The John C Taylor Collection

Carter Marsh

The John C Taylor Collection

Part I

Highlights exhibition: 26 Bruton Street, London W1 23rd to 30th June 2021 Full Catalogue exhibition: 32a The Square, Winchester 3rd to 24th July 2021

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John C Taylor with the dual-pendulum Chesham Quare

The John C Taylor Collection Selling Exhibition – Part I

Carter Marsh & Co. are immensely privileged to be selling the most important collection of English clocks ever to come on the market in the UK. We will be handling the collection over several selling exhibitions from our Winchester premises, and in place of our usual stand at the Masterpiece London Art Fair 2021 we will be holding a Highlights Exhibition at 26 Bruton Street in Mayfair, very kindly hosted by Simon Phillips of Ronald Phillips Ltd, the renowned English furniture dealers. The Highlights Exhibition will mainly be taken from this catalogue, but will also include some important items that are to be sold later: • Wednesday 23rd to Wednesday 30th June 2021 - Highlights from the John C Taylor Collection, at 26 Bruton Street, London W1.

• Saturday 3rd to Saturday 24th July 2021 - The John C Taylor Collection, Part I, at 32a The Square, Winchester.

Our business has been dealing in antique clocks and watches from 32a, The Square since 1947.

Together we have unparalleled experience in the field, with particular emphasis on the finest English clockmakers. This heritage has helped the company to handle some of the world’s most iconic horological pieces, and this continues today.

Over the last 20 years, John has worked tirelessly to share his love of clocks with as many people as possible, striving to give access to his rare and unique collection that, if in institutions, would seldom be working and could only be viewed from a distance. John has participated in ground-breaking exhibitions in the UK, Europe and the USA. These include: Horogical Masterworks in Oxford in 2003; Huygens’ Legacy at the Palais Het Loo in Holland in 2004; Time for Everyone at the California Institute of Technology in 2013; Ships, Clocks and Stars, originally at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London in 2014, followed by displays in Sydney, Australia and the USA in 2015; also, Innovation & Collaboration in London in 2018 and solo exhibitions, The Luxury of Time at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh in 2019 and at the Manx Museum in Douglas, Isle of Man in 2020.

As John explains in his foreword, his passion has never been confined to a single area; innovation and quality have governed every acquisition. Many of the items need little introduction, as their significance is both recognised and well documented. These represent a once in a lifetime opportunity for collectors to acquire museum level items of importance and gravitas.

Even the more unassuming items in the collection are, almost invariably, interesting and unusual in their own right. So as well as the iconic pieces, there are other desirable and beautiful horological examples, priced at a fair and competitive level.

32a The Square Winchester SO23 9EX

We hope you will enjoy our first selling exhibition catalogue and look forward to welcoming you to London and Winchester to view the first installment of this extraordinary and wonderful collection.

+44 (0)1962 844443 info@cartermarsh.com

Jonathan and Darrell Carter Marsh & Co.

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List of exhibits 1. David Ramsay, London, Circa 1620: a silver and gilt-brass oval verge pocket watch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2. William Bowyer, London, Dated 1636: a First Period ‘Great Chamber’ lantern clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 3. Ahasuerus Fromanteel, London, Circa 1640: an early horizontal table timepiece with alarm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 4. Henry Sutton: London, Dated 1650 (or 1656): a printed azimuth dial surveying compass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 5. John Bayes, London, Circa 1660: a three-train silver verge clockwatch with alarm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 6. The Radford Fromanteel, Circa 1663: a striking verge longcase movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 7. John Hilderson, London, Circa 1664: an ebony architectural striking verge table clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 8. The Ingram East, Circa 1665: an ebonised architectural striking verge longcase clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 9. The Minerva Fromanteel, Circa 1665: a Brazilian rosewood striking verge bracket clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 10. Edward East, London, Circa 1665: an architectural two-day striking night table clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 11. The Henry Graves Clement, Circa 1668: an architectural anchor escapement quarter striking longcase clock . . . . . 44 12. The Hurst Longcase Night Clock, Circa 1669: a Fromanteel attributed architectural striking longcase night clock . . 58 13. John Fromanteel, London, Circa 1670: a walnut veneered architectural striking longcase clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 14. The Time Museum Knibb, Circa 1672: an ebony Phase I full Grande Sonnerie 30-hour table clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 15. The ‘Masterpiece’ Jones, Circa 1673: a walnut ‘transitional’ Grande Sonnerie striking table clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 16. Henry Jones, London, Circa 1678: a small ebony and silver Dutch-striking table clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 17. Anonymous, Bristol, Circa 1680: a brass striking verge lantern clock with alarm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 18. Henry Wynne, London, Circa 1680: a silver volvelle technical aide memoire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 19. Jacques Laylette, Paris, Circa 1680: a striking verge lantern clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 20. Joseph Knibb, London, Circa 1682: an ebony Phase III quarter striking table clock with alarm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 21. Thomas Tompion, London, Circa 1685: a Type 1 ebonised 30-hour striking longcase clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 22. Daniel Quare, London, Circa 1685: a marquetry month-going longcase clock with pull-quarter repeat . . . . . . . . . . 104 23. The Cornwallis Tompion from Brome Hall, Circa 1687: a wrought iron and brass striking turret clock . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 24. The Cornwallis Wynne Sundial from Brome Hall, Circa 1695: a bronze double horizontal sundial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 25. The Hague Tompion, No.258, Circa 1695: a mid-size Phase 2 ebony striking and repeating table clock . . . . . . . . . . . 120 26. Daniel Quare, London, Circa 1695: a Boulle year-going striking longcase clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 27. Daniel Quare, London, Circa 1695: an ebony striking and repeating table clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 28. The Milbourn Tompion, No.333, Circa 1699: a Type 3 walnut month-going striking longcase clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 29. The Pelham Tompion Sundial, Circa 1710: a bronze square horizontal garden sundial with equation . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 30. Daniel Quare, London, Circa 1700: a turtleshell striking and repeating horizontal table clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 31. The Spanish Tompion, No.381, Circa 1702-4: a royal turtleshell full Grande Sonnerie bracket clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 32. Anonymous, Circa 1705: a walnut and marquetry portable stick barometer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 33. Daniel Quare, London, No.58, Circa 1710: a Type III walnut portable pillar barometer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 34. The Chesham Quare, Circa 1710: a walnut mean and solar time longcase timepiece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 35. Richard Glynne, London, Circa 1710: a silver inclining dial with travelling case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 36. The Palumbo Tompion, No.537, Circa 1712: a Phase 3 ebony striking and repeating table clock with travel case . . . . 184 37. The Chandos Delander, Circa 1715: an ebonised month-going equation and year calendar longcase clock . . . . . . . . . 192 38. The Bertele Williamson, Circa 1720: a double-dialled equation clock movement with spherical moon . . . . . . . . . . . 202 39. The Kingwood Graham, No.639, Circa 1722: a Type 3 kingwood parquetry longcase timepiece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 40. The Hooper Graham, No.650, Circa 1724: a miniature brass and silver lantern verge timepiece with alarm . . . . . . . . 212 41. The Chester Beatty Graham, No.696, Dated 1733: a gold Ishmael Parbury cased repeating pocket watch . . . . . . . . . 216 42. Larcum Kendall, London, Dated 1776: a gilt cased cylinder pocket watch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 43. The Mudge Green, Dated 1777: a shagreen marine timekeeper with constant force escapement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224 44. Thomas Earnshaw for Josias Jessop, Circa 1783: a pocket chronometer with Wright’s patent punchmark . . . . . . . . . 230 45. The Calcutta Earnshaw, Circa 1792: a month-going mahogany regulator with jewelled deadbeat escapement . . . . . . 232 46. John Russell, Falkirk, Circa 1812: a mahogany ‘royal’ pattern wheel barometer with triple scaled thermometer . . . . . 238 3

Dr John C Taylor OBE Every reasonable person knows that you cannot change the world, but as an inventor I set out to change it - does that make me an unreasonable man?

