ABSTRACT
Trondheim had 7000 inhabitants and was a flourishing trading port for timber and copper, bringing in fortunes to a commercial upper class. The copy, in Michael Taussig ’s words, draws power from the original. ‘The model, if it works, gains through its sensual fidelity something of the power and the personality of that which it is a model’. Measuring 50 × 40 cm, the model consists of two parts, a threshing board and the mechanical machinery consisting of frame, cogwheels, and ‘arms’. In the eighteenth century, models came to form an ever more active part of collections, active in the sense that they performed work. Wooden models played an important part in mechanics, architecture, and other model fields. Some models are with us and can be seen and felt, but most are gone. The materiality of a fish could be rendered in wood; so could a threshing machine; and a wooden globe could represent the earth.
