreement still over what machine is older: while the Roper was indeed built before the Perreaux, Sylvester H. Roper didn't patent this invention, as he did with his revolving shotgun and other devices, while Louis-Guilllame Perreaux patented many versions of his 'improved velocipedes', apparently intending to mass-produce them, though Francois-Marie Dumas notes the Perreaux is unstable to the point of being unrideable, and was likely demonstrated without a rider, using a horse ring with a pivoting rod fixed in the center.
THE PERREAUX STEAM VELOCIPEDE IS NO LONGER UNIQUE!
Text and photos by Jean-Pierre Kreder and Pierre Jobard
Indeed, a team of enthusiasts gave it a twin brother and here is the story of the construction of the replica of this machine, considered among the first motorized two-wheelers of all time, therefore the ancestor of the motorcycle.
In 1868, Louis-Guillaume Perreaux, a Gadzarts (Arts et Métiers engineering school) graduate, filed a patent for a "high-speed" velocipede. This design was refined six times [several versions were imagined: first with a human-powered inertial drive, then an in-wheel electric motor, and finally a steam - ed], culminating in 1871 with a steam-powered velocipede, the sole surviving example of which has been housed at the Musée du Domaine de Sceaux (Hauts-de-Seine) since 1964. Contemporary accounts attest to the machine's actual operation. While largely forgotten until the 1990s, Claude Reynaud, a renowned historian of early two-wheeled vehicles, rediscovered the invention and published a book on it. The velocipede was then brought back into the public eye and exhibited on several occasions in increasingly prestigious venues, such as the Guggenheim and Rétromobile exhibits [the Perreaux was part of a remarkable display - curated by Francois-Marie Dumas - at the 2017 Rétromobile in Paris - ed.].
The challenge of creating a replica
Passionate about restoring vintage motorcycles, Jean-Pierre Kreder embarked on an incredible challenge at the end of 2019: building a replica of Louis-Guillaume Perreaux's steam velocipede. Given the scale of the project, a team effort was essential, and he enlisted the help of two school friends, Philippe Kauffmann and Pierre Jobard (who had already begun exploring the idea), along with Jean-Luc Molle, a friend of Philippe Kauffmann. Other skilled individuals joined the team as they encountered difficulties.
Studying before getting your hands dirty
Research conducted online and with specialists in the field (historians, patents, the state of art and techniques in the 19th century, the history of the velocipede, etc.) has created a documentary resource that, incidentally, has allowed us to correct certain historical errors concerning both Pierre Michaux [inventor of the pedal-cycle - ed.] and Louis-Guillaume Perreaux's invention. Contacts with the Sceaux Museum intensified with the arrival in 2020 of a new curator who was enthusiastic about the project and granted access to the museum's storage facilities to compile a photographic record and carry out all necessary dimensional measurements. In exchange, plans and operating procedures will be provided to the museum to enrich the velocipede's historic record. A phase of reverse engineering then began, involving technical exchanges, the development of hypotheses to be substantiated, but also uncertainties, since until now we have only known the visible parts of the machine!
Taking advantage of the COVID-19 lockdown, Philippe Kauffmann created a 3D CAD model of the velocipede and the set of plans necessary for building the replica. Regarding the "invisible" parts, these questions were answered during the dismantling of the original velocipede by museum-certified experts in the summer of 2023, as part of a mechanical restoration, when the Perreaux was to be included in the "Free Wheels" exhibition for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Physical participation in the dismantling process by these enthusiast artisans allowed for the accurate creation of plans for all the sub-assemblies comprising the steam generation system.
The achievement
From the outset of this project, it was decided to create two replicas of the velocipede: the first was sponsored by Claude Reynaud, the 'discoverer' of the velocipede in the Sceaux Museum, and owner of a fabulous cycling and motorcycle museum (Château de Bosc in the Gard region). Intended to be a static display, this first replica was not built to be functional, and could be finished more quickly. The objective of a second replica is to demonstrate the proper dynamic operation of the entire assembly, and to validate its technical specifications. The design and construction of this first replica required more than six years of work (2020-2026).
The manufacture of replica velocipedes is broken down into three sub-assemblies: the frame, the engine, and the steam generator. These components require a wide variety of techniques, and here is an overview.
Conventional machining (turning, milling, drilling) of mechanical parts and finishing of cast parts. Carried out in the workshops of Jean-Pierre Kreder (all parts) and Jean-Luc Molle (engines).
Forge and metalwork (various supports, suspension springs, wheel rims). Entrusted to Jean-Pierre Kreder for the supports, suspension springs and wheel rims (determining the optimum tightening).