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y father was a polymath who claimed never to have passed an exam in his life. During World War Two, he worked designing and perfecting electrical heated suits protecting the RAF bomber crews from the freezing cold, redesigning their parachute harness and incorporating a life jacket, thereby saving many lives. His ‘can do’ approach to life had a major influence on me from my earliest memories. In 1940, four days after Dunkirk, my father said goodbye to his wife and family on Liverpool quay, just before we set off across the Atlantic to Canada as evacuees. I clearly remember his last words ‘Don’t forget to look after Mummy for me’, which implanted a sense of responsibility for others that has stayed with me throughout my life. Nearly five years later in January 1945, my father came to Canada to collect us and we returned in an ex-banana ship to England. Our convoy included five merchant ships that were torpedoed and sunk on the Atlantic crossing.

Dad was also a gliding instructor who had trained would-be spitfire pilots. After the War, most weekends he took me to the club, to run wild with a pack of other gliding orphans, but if bad weather stopped flying, I would often see him sat at our kitchen table with a clock, carefully taken apart with all the parts in jam jars. He showed me how to clean and polish the gears and bearings. As he reassembled the mechanism, he demonstrated how to put a minute film of oil on each bearing and gear face, pointing out that too much oil attracted dust that became a stiff grinding paste - which was generally why the clock had stopped in the first place!

We lived in Buxton, Derbyshire where I walked each morning to school but, in contrast to my sister, I failed my 11+ and then my Common Entrance exam. In desperation my father flew with me to the Isle of Man to take the entrance exam for King William’s College. After reviewing my exam answers, the Principal told my father, ‘your son is practically illiterate - he cannot even spell the name of his own school!’ However, I had achieved good maths and science results and he thought he might be able to make something out of me. I went on to study Natural Sciences at Cambridge and afterwards I joined Otter Controls Ltd., my father’s post-war company. In the mid 1960s, I designed the V series of over-temperature controls for all portable domestic heaters, together with the G series of miniature electric motor protectors. Both are still in production today. The G series has averaged sales of 250,000 units per week for more than 55 years.

In 1967, Laura was born followed by Neil in 1969. Sadly my wife became unwell and I found myself alone with two young children, so I decided on a new start. In 1977, I resigned all my directorships, sold the house I had designed and built; now the children and I were ensconced in a bungalow in the Isle of Man.

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With little money, a mortgage and two children in private education, I decided to start a new business making kettle controls. My father had impressed on me, ‘never borrow money from a bank’, his belief was that banks view money like an umbrella - while the sun shines they are happy to lend, but if it starts raining, just when you need the umbrella, they want it back. I tried to stick to that advice as I set up Strix Ltd. At this time, electric kettles were only used in tea-drinking democracies - New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Ireland and the UK. My inventions were taken up in those places and Strix expanded, increasing sales every year by 25%. European countries did not use UK electric kettles as the copper elements were thought to be unhealthy - particularly when they went green after too much descaling. I came up with new inventions: a stainless steel element and next, a hidden element underneath the stainless steel bottom of a plastic jug. This was also combined with a 360° cordless connector, and demand became worldwide with production increasing 35% every year. We were named UK manufacturer of the year and won four Queen’s Awards for Enterprise. By the time I retired, I had over 350 patents and Strix had sold almost one billion kettle controls, with a 75% world market share.

John C Taylor with his innovative 360° cordless kettle connector

Over the years my interest in horology grew. I started to see the parallels between my business, based on new inventions and innovations, and what the clockmakers had achieved all those years ago. I gained a greater appreciation of just how visionary and skilled the first clockmakers were to create such incredibly precise and beautiful objects in a period when there was no existing large market for their products, and to build successful businesses on the back of their innovations. Each clock is

testimony to their skill and perseverance, making intricate components by candlelight in draughty unheated workshops, without technical drawings or power tools.

For my inventions, each kettle control was tested against an absolute standard, 100°C. If the control dropped in temperature, the water would never boil and if the control rose in temperature the kettle would never switch off.

John C Taylor with the Corpus Chronophage Clock that he created and donated to his Alma Mater in Cambridge

For clockmakers, their absolute standard was the average length of a day divided into 24 hours. Over 360 years apart, for both products, quality control is essential. I was intrigued - how did the clockmakers control their quality? To my way of thinking, clocks were some of the first products ever made in a factory environment, and the problems I had, starting and growing my business, must have been similar to those faced years before by early clockmakers. The maker who epitomised innovation was Fromanteel, while quality control was undoubtedly Tompion’s forte. Initially, I used to think a Tompion clock was like a house with a view; you paid a lot for a vista that you scarcely had time to appreciate. I was wrong; through collecting his work I now see that everything about his clocks oozes excellence. But he stood on the shoulders of the clockmakers before him, who established the basic layouts of the movements; men like Vallin, Harvey and most especially Fromanteel.

Most things I learnt during my working life are not taught in Business School. I soon determined that you are not in business to make profits; they are an invention of governments used to calculate tax. In the 1970s Rolls Royce was profitable but went

bust; they simply ran out of cash and could not pay the wage bill. So I was in business to generate cash, not profits. Another thing I learnt was - you cannot determine selling price by your costs; it is the market that determines the price. For Strix, the question was - would people pay for my cordless kettle when there was nothing wrong with a kettle with a plug? Would they pay for a neon light, a filter, a stainless-steel element, an invisible underfloor element and a 360° connector?

The early clockmakers also had to learn these lessons and this would have translated into considering how to develop their timepieces in such a way as to ensure that they made more money; they could use less materials and labour, or offer more accurate clocks, perhaps ones with more features or requiring less maintenance.

Their question was - would people choose to pay more for a clock looking like a miniature ebony building, or one with a long pendulum, or clocks in cases made of exotic woods and bright marquetry panels? Some innovations were tried and died - Roman striking, tic-tac escapements. Others appeared rarely, such as musical clocks. East, Tompion, Knibb and Quare all died rich men, but Fromanteel was unable to truly capitalise on his early advantage, while Ramsay and Gould died paupers. Was this because they made inferior items? No, absolutely not!

I never made a conscious decision to build an early clock collection; it was my passion to understand the progression and innovations that led to me buying most of the items in my collection. I considered these through the eyes of an inventor, entrepreneur and manufacturer - a very different perspective to most horologists and commentators from an academic, museum, or general antiques background.

The early clockmakers’ ability to work out ways around an issue to improve products and move the market forward appeals very much to the innovator in me - particularly given the challenges facing them. The timepieces in my collection are a reference to progress, often in terrible circumstances - the mini ice age with the Thames freezing over, disease, religious and civil war, Regicide, quasi dictatorship and the Restoration.

During the Great Plague and the Great Fire of 1665/6, one third of all clockmakers died and of those left; a third lost their stock, work-in-progress and tools in burnt out workshops.

I always wanted to share my collection with as wide an audience as possible, to convey my amazement at the incredible articles that these English clockmakers produced within the context of the period into which they were born, worked and eventually passed on their legacies.

Every item has a personal meaning to me and, as I approach 85, I feel it is only right to take responsibility myself to oversee their handover to others, so I hope you too will enjoy some of the wonderful fruits of our clockmakers’ labours.

Dr John C Taylor OBE 5

Exhibit № 1

David Ramsay, London Circa 1620

Diameter

Oval 42 mm by 32 mm

Case

The silver case with chased gilt bezels, hinged to the covers, each surrounded by scrolling foliage inhabited by half-human half-animal figures; the silver front engraved with a figure of Athene, holding a serpent and hand mirror by an altar of love with two doves; the silver back engraved with the figure of Leukothea holding her Anchor of Hope to sailors. The silver central band engraved with rabbits amongst floral scrollwork. Each gilt bezel hinge engraved with a cherub’s head, below the cartouche-form pendant.

Dial

The 37.6 mm by 28.2 mm gilt and chased dial plate, mounted with a 23 mm silver Roman chapter ring and single blued-steel hand. The plate chased with scrolls and foliage and a mask above XII, a city view and river is engraved within the centre of the chapter ring.

Duration

14 hours

Movement

The gilded movement with oval plates and rear pinned vase-shaped pillars.

The backplate with superbly chased border and plain centre signed David Ramsay Scotus me Fecit. The steel balance with a pinned, elaborately pierced and engraved, floral spray cock below the steel click-wheel with gilt click, engraved to match the cock.

