An early conjurer of unknown make, this type of automaton is often wrongly attributed to Jean Phalibois who started making automata only around 1860. The maker of singing bird boxes, Louis Rochat, is a more likely source. The same maker also produced a larger oriental version of this figure (one is in the Baud collection, and two are known in private collections), with the addition of an extra table that contained bellows for a pneumatically powered dancing doll and cams for alternating playing cards. The Chinese conjurer stands under a draped silk canopy, and resembles a conjurer in a theatre setting that Rochat is said to have made in 1829. The mechanism is unusual in being driven by a pinned brass barrel, rather than the more common set of wood cams.