Bronze casting (structural elements, handlebars, and various other parts). The models were 3D printed in PLA resin in the Auvergne region by Philippe Kauffmann. Models with non-standard dimensions required the investment in a specialized 3D printer. Smaller parts were sand-molded and cast in Jean-Pierre Kreder's workshop, which was equipped with a propane furnace (1100°C) and a crucible. The large and complex frame components of the velocipede were produced in partnership with the Marie Curie vocational high school in Nogent-sur-Oise, which, among other things, offers BTS (Advanced Vocational Training Certificate) programs in foundry work. The constraints of the curriculum meant that the project required two academic years for completion.
Metalwork, welding and piping of the sub-assemblies of the thermodynamic unit and the saddle were also carried out in the workshop of Jean-Pierre Kreder, assisted by Pierre Jobard, using hand tools and machines such as rolling machines, bending machines, drills, milling machines, and homemade stamping tools. The sub-assemblies were brazed with tin-lead or silver, using an oxyacetylene torch.
Carpentry (wheel rims, boiler insulation). The wheel rims are made from oak segments assembled and held together by metal spokes and hoops. The boiler insulation consists of a brass sheet and fir slats enclosing a layer of ceramic fabric—admittedly anachronistic, but a significant improvement over the fibrous insulation used in the 19th century.
Saddlery and textile work (decorative elements of the boiler) are also noteworthy. The saddle consists of horsehair stuffing and a leather covering, fixed to a formed sheet steel frame. The boiler's decorative elements are hand-painted on dyed woolen canvas. Twisted cords enhance the assembly of the various panels.
Finally, the surface finishes (polishing, sandblasting, painting).
After all that, what still remained was to assemble all the disparate pieces and build the first replica, a phase that was completed in early 2026. An initial dry run assembly allowed for the correction of inevitable errors, particularly those due to inaccuracies in the photographic measurements, and for the sizing and positioning of certain supports and pipes. The final assembly has just been completed; the velocipede is ready to be delivered to its commissioner, Claude Reynaud, after it is displayed at the Coupes Moto Légende vintage races in Dijon on May 23/24, 2026.
Summary of the operation: approximately 6500 hours of work, plus 1500 hours of 3D printing, 2500 emails and/or phone calls…
And soon, the first test in over 156 years of a Guillaume-Perreaux
Combustion and heating tests on the steam model are continuing with the construction of the functional onboard steam generator. Next will come testing and assembly on the second replica. The presentation of a dynamic, functional replica is planned for 2027, 156 years after the first presentation of the original… This adventure, which remains primarily technical and human, has spanned six years, marked by numerous questions, successes, difficulties, and setbacks, but rich in relationships with many stakeholders. Stay tuned for the running videos!
A Ride from Toulouse...
[Originally posted on The Vintagent's original Blogspot account on June 12, 2011]
After so much talking about, thinking about, and writing about motorcycles, I think its time for a ride. Can we go for a ride now? Let's go for a ride.
Is Racing As Good as Sex?
By Doug Boughton
A while back, my teenage son asked if racing motorcycles was as good as sex. I thought a second and responded with that old adage; 'It's as much fun as you can have with your clothes on, but it lasts a lot longer.' *
- That depends on the race, or the partner! - Ed.
Unibus: the World's First Scooter
[This article originally appeared in the May 2024 issue of The Automobile magazine. It looks much better in print: order a copy!]
Picture a scooter. Any scooter, every scooter. Regardless of brand or era, they’re fundamentally the same, a genotype of unthreatening little motorcycles with three common elements: enclosed bodywork, a flat footwell, and small wheels. They are ubiquitous and popular around the world, because, in our murky subconscious, sitting in a chair does not conjure the psychic potency of straddling a horse. Dedicated motorcyclists understand that a scooter’s harmless countenance is an illusion, that ponies are the cruelest of mounts, and that we are all of us doomed knights on an unforgiving road. It’s understandable that most people find it daunting, or inconvenient, to gear up and saddle up for a coffee on a motorbike, so the wide world is enamored with the scooter for its ease and simplicity; especially women. More on that anon.
Harold Dalton Boultbee, born 1886 in Eaton, Yorks, graduated from Cambridge in 1908, when young men of a certain economic strata were infected with aero fever. The Wright brothers had proved a kite launched by rubber band and boosted by an anemic motor could sustain flight for a few hundred yards, and changed the world forever. That the litigious Wrights proved more an impediment than a boon to the development of flight was immaterial, as the point was made it could be done, albeit better, and soon was. Boultbee was one of those eager to improve the breed, and in 1909 made his point by patenting the first design for retractable landing gear: it was his first association with wheels on vehicles, but not his last.