Escapement

Verge with plain steel balance and delicate pinned floral cock

Provenance

The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, USA, inventory no.3415;

A very rare James I silver and giltbrass oval early verge pocket watch

Sotheby’s New York, 19 June 1999, lot 10, sold for $41,825; John C Taylor collection, inventory no.99 Exhibited

1990s, The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, USA; 2018, Innovation & Collaboration, London, exhibit no.5; 2019-20, The Luxury of Time, Nat. Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, cat. no.2:2

Literature

Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, p.127; The Luxury of Time, Clocks from 1550-1750, 2019, p.14

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99

avid Ramsay was born in Scotland in c.1585, possibly in Dundee. He was one of the finest early makers and initially learnt his trade working in France. At the request of King James I, Ramsay arrived in England in about 1610, and in 1612, he was paid £61 for three watches he had made for the Prince of Wales. In 1613 Ramsay was appointed chief clockmaker to James I (d.1625) and this was on a much higher salary than his predecessor, seemingly a clear indication of how highly he was regarded by the king. By 1622 he was working at Tothill Street, Westminster and had taken as journeyman William Petit, an alien he had most probably brought over from France. Ramsay became the first Master of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers at its formation in 1631, but curiously did not attend until late 1634, being away in the country. He continued to scarcely attend Clockmakers’ meetings, except between 1652-1654 when he voted himself a grant from the Clockmakers’ funds, having suffered under the Commonwealth regime (1649-1660). By 1653, Ramsay was living in Holborn, within two doors of the ‘Wounded Hart’, and he died in 1660, leaving a widow, Sarah.

It is interesting to note that, although working in London, his signature on this watch, David Ramsay Scotus me Fecit, re-affirms his Scottish roots, perhaps as confirmation of his favour with James I, the Scottish king. The French nature of Ramsay’s work is shown by the existence of a very similar watch to the present example, signed R Dieu a Paris, of c. 1615, formerly in the Dr E Gschwind collection, Basle (see his catalogue, Montres Francaises, 1500-1680, no.12).

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Exhibit № 2

William Bowyer, London

Dated 1636

Height

19 inches (480 mm)

Dial

The 7½ inch (190 mm) diameter, narrow silvered chapter ring with a quarter division ring inside Roman numerals and fleur-de-lys half-hour marks. The brass dial-plate chamfered and shaped to slot and pin-fit within the front pillars, with a scribed-edge outer line, enclosing finely engraved flower stamen and scroll spandrel corners, with further scrolls and flowers within the chapter ring. The large silvered alarm setting disc engraved with stylised compass points within the Arabic hours, set against the tail of the pierced and sculpted steel hand.

Duration

30 hour

Movement

The posted frame movement with Bowyer’s large pattern Doric columns, acorn feet with urns above, fixing the bottom and top plates. With matching pierced frets to the front and sides, the front finely engraved with a winged cherub flanked by terms above the engraved signature WILLIAM BOWYER FECIT 1636. The large bell supported within a brass standard with pins into the frame urns and fixed to the matching urn on top. The slot-hinged and shaped later brass side doors with turn catches to the front. The trains contained within three vertical plates, the outer two of cruciform shape; the front-planted going train restored back to verge and balance wheel escapement with a steel crownwheel; the rear strike train governed by a countwheel, mounted outside the back cruciform plate, and striking on the large bell. The bottom plate drilled for two counterbalanced driving ropes, the rear rope driving a restored alarm pulley mounted on the outside of the iron backplate.

Escapement

Verge and balance wheel (restored)

Strike Type

Countwheel hour striking

Provenance

Private European collection;

A very fine and large Charles I striking First Period ‘Great Chamber’ lantern clock with alarm

2004 with Anthony Woodburn, sold for £55,000; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.137 Exhibited

2018, Innovation & Collaboration, exhibit no.9

Literature

Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, p.131

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137

illiam Bowyer is considered the most prominent and influential of the early lantern clock makers that were working during London’s so-called ‘First Period’ from 1580 to 1640. His surviving clocks are invariably of unusually high quality, leading John Hooper to comment: ‘His standard of workmanship, design and execution was exemplary throughout his working life... his clock frames were splendidly turned and assembled and the dials beautifully engraved, especially on his early clocks... the movements of his clocks are of an equal standard of… excellence rarely approached by other makers of his era.’ (Antiquarian Horology, Summer 1998, 'William Bowyer Great Clock Maker', p.122-133).

Beyond his standard sized productions, Bowyer is particularly renowned for a small surviving series of larger, special, ‘Great Chamber’ clocks, and the current example appears to be one of three known using the same large-sized castings for the frame, the other two being; The Brewers’ Company clock dated 1632 (Bonhams, lot 77, 16th December 2020, £56,500), and a fine undated example in a private collection that was probably made slightly later.

William Bowyer was the son of Ralph Bowyer of Warfield, Berkshire, and was probably born in the 1590s. Little is known of his early life and training, but Bowyer was one of very few makers who sometimes dated his lantern clocks, and the existence of one from 1617 indicates that he was independently active by that

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time, or perhaps even a year or two before (Bowyer’s earliest known dated English lantern clock of 1617 is also in this collection, inventory no.189). Andrew King suggests that he was married twice, and with his second wife, Prudence, had six children, but only three survived infancy.

In 1630, Bowyer was made free of the Pewterers’ Company and in the same year, he subscribed £5 towards the future Clockmaker's Company Charter. He was a member of the Clockmakers' by 1632, when he was sent with a small committee ‘to treat to the Blacksmiths about their business’. However, Bowyer proved a reluctant participant in the new company and by the following year, he was in trouble for failing to attend the Court, despite warnings. Andrew King further suggests that Bowyer took at least six apprentices during his early years, while from 1638 four further apprentices are recorded of Bowyer’s through the Clockmakers’ Company.

On 25 July 1642, Bowyer presented the Clockmakers’ Company with ‘a great chamber clock... to be free from all Offices in this ffellowshipp’. By February 1650, he was in dispute again and was complained against for not binding his son-in-law through the Company. Nevertheless, he eventually became Assistant in 1651 and Warden in 1653, which was the last time he attended, and it is thought that he died later that year.

Bowyer’s on-going difficulties with the Clockmakers’ were likely because he already belonged to the Pewterers’, and this was in similarity to a number of others at the time the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers received their Royal Charter in 1631. Edward East for instance, despite being a founding Assistant and becoming Master twice, in 1645 and 1653, never gave up his involvement with the more influential Goldsmiths’, eventually making Prime Warden, their equivalent of Master, in 1671.

Bowyer worked in Leadenhall Street, not far from Lothbury, the busiest area of lantern clockmaking at this time. His output was relatively prolific, reflecting his considerable success, but also suggesting that he had a large workforce at his command. He produced some of the most remarkable lantern clocks of the period, including the famous Great Chamber clock made for Samuel Linacre and dated 1623 (variously illustrated by George White in English Lantern Clocks, 1989, and sold by Bonhams in 2007 for £144,000). His customers were apparently numerous and diverse. The Samuel Linacre clock of 1623 suggests he was subcontracting for other retailers and makers, while a small number of surviving items were made with indications of their original owners, including a lantern clock of circa 1626, made for John Leslie, 6th Earl of Rothes (1600-1641), who was one of the main leaders of the Covenanters, supporting the primacy of the Presbyterian Church in Scottish religious affairs. Bowyer also made the aforementioned clocks for the Brewers’ Company in 1632, and the Clockmakers’ Company in 1642. In addition, there also survives a sundial dated 1630, that was made and initialled for John Endecott (15891665), who first served as governor in 1629-1630 of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, that would subsequently become Salem. Endecott left England in 1628, so this sundial also remains as evidence of an early export trade. On his demise, his former apprentice, Francis Bowen, probably succeeded Bowyer in Leadenhall Street. Also inheriting his master’s ambivalence towards the Clockmakers’ Company, Bowen was in dispute with them almost immediately.

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Exhibit № 3

Ahasuerus Fromanteel, London

Circa 1640

Height

3½ inches (88 mm)

Dial

The 4 inch (100 mm) square brass dial with winged cherubs heads engraved to the corners, the applied silvered chapter ring with internal quarter division ring, Roman hours and stylised fleur-de-lys half-hour marks between. The rotating central silvered alarm disc engraved with a Tudor rose surrounded by flower heads, with outer Arabic alarm hours engraved anti-clockwise.

