Egg toppers, honey wagglers and other “food machines”

The results of the Feast Automata project include a honey waggler, an egg topper and the Knickerbocker Glorifier – a device that makes the ice cream all by itself.

Then there’s a candy floss maker driven by candle power, and The Great Journey, a wind up automaton that brews “and helps prepare tea”.

There’s a great joy to be found in these projects, which have been eight months in the making.

Visitors will be able to play with most of the products in Fortnum & Mason’s London Piccadilly store where 13 of 97 original designs have been taken forward.

Fortnum & Mason’s says its own design history includes “inventing the Scotch egg in the 1930s” and introducing Britain to Alvar Alto’s Scandinavian bentwood furniture in the early 1930s.

Feast Automata runs until the end of September after which Fortnum & Mason says it will continue to work with some of the students to help them “develop and sell their products”.