Harold Boultbee’s design for Gloster was unique, and caused a stir when the Unibus was revealed in the Summer of 1920. Dubbed ‘the car on two wheels’, the Unibus was aimed at a genteel clientele, and was priced accordingly at 95 guineas: the same price as the new Brough Superior superbike, and a year’s wages for most working folk. What did one get for such extravagance? Among the most sophisticated two-wheelers on the road, in specification if not in sheer speed (George Brough having comprehensively claimed that space). Technically that meant a simple two-stroke with two-speed gearbox built ‘on automotive principles’, with full springing front and rear plus total bodywork enclosure. The frame was also built on automotive practice, being a sheet steel ‘tub’ with drilled-out horizontal runners and simple cross-panels forming boxes that extended upwards for the steering stem and seat post. The pressed-aluminum bodywork enclosed the whole of the engine, fuel/oil tanks, and mudguard up front, and the flat seat (with copious enclosed cubbys beneath for tools and storage) and rear mudguard combo.
The motive power was a 2½ h.p. (269cc) two-stroke single-cylinder engine set across the frame, which drove through a single dry-plate clutch to a two-speed constant-mesh gearbox set across the frame. The gearbox was connected to a prop-shaft ending at the rear wheel, and used an enclosed worm drive. Perhaps the most unorthodox feature of the Unibus was its dual braking system, with two internal-expanding brakes, one controlled by hand and the other by foot, both acting inside the rear drive housing, rather than the wheel hubs, as later became the norm. Unusually for a motorcycle of the period, the rear wheel was fully sprung, using quarter-elliptic springs attached to a bracket on the worm drive housing, with parallel pivoting arms. The forks were also leaf-sprung, with short fork legs pivoting from the lower steering stem, and the ends of the quarter-eliptics attached to the steering stem and a leading link ahead of the front axle, meaning the fork’s movement was purely fore-and-aft. This was terrible physics, as the wheelbase changed with fork flexure, but in practice (as on the later Neander using the same principles) is surprisingly comfortable and does not spoil handling. Stability was enhanced by using 16” diameter wheels, made of split steel discs (like a Vespa), providing a far more secure ride than a small-wheel machine, and echoing modern practice for more powerful scooters.
There’s another story to tell around the Unibus and the invention of the scooter: the social history of women on wheels. Two wheelers played an important role in societal changes for women, as the bicycle rolled over Victorian ideas about suitable clothing for women, and their freedom of movement. The Ordinary bicycles’ extraordinary popularity from the 1870s onward had exposed bodices and hoop skirts as simply impossible for a modern lady on the move. In the late 1880s, the smell of freedom wafted around the new Safety bicycle, the original Suffragette conveyance, and in the late 1890s, at the dawn of the motor industry, advertisements featured women riding motorized trikes. By the ‘Noughts and ‘Teens, motorcycles designed especially for women – the Ladies Models - appeared in the catalogues of most British motorcycle manufacturers. The ‘Teens were a heady time for women’s suffrage movement, women were on the verge of gaining the vote in the UK and USA, and the motorcycle industry was eager to exploit what seemed an imminent new market as women took to the wheel.
Sonia Delaunay and the Invention of the 'Art Car'
[Originally published in The Automobile magazine. For a copy of the Sept. 2024 issue, click here]
The need for Art is surely older than the need for Speed, and painted evidence of nomadic artisans afoot chasing down game 30,000 years ago remains as testament to a hard life without wheels. Or perhaps, the possibility of art was available, while speed per se had to wait for the taming of the horse. When the wheel finally arrived, it was immediately decorated; carts and chariots became a canvas for expression – personal or divine. When the automobile appeared, the tradition of horse-drawn coachbuilding carried on, because looking smart in your wheels has always been a priority. Some of that work is exquisite, but is it art? That’s a sticking point, as battle lines were drawn in 19th Century French académies between the ‘Fine Art’ versus ‘Craft’ and ‘Decoration’. That line is finally dissolving, as artists expand their oeuvre from painting or sculpture to include design. For example, the fake Donald Judd dining set crassly shown off by Kim Kardashian, that earned her a lawsuit from Judd’s estate. Since everyone is an artist these days (per Marcel Duchamp), how do we differentiate between art hobbyists decorating their cars, and famous artists being commissioned to decorate cars?