The riveted steel pointer in the place of 12 indicates time against the chapter ring, while the alarm is set by rotating the head of the tulip-shaped central alarm hand on the alarm disc.

Duration

30 hour

Movement

The square plates held by four Egyptian pillars all with traces of the original gilding. The going train has a fusee and large flanged barrel, verge escapement with brass crown and contrate wheels, the screw-fixed pierced and engraved balance cock holding the two-arm steel balance. The backplate retains traces of the original gilding and is signed Ahasuerus Fromanteel Londini securing to the case with three brass turn-catches. The alarm driven by a fixed spring-barrel with steel contrate and crown wheels to a cocked verge arbor with hammer, sounding on the bell below. The underside of the movement has a separate screw-fixed hinged door assembly, with a circular aperture and spider bell-stand.

Escapement

Verge with plain steel balance and screwed floral cock

Strike Type

Alarm

Case

The later 4⅝ inches (118 mm) square brass case of multi-piece lead-soldered construction with some traces of gilding. Each brass-sheet side is mitred to the outside corners, with interior angle-supports to hold them, and engraved open flower and foliate decoration towards the mitres, leaving blank the central part on each of the four sides. The step-moulded top has a square aperture into which the movement snugly fits with the dial resting atop, soldered to adjoin the four sides, and is reflected in a step-moulded base below that has a similar aperture with four turned-neck ball feet to each corner.

Provenance

Private collection UK, until sold in 2015 for £60,000;

An early and rare Charles I square horizontal table timepiece with alarm, in a later case

John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.171 Exhibited

2018, Innovation & Collaboration, exhibit no.15

Literature

Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, p.137

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171

locks by Ahasuerus Fromanteel of this pre-pendulum period are hugely rare and significant to the history of English horology at this critical time, but also extremely difficult to date, as so few clocks were made during this period of political and economic instability.

The first wave of French and Dutch speaking Protestants fleeing persecution on the continent were Walloon refugees, who started to arrive in England from the Spanish Netherlands in 1567, having been forced to flee the suppression of Protestantism by King Philip II of Spain’s forces lead by the Duke of Alva. Queen Elizabeth I welcomed this initial wave of skilled craftsmen, one of whom was Baldewyn Fromanteel, who settled amongst the Dutch community in Colchester. His son Mordachaeus, a woodturner, moved to Norwich where his son Ahasuerus was born on 25 February 1606/7. There is no record of his apprenticeship, but Ahasuerus Fromanteel was working in London by 1629, perhaps initially for the Anglo-Dutchman, Cornelis

Drebble (1572-1633). In 1631 Fromanteel joined the Blacksmiths’ Company, and then the Clockmakers’ Company by redemption as a Brother in 1632.

What is clear is that Fromanteel was a polymath of diverse engineering talents, working on lenses and water engines, as well as clocks.

This period marked the start of tensions between Charles I and Parliament that ultimately culminated in the breakdown of relations, civil war and then Regicide in 1649. Court Books from the Goldsmiths’ Company give evidence of the level of precious metal trade in London between 1630 and 1660, which amply illustrates the turmoil that

must have been apparent across all the trades in the city, including clockmakers. Through the relative calm of the 1630s, up until 1641, Goldsmiths’ records show touch marks on precious goods at a level that was not to be surpassed again until the 1680s, but with the start of civil war in 1642, trade went into an acute recession for 6 or 7 years, only recovering to half the pre-war levels by the early 1650s. Thus the London clockmakers would have found business extremely difficult with an inability to obtain patronage, and to find new markets for his wares, Fromanteel made several trips to the Continent, principally Holland, selling 13

microscope lenses, whose high quality found him customers outside the turmoil in England.

Against this background, it seems distinctly plausible that this clock was actually commissioned before the start of civil war in 1642 and the consequential devastation of London trade. By the 1650s Fromanteel was back working on horological innovations, and he had aligned himself with Cromwell, reportedly supplying him a clock for the huge sum of £300 and another for Mr Palmer at £200 (Greengrass, Leslie & Hannon, 2013, The Hartlib Papers, The Digital Humanities Institute, 14

University of Sheffield). In 1656, The Lord Protector intervened on his behalf, instructing that he be admitted to the Freedom of the City of London, much against the will of the ‘great and good’ in the Clockmakers’. With the exception of a striking table clock by David Bouquet that has been dated to c.1635 (Science Museum, object no.1953-48) and two others signed Robert Grinkin and Edward East, dated to the ‘middle of the seventeenth century’ (Early English Clocks, 1982, p.35-37, all illustrated), there is very little English clockwork over this period with which to compare.

Exhibit № 4

Henry Sutton, London

Indiscernibly dated 1650 (or 1656)

Size

4¼ inches (108 mm) square

Case

The perhaps almost contemporary square box surveying case is constructed of multi-piece sheet-brass; the outer box has brass sides fixed by dovetail corners; and an inner brass sleeve mitred and forming a step to allow for the glass; the back of sheet-brass, and extending to the Western side with apertures for fixing to a surveyor’s plain table.

Dial

The square paper, partially dated 27th Aprill 1650 (or 1656), with a printed degree scale in four quadrants 0-90-0-90-0 calibrated to 1°. Signed in the central spade-form cartouche Henry Sutton fecit below a large fleur-delys. Surrounding the cartouche are the hour lines drawn in stereographic projection and with a zodiacal calendar (0°-Aries = 10 March). In the centre is an eight pointed wind rose with hand written cardinal points, N, E, S & W, and a fine blued steel magnetic needle. The original paper laid upon another, with an early hand-drawn ink compass dial with hand-written degrees every 10° to the full 360°, anti-clockwise.

Provenance

Cyril E. Kennedy collection, and sold Sotheby’s, 22 Apr. 1965, lot 66; Edgar Mannheimer, Zurich; Harriet Wynter Arts & Sciences, London, sold to; Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, USA, inventory no.1156 until sold; Sotheby’s New York, 13 Oct. 2004, lot 767 sold for $2,180; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.134

Exhibited

Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, USA, inventory no.1156;

An exceedingly rare English Republic printed azimuth dial, converted to a surveying compass

2018, Innovation & Collaboration, exhibit no.11 Literature

H

№

16

134

Wynter & Turner, Scientific Instruments, London, 1975, p.139, fig. 161; Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, p.133

enry Sutton (fl.1624-1665) was a member of the Joiners' Company, who worked in Threadneedle St. and was perhaps, the most talented and original mathematical instrument maker then in London. His instruments were renowned for their accuracy, but he also engraved and published reverse-printed papers that were mounted as instruments, such as this azimuth dial.

Sutton was particularly noted for the dividing and engraving of numbered scales, and his surviving work in partnership with Samuel Knibb is a pivotal exemplar in the story of collaboration between instrument and clock makers (Science Museum obj. no. 1872-136, and Museo Galileo inv. no. 179). On his arrival in London by 1662, Samuel Knibb was first recorded as a clockmaker in Westminster, but he soon moved to Threadneedle St. certainly close by, and sometimes cited as sharing, Sutton’s premises. Sutton by then was at the zenith of his career, and their partnership allows not only the possibility that Sutton executed the necessary dividing and engraving of rings for Knibb, but also that Sutton’s workshop may have already been acting as engravers to the Fromanteel workshops, this on the strength of Knibb’s evident work for, and with, Ahasuerus Fromanteel.

The printed paper azimuth dial served Sutton as a trade card, and it was also incorporated into surveying instruments such as this; an identically printed dial can be found in a circular brass case, in the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford (inv. no.54294). That instrument might have given us our missing year, but when it was trimmed the outer date was removed, and no other untrimmed version of this particular azimuth dial has come to light.

Henry Sutton had close connections with the early Fellows of the Royal Society and when he died in the plague of 1665, Robert Moray wrote to Henry Oldenburg, ‘wee all here are much troubled with the loss of poor Thomson & Sutton’. The prestige

of Sutton’s scale division was such that even a century after his death his name was still used as a guarantee of quality.

