← The Harry Craddock Cocktail Robot

2021 – 2025 · 588 photographs · one machine

The Story of the Build

It started as a joke taped to a coffee-maker-looking thing. It ended as a machine with a soul. Everything in between was photographed.

Chapter One · Spring 2021

The Keurig Bartender

A stock Bartesian arrives, pours a genuinely good cocktail, and gets a hand-lettered sign making fun of it. Then the screwdrivers come out.

The stock Bartesian on a counter with a hand-lettered sign reading Keurig Bartender
The sign says it all. A machine this good deserved better than looking like a coffee maker.
The Bartesian newly unboxed with its cocktail capsule boxes
Day one. Capsules, spirits, promise.
Five black-and-white Marilyn Monroe panels leaning against a wall, newly arrived
Set dressing, ahead of schedule. Marilyn arrives in five panels. Remember her — she comes back later with ears.
▶ Film · Opening it up. Pumps, tubing, boards. The pour system was proven — it stayed. Everything around it was about to change.
A Soviet 6E1N electron tube held up between fingers
The tubes arrive. Soviet 6E1N “magic eye” electron tubes, sourced from the other side of the world, decades old and still bright.

Chapter Two · Late Summer 2021

Copper

Sheet copper cut and rolled by hand, coils wound around glass, and the first tube glowing green on the bench.

Cut copper sheet pieces beside the machine's screen frame
Patterns first. Copper sheet, cut to fit this machine and no other.
A workbench covered in copper pieces, a drill and tools
The counter becomes a workshop.
▶ Film · First light. A magic-eye tube warms up on the bench.
Copper tubing coiled by hand around a glass reservoir
Wound by hand. Copper tube around glass — the machine’s signature curve.
▶ Film · The board that runs it, tested in the open before it disappeared into the base.

Chapter Three · Fall 2021

Harry Gets His Name

A laser burns Harry’s likeness into wood, the schematic is drawn on graph paper and then aged like a recovered document, and the copper takes its first patina.

▶ Film · The laser at work. Harry Craddock, burned into the grain — the mark that signs the machine to this day.
▶ Film · Aging the schematic. The hand-drawn wiring diagram gets the recovered-from-1929 treatment.
▶ Film · The speaker plaque, wood-burned with the legend.
A bank of glowing electron tubes, orange and warm
Warming up. The glow is the point.

Chapter Four · Winter 2021–22

First Pours

The epoxy bar top cures, the cart gets stocked, and the machine pours for people for the first time. The guest book opens.

▶ Film · The epoxy pour that sealed the bar top.
The finished machine on its cart with a stocked shelf of bottles
On its cart, stocked and ready.
▶ Film · A first pour under the blue light.
▶ Film · Ice in, machine on.
▶ Film · The guest book in use. Every pour gets written down.
A guest in a red dress beside the machine
Guests dressed for it. The machine has that effect.
The machine riding in the open trunk of a car
It travels. First trunk ride.
The machine outdoors on a folding table with a striped cloth
First outing. Anywhere with a plug is a bar.

Chapter Five · 2022

Upgrades & Character

The machine gets rebuilt, relabeled, road-cased — and somewhere in here, a film gets made. Harry himself turned up for it. So did the bunny ears.

The machine draped in yellow caution tape during an upgrade
Upgrade season. The tape was a joke. The rebuild wasn’t.
Cases of cocktail capsules stacked in the room
Provisions, by the case.
The Cocktail Robot label with QR code set under the tray glass
The label under the glass — with a QR code that plays the films.
Joe dressed as Harry Craddock in fedora and green goggles, with a friend in bunny ears
The film shoot. Harry himself turned up, goggles and all — and brought a friend.
A scene from the film shoot: bunny ears, trophies and magazines on the floor
Some scenes cannot be fully explained. That’s a story for a different time.
Joe smiling in a Harry Craddock Cocktail Robot ballcap
The artificer, in official team merchandise.
▶ Film · Sugar rim, steady hand, machine pour.
▶ Film · The road case, lined and lit. The robot gets a touring rig.

Chapter Six · 2022–23

The Speakeasy Years

The copper goes dark and honest, a brass plaque makes it official, and a whole room grows up around the machine — with more machines to keep it company.

The lounge room: leather chairs, red lighting, the cart bar
The room grew around it. Leather, tail-lights, low red light.
The machine years on, dark patina, with its brass plaque
Three years of patina. The brass plaque made it official.
A collection of copper barware on a shelf
Copper collects copper.
The jukebox panel with lit dot-matrix display beside the cocktail book
The jukebox panel. Another machine joined the band.
The machine at its post on the cart, bar stocked below
At its post. Bar stocked below, stories loaded above.
▶ Film · Pouring on the aged machine. Same recipes, deeper voice.

Chapter Seven · 2023–25

Still Evolving

Years in, it still pours, guests still arrive — some bring bunny ears — and the workshop around it keeps inventing.

▶ Film · Still pouring, years in.
A large tube ringed with rainbow LEDs
New tube experiments.
▶ Film · A cameo from the next invention. The chrome skull is the cradle of the Nanowave laser helmet — a device Joe built to regrow hair, inspired by Harry’s strong pours. That one gets a page of its own.
A guest in pink bunny ears facing the Marilyn Monroe wall art
Guests still arrive in bunny ears. It’s tradition now. The tradition is contagious…
The Marilyn wall art wearing glowing bunny ears
…which is exactly how Marilyn got hers.
A lit shelf of wine and spirits bottles
The bar keeps its stock.
▶ Film · The workshop keeps going. Turntable, VU meters, next ideas.

The end of the story is unwritten

The machine in these photographs is for sale.

Four years of work, one of one, fully working — and its next chapter belongs to whoever writes it.

Inquire about the machine Back to the showcase