There is a difference between ‘art cars’ and Art Cars. One is a thriving and popular form of expression using vehicles as an artistic medium, practiced the world over since the origin of the wheel. The umbrella term ‘art car’ thus includes many important genres, like the ‘custom culture’ car scene originating in the late 1940s, the historically deep Low Rider scene in the USA, the insane Indonesian Vespa cult (where through metal mitosis scooters are transformed into 20- or 30-wheeled living platforms), as well as the psychedelic vehicles emerging in the 1960s. Hippie cars lingered and became the so-called ‘art car’ movement, as documented by Harrod Blank in the 1992 film Wild Wheels, and the 1997 book ‘Art Cars’ (Ineri Foundation). Blank co-founded the Art Car Fest, with art car parades became a thing in the US; in India there’s the Cartist festival, with extravagant lorries assaulting all the senses, all at once. There’s even an Art Car Manifesto (1997, James Haritas), a must for any popular art movement: “The art car is… transforming the automobile into a potent new personal symbol.” In sum, the art car movement is enormous, popular, and global. But I’m not addressing any of those scenes here, which in retrospect make the Art Car movement look very small, and very elitist. Which it is.
But the first BMW Art Car of 1975 was not the origin of the Art Car genre: that was created 50 years earlier, in Paris. How Sonia Delaunay was tailor-made for the invention of the Art Car requires an understanding of her significance as a pioneering artist of multiple mediums. That she oversaw not one but three Art Cars over a 50-year span makes her a titan of the movement. Her work is so strongly identified with Art Cars that cars by other designers have been mis-attributed as Delaunays…especially when the automobile brand is Delaunay, but we’ll get to that.
Sonia Delaunay was born Sofia Stern in Odessa (1885) to poor Jewish parents, and was orphaned by age 5. She was adopted by her wealthy and childless uncle Henri Terk of St. Petersburg, and re-dubbed Sonia Terk. At 16, a teacher noted her artistic brilliance, so she was sent to the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, Germany. In 1905 she convinced her adoptive parents to allow her to study at the Académie de La Palette in Paris for a summer. Paris was the center of the artistic universe, and she begged to return. The Terks wanted her in Russia and married, at which point she could take her inheritance; two apartment buildings in St. Petersburg providing ample income.
Maison Sonia boomed as a frenetic postwar spirit spilled over into modern art, design and decoration. In 1924/5, journalist Maurice Kaplan begged her friend Sonia Delaunay to apply one of her abstract designs to Kaplan’s charming new runabout, an Ariés 5-8hp Torpedo 3-seat boat-tail convertible. Sonia provided a pattern of rectangular color blocks in green, gray and black, in the mode of her copyrighted Simultané fabrics. Sonia was at this time financial partners with Jacques Heim, who invested 500,000 francs to establish Ateliers Simultanés - a nod to the Delaunays’ art theory - as a storefront studio, with Sonia-designed fabrics, knitwear, furs, handbags, scarves, and shoes, all of which were a runaway success. Her bold abstract patterns were particularly suited to the fashions of the 1920s, as their lack of waistline and minimal tailoring were suitable for any body size or shape, a concept familiar today to fans of Comme des Garçons or Marni. Sonia even produced special clothing for automobilists and their passengers, and surviving examples include a set of four embroidered cloche hats for the daughters of her friends Jean and Annette Coutrot.
The Art Car as an idea
There was a contemporary context for Sonia’s Art Car in the aesthetic tumult of Art Deco Paris: the idea of an automobile painted with abstract patterns was already afoot. In 1923 the luxury automobile brand Delaunay-Belleville, est. 1904 by Louis Delaunay (whose unrelated surname sowed much confusion later), commissioned five well-known graphic artists to paint sample color schemes for cars, as an ‘essai sur les differentes manières de les carrosier’. The artists included Georges Lepape, Eduardo Garcia Benito, René Lelong, Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann, and Charles Martin. The resulting catalogue is exquisite and beautifully printed by Draeger in Paris (still in business). The proposed paint schemes are exuberantly Art Deco, and remarkably similar to each other, all using abstract geometric patterns in multiple colors. To my knowledge no customer ever actually ordered such a car, but even as an ‘ideal’ concept (so popular in the 20th Century motor magazines), such color applications were perhaps too flambouyant for the average wealthy automobilist.
The 1920s were great financially for the Delaunays, but not the ‘30s. When the Crash hit Europe in 1930, the high-end fashion business dried up. The decision to close Atelier Simultanés meant she had to lay off 30 workers, and give up their apartment. Once again they were poor artists relying on Sonia’s ingenuity to survive, but she called the mid-to-late 1930s her ‘freedom years,’ without the pressure of a fashion line, storefront, or employees. She still designed fabrics for Jacques Heim, took on interior design and graphic art jobs, and painted. For the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques, she and Robert both got commissions for enormous murals, which was a shot in the arm.