This Henry Sutton reverse-printed paper azimuth dial was subsequently, but perhaps almost contemporaneously, adapted for use as a surveyor’s compass; it was mounted on a second paper carrying a set of degrees added by hand, outside the printed dial, the initials of the cardinal points were adapted to correct their order on the compass rose and a magnetic needle fitted. The composite paper scale was then mounted in a glazed brass box with an extended back having four holes and a threequarters slot cut in the overhang for attachment to its plain table (known as a plane table from c.1830), and together with an alidade and a chain measure, this compass provided a surveyor with all that was required to survey and map in the 17th century.

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Exhibit № 5

John Bayes, London Circa 1660

Diameter

59 mm

Case

The silver hinged case with ring pendant and a pierced central band, engraved with branches and flowers. The body holding the bell inside and the back with ring turned shutters for each train, engraved with C for clock (strike), W for watch (going) and L for Larum (alarm) all centred by a finely engraved Tudor rose. Outer case lacking.

Dial

The silver dial engraved to the outer edge with decorated demi-lunes, the chapter with Roman numerals, half-hour marks and quarter division ring and blued steel poker hand. The Arabic central alarm disc, pierced and engraved with flowers centred by a Tudor rose overlaying a gilt ground, with heart-shaped alarm hand in blued steel.

Movement

The gilt-brass three train movement with plates held by five Egyptian split pillars, screwed foliate cock engraved with a dolphin, two-arm steel balance, pre-hairspring, worm and wheel set-up with silver rosette engraved Arabic dial and blued-steel mounts. The silver Tudor rose engraved countwheel, blued steel gate, striking barrel pierced and engraved with foliage. The backplate signed Johannes Bayes Londini.

Duration

24 hours

Escapement

Verge with plain steel balance wheel and floral pierced cock fixed with a screw

Strike Type

Hour striking controlled by a Tudor rose decorated silver countwheel

Provenance

The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, USA, inventory no.60;

A fine Charles II three-train silver verge clockwatch with alarm

Sotheby’s New York, 19 June 2002, lot 7, sold for $10,157; John C Taylor collection, inventory no.98 Exhibited

J

1990s, The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, USA

ohn Bayes was the son of a Huntingdonshire farmer, made free of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers in 1646 and warden from 1658 to 1664. Bayes died before 1675, and his wife received a regular pension from the Clockmakers’, by 1670 she was ‘sick and in great want’ but continuing to draw a pension until 1679.

A similar watch by Bayes can be found in the Victoria and Albert Museum (see J F Hayward, English Watches, catalogue plate 20).

№

18

98

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Exhibit № 6

The Radford Fromanteel

Circa 1663

Height

6 foot 11 inches (2057 mm)

Dial

The 8¼ inch (210 mm) square brass dial with original and typical fire-gilding to the visible areas only, centrally signed A Fromanteel Londini fecit along the lower edge. The corners with superbly chased winged cherub spandrels, dotmarked, corresponding to dots on the dial plate, and fixed with single screws and steady pins, in the usual Fromanteel fashion. The narrow brass chapter ring is solid-silver-faced and engraved with an inner quarter division ring, Roman hour numerals with stylised fleur-de-lys half-hour marks, and outer Arabic minutes marked every 5, within the division ring. The finely matted centre with a square-chamfered date aperture above VI, shuttered winding holes and fine well-sculpted hands in blued steel. The whole dial held to the movement frontplate by four latched dial feet.

Duration

8 days

Movement

The typical early Fromanteel weight-driven verge movement having bottleshaped plates held by five latched finned baluster pillars, with twin barrels and large greatwheels mounted to the back, extending beyond the plates. The going train with knife-edge verge escapement with a short bob pendulum and bolt-and-shutter maintaining power, activated via a curved-scroll lever coming out from between the plates behind III. The strike train governed by an external countwheel with pinion-of-report, mounted high high in the train and striking the hours, via a vertical hammer arbor with horizontal hammer rotating onto a large horizontal bell mounted above, together with a small trip lever for re-sequencing the hours, behind IX, getting the strike back into phase with the hands.

Escapement

Knife-edge verge with short bob pendulum

Strike Type

Hour striking, countwheel mounted high in the train outside the backplate

Case

The recent bespoke-made replica case, of slender architectural form with ebony-veneers on an oak carcass. The architectural rising hood with fine ebony mouldings, the tympanum mounted with a gilt-brass cartouche surmounted by a winged cupid’s head. The plain frieze with a gilt-brass swag mount below, flanked by gilt-brass multi-piece Corinthian capitals on three-quarter tapered ebony columns to the front and matching half-columns to the rear sides, flanking further side swag mounts. The hood resting on a convex throat moulding above a rectangular panelled trunk door, fitting straight to the trunk sides, with matching inset raised panels. The plain ebony veneered base, below a cavetto/ovolo plinth moulding, raised on four turned bun feet.

Provenance

1890s, reputedly acquired by a member of the Radford family in Tavistock, Devon for £5, thence by descent;

A very fine and early Charles II striking verge longcase movement and dial by Ahasuerus Fromanteel, London, in a replica ebony architectural case

Early 1900s, the case reputedly destroyed in circumstances unknown; By 1936, The HE Radford FSA collection; Mrs Herbert Radford, Lested Lodge, Hampstead, and thence by descent; By 1969 with G Radford Esq. and lent to the RA Lee exhibition, The First Twelve Years of the English Pendulum Clock, thence by descent until sold; Bearne’s, Exeter, 23rd Oct 2001, lot 611, sold for £53,168; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.71 Exhibited

1969, The First Twelve Years of the Pendulum Clock, exhibit no.31; 2018, Innovation & Collaboration, London, exhibit no.31

Literature №

20

71

RA Lee, The First Twelve Years of the English Pendulum Clock, exhibition catalogue no.31; Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, p.178

22

T

his early movement and dial dates from circa 1663 and is a very original rare and early example of Fromanteel’s fully-developed, weight-driven, short pendulum movement pattern with a high positioned countwheel and the frontplate undivided; the dial also retains typical early features that were soon to be surpassed. The movement pillars are fixed in the way that all English clockmakers were soon to adopt, riveted to the backplate and secured by latches on the front plate. The plates themselves are of tall scoopedtop outline, that was soon to change to a rectangular format as standard. The knife-edge verge escapement with short bob pendulum was to be superseded within the decade by the long pendulum, first using a cross-beat, to be followed almost immediately by the anchor escapement. The high-positioned outside countwheel was soon brought down the train, and on 8-day clocks mounted direct on the greatwheel.

The vertically pivoted hammer arbor, here still in the Renaissance-clock format, was soon to be planted horizontally between the plates. With this dial, Fromanteel was still facing his chapter rings in expensive solid silver and using steady-pins for the spandrels; even the economic use of fire-gilding behind them soon ceased, possibly because the cost of labour, in marking out and careful application of the gold amalgam, outweighed the cost of a relatively small amount of gold.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, succeeding generations of the Radford family were elected Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries, and it was likely one of these who first spotted this clock in Tavistock in the 1890s, for the bargain price of only £5. By 1969, RA Lee stated in The First Twelve Years of the English Pendulum Clock catalogue that the original case for this clock was destroyed early in the 20th century; presumably this was discussed with the then owner, G Radford Esq., and this sad loss had happened during his family’s tenure, but no clues were given as to the circumstances.

The recently commissioned case is superbly made in Fromanteel’s early architectural format with half-columns to the rear of the hood. No cost was spared in its production and with other cases in the collection to closely study, it was made to exacting architectural form and construction, completely appropriate in style and character, for the date and type of this very original Ahasuerus Fromanteel movement and dial.

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Exhibit № 7

John Hilderson, London

Circa 1664

Height

20¼ inches (516 mm)

Case

The case of simplified architectural form in ebony and ebonised fruitwood veneers onto an oak and pine carcass. The full depth architectural pediment, set on either slope with matching raised rectangular panels above a plain frieze, over the unadorned front door that has a fine glazing frame-moulding, the side glazed apertures with matching mouldings. The flat back veneered, and with a pediment shaped fretted aperture framed by raised mouldings, above the solid rear door. The main plinth moulding resting, and rotating, on a restored squareedge veneered turntable base with ebonised bun feet.

