Moggy mania at museum!
Self-filling bowl invention is among items at cartoon cats exhibition
Friday, 21st February — By Frankie Lister-Fell
William Heath Robinson’s self-filling bowl
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A SELF-FILLING milk bowl invention created by a famous Islington illustrator is going on display in an exhibition about cartoon cats.
William Heath Robinson was born into a family of artists in Finsbury Park in 1872 and trained at the Islington School of Art. A bench commemorating the artist was installed in Waterlow Park in 2017.
From April 5, two of his artworks, a replica of one of his most endearing contraptions and his sketchbook will be put on show at the Cats in Cartoons exhibition at the Cartoon Museum, Fitzrovia.
Museum director Joe Sullivan, a cat lover who grew up with a three-legged moggy called Yoda, told the Tribune: “We have a replica of his self-filling milk bowl called the Cream Pouring Machine. The idea is the cat sits on the wooden platform, which is a pressure pad, and the rise in pressure pushes milk up the jug and out of the spout into the bowl.
“He had a cat called Saturday Morning, which was his big inspiration.”
The exhibition will feature more than 100 cartoons and comics including some of the greatest cats to grace British comics, newspapers and magazines. The show will include works by Louis Wain, Axel Scheffler, Ronald Searle, Simon Tofield, Anthony Smith, Gemma Correll and Hunt Emerson, and feature favourite characters including Garfield and Bagpuss.
Mr Sullivan said: “Everyone loves cats – apart from the people that like dogs. You see cats everywhere in 2025: in the media, they’re in cartoon comics, internet videos and memes.
“They’re quite unique as animals as they’re so independent. Elements of their personality are so well-known that they can be lampooned to reflect humanity. Because they live alongside humans we end up projecting ourselves onto them and cats end up seeming like their owners.
“They’re very much masters of their own destiny which I think is what people love about them. They have identifiable characteristics.
“That’s why they’ve been such a great subject for cartoonists for hundreds of years. The idea of the fat cats got the cream, these popular businessmen, then down to Garfield who is lazy, they can be depicted in all of these different ways and people can understand these characteristics instantly just by looking at them.
“We couldn’t do an exhibition like this about donkeys, for example.”
His favourite piece in the show is by Ronald Searle, an influential post-war cartoonist, who did “massive cat artworks”.
The pieces are taken from the museum’s 5,500 collection of cartoons that span 300 years.
The exhibition will also explore the work Battersea Dogs and Cats Home does to protect and advocate for the welfare of cats, with interviews with staff taking visitors behind the scenes of the London cattery, which benefits more than 2,000 cats per year.
• Cats in Cartoons is at the Cartoon Museum, 63 Wells Street, W1A, from April 5-September 7. https://www.cartoonmuseum.org/
