The chariot was purchased by a private collector who took it home to New York. I take pleasure in knowing that it was built to last for at least a thousand years.

The dog, the rabbit and the hoop all feature in the painting, and take the place of the orrery.

The hoop is there to remind us not to jump through it, not to submit to someone else's control.

In practical terms the South Pointing Chariot was a simple direction finder. It could have been made to point in any direction - north, south, east or west.

The rabbit is significant in that the handle on the original South Pointing Chariot was carved in the form of a rabbit. Because the handle extended out front it meant that wherever the rabbit went the chariot had to follow.

I took lots of photographs and had planned to write a treatise on how it worked, but I quickly got bored with that idea and wrote a scientific fairy tale instead.

If we listen human instinct actually tells us what we need, but advertising makes us want things we don't need and things we can't have.