Dial

The 8 x 9 inches (206 x 232 mm) rectangular brass dial retains its original firegilding and the very fine matting shimmers like shot silk when viewed obliquely.

This is surrounded by a narrow burnished edge-margin, and centered by an engraved Tudor rose. The slender silvered chapter ring with inner quarter division ring, Roman hour numerals and stylised fleur-de-lys half-hour marks, the outer Arabic minutes marked every 5, within the ring. The original hour and minute hands of early form, finely pierced and well-shaped in blue steel, with the winding squares placed above the centre without shutters; the dial is secured to the movement via four ‘reverse-knopped’ and pinned dial feet.

Duration

8 days

Movement

The substantial movement, retaining traces of original gilding, with seven attractive shallow vase-shaped baluster pillars, proud-riveted to the frontplate and pinned on the backplate. The large diameter spring barrels driving the substantial fusees with gut lines, also with large diameter greatwheels resulting in high position winding squares on the dial. The going train with engraved apron to the knife-edge verge escapement and short bob pendulum; the strike train governed by a small gilt-brass countwheel engraved with a Tudor rose and Arabic numbering of each locking slot, mounted high on the backplate and engaging a cocked detent lever, striking the hours on a large vertically mounted bell. The backplate is plain apart from the bold engraved signature, John Hilderson Londini Fecit, in early cursive script in an downward curve below centre. The movement held in the case by later plain brackets.

Escapement

Knife-edge verge with short bob pendulum

Strike Type

Small hour countwheel, high on the backplate, with a cocked detent lever

Provenance

Private collection Brixham, Devon, bought by GH Bell of Winchester and sold c.1950; James Bomford Collection sold 1964; RT (Peter) Gwynn Collection; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.44

Exhibited

1964, Collectors’ Pieces, AHS 10th anniversary exhibition, Science Museum, exhibit no.22; 1969, The First Twelve Years of the English Pendulum Clock, London, exhibit no.21; 2003, Horological Masterworks, Oxford Museum for the History of Science and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, exhibit no.13; 2004, Huygens’ Legacy, Paleis Het Loo, Holland, exhibit no.29; 2018, Innovation & Collaboration, London, exhibit no.44

A rare and early Charles II ebony and ebonised architectural striking verge table clock on a turntable base

№

26

44

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Literature

J

Ullyett, In Quest of Clocks, 1950, p.142-6; Lloyd, Country Life Annual, 1954, p.165-168; Lloyd, Old Clocks (Practical Handbook for Collectors), 1958, pl.16; Lee, The First Twelve Years of the English Pendulum Clock, 1969, exhibition catalogue, pl.62 and 63; Dawson, Drover & Parkes, Early English Clocks, 1982, pl.208 and 209; R T Gwynn catalogue, 1990; Antiquarian Horology, Weston, ‘A Reassessment of the clocks of John Hilderson, and other Members of the East School’, June 2000, p.407-415; Horological Masterworks, 2003, p.58-61; Huygens’ Legacy, The Golden Age of the Pendulum Clock, 2004, p.80-81; Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, p.204-205

ohn Hilderson is a most unusual name and probably Dutch according to Loomes; he was possibly a mercenary in the Civil War - a John Hilderson in 1640 was an Ensign in the Royalist Army raised by Charles I as he prepared to attack the Covenanters in Scotland. The same unusual name in 1642 was a Captain in Lord St John’s Regiment in the Parliamentarian Army in the first clashes in the Civil War. His surviving spring clocks show him as one of the ‘East school’ of clockmakers but nothing is known about his training.

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Loomes notes that he may have been working on or near Cecil Street, off the Strand (see Hilderson no.3, signed in Chesell Street) and he took as apprentices, Samuel Hayley in 1657, and Thomas Watson in 1662. Nothing is known of him after 1666 and it is thought he may have perished in the Great Plague.

Only five complete clocks by him are currently recorded, while a sixth example with considerable later alterations also survives. The five clocks are as follows: 1. Architectural spring table clock, the present clock 2. Architectural spring table night clock (also in this collection inventory no.54) 3. Architectural spring table clock signed in Chesell Street Londini Fecit (Ullyett, In Quest of Clocks, 1950, p.142-6) 4. Architectural spring table clock with all-over engraved dial (Antiquarian Horology, June 2000, p.407, fig.1) 5. Lantern clock, quarter striking and two-handed (illus.

Turner, British Craftsmanship, 1948) In similarity to East’s work, this movement has vaseshaped baluster pillars riveted proud of the frontplate and pinned to the backplate, framing high-mounted fusees with spring barrels shallower than the fusees, flanged in the early manner, preventing the lines from sliding off. The going train winds anticlockwise and is without a centre-wheel, thus the under-dial minute wheel is mounted remotely in the historic fashion, the extra wheels giving a ‘loose feel’ to the hands with backlash, unlike those examples of the ‘Fromanteel school’. The striking train winds clockwise with a countwheel mounted high on the backplate, the detent arbor extending outside with an engraved backplate cock. The hammer arbor is also cocked, but on the frontplate, while its hammer stop and banking spring are mounted there too. The dial is also similar to East’s early pendulum clocks, with all-over punch matting and a burnished margin and winding squares set high above centre.

Sadly, there is little information to indicate who the early casemakers were, but it is thought that East’s architectural cases were likely made by indigenous City craftsmen, and sometimes lack the proportion and refinement of those by Fromanteel, who appears to have used the design services of an architect, probably John Webb (1611-1672), with cabinetmakers based outside the City limits in Southwark, who were aliens or foreigners like himself. This case however appears to buck that trend; it is well-proportioned and of pleasingly simplified architectural form, without columns. As two similar such spring clock cases exist by Hilderson’s direct contemporary, Samuel Knibb, who was firmly of the ‘Fromanteel school’, arguably this case might have been made by one of the same, possibly alien, craftsman that Knibb and Fromanteel were using.

This is a particularly fine example of a complete early architectural spring pendulum clock, from a renowned but little represented maker of the ‘East school’. It has the added benefit of a distinguished and well-recorded provenance and exhibition history, as well as being frequently illustrated and discussed in a variety of horological books and journals over the past 70 years. It holds a further connection to our Winchester business, as it first surfaced in 1950 through the founder of our company, Geoffrey Bell.

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Exhibit № 8

The Ingram East

Circa 1665

Height

6 foot 4½ inches (1970 mm)

Case

The slender ebonised pearwood veneered architectural case, the design attributed to John Webb (1611-1672) and of delicate proportions, the rising hood with fine mouldings to the triangular pediment, the tympanum surmounted by three Mannerist urn finials, mounted with a gilt-brass cartouche flanked by hunting figures with dogs and hawks. The plain frieze supported by gilt-brass multi-piece Corinthian capitals on three-quarter tapered ebony columns to the front and matching half columns to the rear. The hood resting on a convex throat moulding above a full-width rectangular raised panelled trunk door fitted directly to the trunk sides, also with matching moulded panels. The plain ebonised pearwood veneered plinth raised on four turned bun feet. In the sometime Fromanteel fashion, the backboard extends above the sides of the triangular hood, but within its apex.

Dial

The 8¼ inch (208 mm) fire-gilded square brass dial, the corners superbly engraved with vegetables, flowers, fruits and ribbons, and signed sequentially Edwardus East and Londini within the lower spandrels. The slender silvered chapter ring with fleur-de-lys half-hours and Arabic minutes, every 5 within the divisions. The finely matted centre, with shuttered winding holes, and original well-sculpted hands in blued steel. The whole dial held to the movement frontplate by four latched dial feet.

Duration

8 days

Movement

The slender rectangular movement with six finned baluster pillars, latched to the frontplate. The going train with original bolt-and-shutter maintaining power for the verge escapement and short bob pendulum, oscillating above the seatboard; the strike train governed by an external countwheel, mounted direct on the barrel arbor outside the backplate, and striking the hours with a horizontally pivoted hammer on the large vertically mounted bell above.

The outer base pillars guided into place by taper pins, the whole resting on typical early seatboard blocks and held to the backboard by a bracket.

