RosenThe Rosen Association, Seattle

The house’s work

The Pieces

The house has made a great many things since 1911. Three of them have needed a license from the Turing Registry, and the house reports on each in the same way, whatever the license now says.

The Owl’s left eye, front elevation. A large engraving of one glass eye in its facial disc: a black pupil with the blades of the iris diaphragm just visible inside it, an iris drawn as dense radiating fibers with small crypts and rings, a highlight, a heavy upper lid and a ring of fine feathers radiating outward.
Atelier drawing 205, 2010The Owl’s left eye

The Rosen Owl

An owl, and a replica, made over eleven years to show what the house can do. Shown in the Salon on Thursday evenings, with its plaque and its certificate.

Turing Registry TR-10215 · Active

The dial of the Penfield Mk IV, front elevation. A round engraved dial with a knurled bezel. Forty-eight registers are grouped into six families: Ease, Attention, Warmth, Vigor, Gravity and Rest. The last four registers of Gravity are cross-hatched to mark the wellbeing threshold. Below the central knob is the Almanac window with the days of the week, and to the right a keyhole for the confirmation key. 123456781234567812345678123456781234567812345678 EASEATTENTIONWARMTHVIGORGRAVITYREST ROSEN · SEATTLE Penfield Mk IV MTWTFSS ALMANAC
Atelier drawing 226, 2022The Penfield Mk IV dial

Penfield Mk IV

A bedside instrument of forty-eight registers, made at the Penfield Works. Suspended pending a dosage audit; safe to use within the registers permitted.

Turing Registry TR-11215 · Suspended

A Nexus-6 left hand, palm toward the viewer. A workshop drawing of a mechanical left hand seen from the palm, so that the thumb is on the right: a palm plate, four fingers and a thumb, each finger made of three jointed segments with pinned knuckles. The last joint of the middle finger is drawn pulled out along a dashed axis. A B C D
Atelier drawing 219, 2020A Nexus-6 left hand

The Nexus line

Units for general labor off-world, recalled on 1 December 2024. Nine remain outstanding.

Turing Registry TR-09911 · Revoked

1913–1979

The heritage collection

Before the Penfield, the house made pieces that needed no license, because nothing in them decided anything: a clerk who writes the same four lines every month, a lark that waits for an answer, a greyhound that breathes in its sleep, a child who opens an umbrella before rain. Forty-four of them are kept at the House in working order, wound on a schedule kept by the restorers, and shown on any visit.

Most were made for the house itself, to prove a point among the makers or to keep them at the bench in lean years. A few were made for clients and bought back. Each has its certificate, and each is overhauled every seventh year like any keeper’s piece. The oldest, the Copyist, was finished in 1913; the youngest, the first Penfield tone cabinet, in 1979.

The Copyist, 1913
The Sleeping Hound, 1931
The Listener, 1971
All forty-four pieces

Commissions

The house no longer accepts commissions for figures of any kind, and has not since December 2024. It continues to accept commissions for clocks, singing birds and mechanical pieces that are not autonomous and do not resemble a person, at the discretion of the Master of the Atelier. Write to house@rosenassociation.org.