In an echo of the 1924 Delaunay-Belleville Art Car pamphlet, in early 1967 Sonia Delaunay was chosen for an exhibition of artist-decorated cars entitled 'Cinq voitures personnalisées par cinq artistes contemporains' (five cars personalized by five contemporary artists), organized by the arts and culture magazine Réalités. The cars were to be auctioned off as a fundraiser for the Fondation pour la recherche médicale. Four of the artists were pioneers of the Op Art style emerging in the 1960s, including Victory Vasarély, whose bulging dot paintings were the dilated-pupil grandchildren of the Delaunays’ discs. But without Sonia’s decades of design work under his belt, Vasarely’s strips of reflective mylar dots randomly applied to an Opel Kadett are simply - there is no other word for it - awful. The artist Arman (Armand Fernandez) covered a 1961 Renault 4L with 819 decals of…a Renault 4L. "The 819 Renaults lined up on the body symbolise the theme of accumulation.” Indeed. Carlos Cruz-Diez transformed a Daf 33 into a ‘Physichromobile’, using carefully measured vertical lines of different colors on both the bodywork and windows, arranged to produce visual after-effects in the viewer’s eyes. Yaacov Agam’s work was simplier, with his Simca 1000 featuring large, simple blocks of color, and was the most appealing of the younger artists’ work for the auction. Yet it was the 81-year old Sonia Delaunay who stole the show, and created an enduring work of art – her second Art Car.
In 1973, Sonia – nearly 90 - was again invited to create a color scheme for a car, in this case a Bugatti T35, supplied to her as a 1:8 scale model by Jean-Paul Fontenelle. The model would be sold at auction to benefit the Bal des petits lits blancs, a children’s hospital charity, and had been organized by Artcurial and Hervé Poulain. The Bugatti T35 was an inspired choice as the perfect 1920s canvas for Sonia’s artwork, and her concept was arguably the best of her three Art Cars, with its colors arranged in bold, colorful roundels against blocks of color in blue, white, red, and green, very much in line with her graphic work over the previous 20 years. The model would have remained just that, a mock-up, had not the imaginative owner of an actual Bugatti T35, Marc Nicolosi, been inspired to make it real. Nicolosi asked his friend Hervé Poulain for permission from Sonia Delaunay to use the color scheme on his car. Her consent is preserved by the Nicolosi family in a letter of 3 October 1977: “I put one condition on this agreement, which is that the production be submitted to me before the words 'after Sonia Delaunay’ are added.” Marc’s son Baptiste Nicolosi continues the tale: “Sadly, my father did not paint the Bugatti in the 1970s, and Sonia died soon after (1979). At the beginning of the 1990s he still wanted to do the paint scheme, so he contacted the owner of the model, asking ‘can you loan me the model so that I copy the paint scheme?’ He said yes, but we could keep the paint scheme ‘only for five years’. We pushed it a little bit, like 6 or seven years, but in the end my father put it back to gray.”
Mecum Las Vegas 2026 Top 10
Mecum's annual motorcycle auction in Las Vegas is coming up January 27-31: have a look on their website, and bid baby bid! It's a great time to buy motorcycles. Here's what I want for Christmas, in no particular order:
1934 Matchless Silver Hawk V-4
1978 Honda CB125SNew in Box PAIR
1975 Norton VR880 Sprint Special Kenny Dreer
Go check out Mecum's website for many, many more cool bikes.
The Pirates of Thames Forts
By Kevin Day
My friend Kevin treated me to a trip out into the seaward end of the Thames estuary to see the WW2 forts. To get there, we traveled down to Kent, then crossed the bridge to the Isle of Sheppey, which is reminiscent of Orwell Bridge on our home turf. Once on Sheppey we soon found Queensferry dock and parked up. There were lots of screaming kids and their parents at the jetty. Surely, we aren’t going to be seven hours at sea with those little horrors? But luckily enough they are just waiting for the Jet Ferry to Southend, off for shopping or McDonalds or roller-skating or whatever you can do in Southend to please the kids on a Saturday morning. After all they’ve all gone our boat's owner, Martin Hurley arrives and gives us a brief briefing and I’m sure that he said the captain was his husband, but Martin doesn’t accompany us on this voyage. The captain is old - Captain Alan is his name - and the first mate leans over to talk to us; he’s a chunk of a man, a London/Essex type, although later he claims to be from Devon.