Escapement

Knife-edge verge with short bob pendulum

Strike Type

Outside hour striking countwheel mounted on the barrel arbor

Provenance

By descent from either Sir Bruce Ingram (d. 1963) or his brother Sir Herbert Ingram, to the latter’s son:

An exceedingly fine and rare Charles II ebonised architectural striking verge longcase clock by Edward East, London

Michael Ingram (d. 2005), and sold Christie’s, 6 Dec. 2006, lot 112, for £363,000; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.177

№

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177

Exhibited

2018, Innovation & Collaboration, London, exhibit no.33

Literature

Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, p.180-181.

Comments

This very original clock appears to confirm collaboration between the two most important clockmakers of this period. The movement and case are closer to the work of Fromanteel, while the dial is decorated in East’s own style, suggesting the clock was supplied by the Fromanteel workshop, but finished under Edward East.

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he case of this important short pendulum verge longcase clock is an early instance of the use of ebonised pearwood veneer rather than ebony, but it is otherwise of the Fromanteel’s early true architectural form; with half-columns to the rear sides of the pediment hood; a drip mould to the cornice mouldings; and raised panels to the long trunk door and sides. In respect of the case’s schooled architecture and fine latched movement, this clock would seem closer to the work of the Fromanteels’ than East at this period, inviting the speculation that it was supplied from their workshop to East. In seeming confirmation of this idea, the continued backboard, rising above the slopes of the pediment is otherwise only found on Fromanteel longcase clocks, as exhibit no.7 in Lee’s First Twelve Years of the English Pendulum Clock exhibition of 1969 and another (unsigned, but clearly attributable to Fromanteel) sold Christie’s 12 Dec. 1988, lot 166, also illustrated in Antiquarian Horology, March 1989, p.26.

Notwithstanding the likely Fromanteel connection to the case and movement, the dial is more archetypal of East’s output; the engraving is exquisite and in a style fashionable for the period that can be seen on other architectural longcase examples; see Edwardes, The Grandfather Clock, 1971 (pl.137) and the British Clockmaker's Makers Heritage Exhibition catalogue, 1952, while Horological Treasures of the Lord Harris Collection, 2017 (front cover and p.25) illustrates an early architectural hooded wall clock with similar decoration and spandrel signature. Later, other makers also used this format of dial engraving; for example Joseph Knibb’s night timepiece in Early English Clocks (p.516-517) and; Joseph Knibb’s longcase timepiece in Innovation & Collaboration, exhibit no.62 (p.243-244).

Edward East (1602-c.1695) was the longest living of the important London clockmakers of the 17th Century and one of very few Londoners who served as Master to two Companies. East was baptised in 1602 in Southill, Bedfordshire and by 1618 was apprenticed to Richard Rogers of the Goldsmiths’ Company.

He was made free in 1627 and in the same year he married Anne Bull, the daughter of one of the leading London watchmakers, whose family business had started in the 1570s and in the previous generation had provided two royal makers. Edmund Bull (1585-1644) was an astute businessman, running workshops both outside the jurisdiction of the City in Ram Alley as well as within and, through his marriage, East became heir to one of the most important watchmaking dynasties in London.

For practical reasons, it is likely that Bull encouraged East to join the newly incorporated Clockmakers’ Company in 1631. By then East was running the Bull’s Ram Alley manufactory, employing the very foreigners the company was trying to control. Despite this East became the youngest of the ten original Assistants. As the Clockmakers’ influence and control grew, East was to become Master twice, in 1645 and 1653, however he never gave up his involvement with the more influential Goldsmiths’ Company.

During the First Civil War (1642-1646), the Goldsmiths’ Company Court book records show that assaying of plate was all but stopped, and clockmakers must have been even harder hit than the plate-workers; in hard times they could realise the value in their precious metal stock, but not so the clockmakers. Nevertheless, when Edmund Bull died in 1644, East became the primary clockmaker in Fleet Street, but he was also increasingly prominent in the Goldsmiths’ Company. It was often quoted that Edward East was a Royalist, but this has proved a somewhat simplistic

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view; the Goldsmiths’ were key financiers of the Roundhead Army and had invested over £17,000 in the Parliamentarian cause. Not only is there no evidence of East’s objection but he was later to take ownership of property in West Meath, Ireland, in repayment of a personal loan to Cromwell’s army. In contrast to Fromanteel, it appears that East was more politically astute by avoiding vocal support of a Republic or the Commonwealth.

East remained in London during the First and Second (1648-1651) Civil Wars, expanding his business and taking full advantage of opportunities. In the winter of 1648/9 he took what was perhaps his most poignant commission, an alarm watch for the imprisoned king, Charles I, which although dispatched via the Earl of Pembroke on 17th January went missing during delivery. By the time of his trial three days later, the watch could not be traced and the king remarked ‘Ah! Had he not told the officer it was for me, it would have probably been delivered: he well knew how short a time I would enjoy it.’ Charles I was executed on 30th January 1649.

East’s business was flourishing, for as well as controlling the premises left by Edmund Bull, including The Musical Clock in Fleet Street, East had acquired a tenement and shop in St Clement Danes. In 1647 East was made ‘Treasurer’ of the Clockmakers’, becoming its Master in 1653 for a second time. By 1657 East was also made 4th Warden of the Goldsmiths; given his duties he required several managers working to his command, amongst whom we know of his brothers, James and Jeremy (by now running Ram Alley, where foreign workers were put to use) and his son, also James, plus a small army of journeyman and apprentices.

In 1658, Ahasuerus Fromanteel had pioneered the introduction of the pendulum in London, stealing a march on his competitors, but by the early 1660s East and other London makers were also producing pendulum clocks. Having prospered conspicuously during the Commonwealth, with the restoration of Charles II in 1660, East moved seamlessly into prominence as royal horologist under Letters Patent issued on 15 November 1660 at 12d per day and £3/6/8d for livery. Although not a lucrative position, it bestowed royal approval at a time when status was highly important, and another warrant was issued making his son James clockmaker to the Queen from April 1662, when apparently he was not even a member of the Clockmakers’ Company. Thus East cemented the reputation of his dynasty and by the mid-1660s the ‘East school’ had also caught up technically with the ‘Fromanteel school’ and were producing clocks of near-equal refinement to their rivals, but East also continued to sub-contract work to Fromanteel, as this example testifies with only its dial apparently ‘finished’ by his own workmen. Now in his 60s, East was able to supplement his workforce with apprentices taken through his own ex-apprenticed journeymen, while continuing to take apprentices through both of his Companies. The most celebrated of these was Henry Jones (1642-1695), whose so-called ‘Masterpiece’ clock is also in this collection, inventory no.72, exhibit no.15, on p.78.

In 1665 London experienced the worst outbreak of bubonic plague that century and just as the city was recovering, the Great

Fire took hold in September 1666. Two of East’s properties, Ram Alley and The Musical Clock in Fleet Street, were destroyed and it appears East was forced to retreat to his property in St Clement Danes, which had escaped destruction. Over the following years it appears East’s son James became increasingly central to the business and, while James managed the business, Edward East was made Prime Warden (equivalent of Master) of the Goldsmiths’ Company in 1671. Now almost 70, in that year the Clockmakers’ applied for a coat of arms and he was described as Edward East, the only person now living of those mentioned in the said Letters Patent of Incorporation of 1631. With the business at the height of its fame and succession seemingly secure, tragedy struck and his eldest son James died in 1674. James’s untimely death gives us a snapshot of the wealth the Easts had accumulated, and his estate was valued at the huge sum of £2027 10s 0d. He was owed over £1350 by his debtors: the King and Queen, the late Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Craven, Mr. Rosewell the Queen’s apothecary, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Dunscombe. As was often the case at this time, the vast majority of that debt was from the Crown.

The influential post of Royal Clockmaker was offered in 1674 to Robert Seigniour (1645-1686), but only on the death of Edward East. This might indicate that Seignior took over management of East’s business as, at sometime after 1674, East moved out to Hampton on the outskirts of London. In the event, East was to outlive Seignior by nearly ten years, but his business continued most probably under management. It is clear that good relations continued with East’s former apprentice Henry Jones and in 1693, East and Jones placed £100 in trust with the Clockmakers’ to pay five Freemen, or their widows, twenty shillings per annum.

When the donation was recorded it was recommended that ...the Master and Wardens do go to Mr. East and give him hearty thanks for his charity. This is the last record of Edward East alive who was by now 91 years old, an extraordinary age for the time. He died between that date and the proving of his will on 23 February 1696, most likely in late 1695.

Michael Ingram (1917-2005) was the great grandson of Herbert Ingram (1811-1860), founder of the Illustrated London News. He ran a small engineering company near Cirencester that, interestingly, supplied Dr Taylor’s company with components in the 1970s. A collector of drawings and watercolours from the age of 21, Michael Ingram built up a fine collection, which was sold at Sotheby’s, London in December 2005. He was also related to two renowned collectors and it is likely that he received the East from one of them. He was the son of Sir Herbert Ingram, a connoisseur of Chinese porcelain, whose collection was given to the Ashmolean Museum in the 1950s, a significant gift that ensured its collection of celadon greenwares is unrivalled outside China. His uncle, Sir Bruce Ingram (1877-1963), was editor of the Illustrated London News for 63 years and a passionate collector of British and Old Master paintings and drawings, with a particular interest in maritime art. His collection of 700 drawings by Willem van de Velde the Elder, and Younger, was given to the National Maritime Museum in 1957.

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Exhibit № 9

The Minerva Fromanteel Circa 1665

Height

23 inches (584 mm); 35 inches (889 mm), including bracket

Case

The architectural flat-back case, the design attributed to John Webb (16111672) and veneered in Brazilian rosewood onto a solid rosewood carcass, with long-grain mouldings to the shallow dome top, surmounted by a well-cast and chased gilt-brass figure of Minerva, holding a spear and a shield depicting the head of Medusa, and flanked by four octagonal pedestals with early giltbrass pineapple finials. The full architecturally moulded entablature with drip-moulding, over a frieze with a gilt grotesque mask centering two swags mounted to the front, all supported by three-quarter multi-piece Corinthian stop-fluted columns to the front and matching quarter-columns to the rear, both sides inset with fretted access doors hinged to the rear, all above an architectural moulded plinth. The whole case resting on a replica matching rosewood veneered inverted-bell-shaped bracket with a blind fret apronfronted drawer, graduating down to a further inverted gilt-brass finial below.

Dial

The 8¼ inch (210 mm) square brass dial with original mercury fire-gilding, typically to the visible areas, in this instance over the scribe-lined edge only. The corners with superbly chased winged cherub spandrels, each fixed with a single screw and riveted steady pin onto the dial plate, in the usual Fromanteel workshop fashion. The narrow silvered brass chapter ring engraved with an inner quarter division ring, Roman hour numerals with large, stylised fleur-de-lys half-hour marks, and outer Arabic minutes marked every 5, within the division ring. The finely matted centre with a large square-chamfered date aperture above VI, shuttered winding holes and well-sculpted hands in blued steel. The whole dial held to the movement frontplate by four dial feet with beautiful swan-neck latches.

Duration

8 days

Movement

The rectangular movement with eight finned baluster pillars, with swanneck latches to the split frontplate, divided down the centre for the lower half of the two trains but narrower at the top on the IX side for the strike train; the going train with bolt-and-shutter maintaining power, activated by a curved, pivoted lever protruding from the centre of the movement on the III side. The knife-edge verge escapement with a single-footed backcock and short bob pendulum, without a holdfast, as seemingly appropriate to a wall mounted clock; the strike train controlled by an external countwheel engraved with Arabic hours, driven by a pinion-of-report and mounted high on the backplate, striking the hours on the horizontally-mounted bell above. The backplate with a straight early cursive signature across the centre Johannes Fromanteel Londini Fecit and otherwise plain, held to the case by dial turns behind III and IX.

Escapement

Knife-edge verge with short bob pendulum

Strike Type

Outside countwheel hour striking, mounted high in the train

Provenance

Private collection Marrakech, Morroco;

An important and supremely rare Charles II Brazilian rosewood striking bracket clock by John Fromanteel, London

2013 sold by Bobinet for £450,000; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.82

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his architectural flat-backed case adheres to the original Fromanteel designs, attributed to John Webb (1611-1672), with a shallow dome top.

The mounts on the case frieze include paired swags of berried laurel leaves with ribbon ties, that relate closely to a drawing by Webb for an internal doorway at Greenwich Palace, of c. 1665-6. It also features quarter-columns at the back angles against vertical case back-fillets, rising from the stylobate at the base of the columns, all the way up behind the entablature.

With a requirement for side access to the bolt-andshutter and countwheel trip levers, doors are inset into each side, swinging open to back against the wall.

When this clock came to light in 2013, the case showed absolutely no traces of an extra ‘step’ beyond the existing stylobate and moulded base, either fixed or turntable. The flat-backed three-quarter form with side doors opening 90°, encouraged the decision to purpose-make a matching wall-mounted bracket and, as the top cornice is wider than the base, the extra width of the bracket completes the required visual balance as would have been acheived originally. The consensus amongst academics is that some architectural spring clocks were mounted in this manner; while none from this early period are known to survive, all the evidence indicates that this is likely the earliest surviving springdriven true English bracket clock.

The movement and dial are of the finest quality; the plates are of rectangular form, having a split frontplate, and the countwheel remains set high on the backplate in the early-Fromanteel manner; while the dial is gilded to the visible areas and retains steady pins from the spandrels, the chapter ring is in silvered brass, rather than silver-faced, and with large and unusual stylised fleur-de-lys half-hour marks. The escapement remains a verge as intended, with understandable ‘local’ repairs, while the bolt-and-shutter maintaining power had been removed and has been recently and skilfully restored. The originality of the strike train makes it likely that three pairs of corresponding plugged holes near the top of the strike side were workshop related, during manufacture.

As a case made in circa 1665, constructed entirely in Brazilian rosewood, it stands almost alone in English furniture making of this period, so that beyond the importance of this fine early spring clock movement and dial, the use of this exotic wood apparently emphasises its original high specification and cost.

The use of the term ‘rosewood’ here is loose, without intrusive analysis its definitive genus and geographical origin is extremely difficult to determine but, in this instance, it seems difficult to argue that it is instead an unusual cut of ‘English colonial’ Cocus wood, which is sometimes advanced as an alternative (Bowett,

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English Furniture 1660-1714, p.307). This is because the veneers have been cut along the grain, rather than obliquely, and its deep brown reddish hue with black striations certainly has the appearance of true Brazilian rosewood, while the lighter, contrasting, wood appears to be imported Castello boxwood, rather than a less expensive native variety. To set this in context, the Navigation Act of 1651 had ensured that all trade between England and its colonies was restricted to English or colonial shipping, while, other European powers imposed similar rules to their own colonies. So it was not easy to obtain raw materials from parts of the world not within England’s direct control.

Brazilian rosewood is very rarely found in English furniture at this time, and its cost would likely have been supreme, commensurate with the case design and quality of the movement.

Although nothing of its provenance is known before 2013, there are no apparent scratch marks to assist us with its history, and the location of the clock in Marrakech remains both intriguing and interesting. In 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth I, separating Protestant England from Catholic Europe and, in seeking allies to balance England’s political and trading interests, Elizabeth cemented relations with the Sultan of Morocco, Mulay Ahmad al-Mansur (1549-1603). The Sultan meanwhile, dreamed of re-conquering al-Andalus, the Islamic territory in the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years until 1492. With Spain as a common enemy, an Anglo-Moroccan alliance was formed and in 1585, the Queen granted a patent to The Barbary Company for exclusive trading rights with Morocco. Exchanging armour, ammunition, timber and metal; for sugar and saltpetre, to make gunpowder, all in spite of a Papal ban and prompting the Papal Nuncio in Spain to comment… there is no evil that is not devised by that woman, who, it is perfectly plain, succoured Mulocco with arms, and especially with artillery. Trade and political alliances continued into the 17th century and pertinant to the context of the present clock, in 1661, England acquired the Moroccan port of Tangier, as part of her dowry when Charles II married Catherine of Braganza, and it remained in English hands until 1684.

Of course, this clock may have arrived relatively recently in Marrakech, perhaps via a European expatriate, but with political and trading links to Morocco, and the English occupation of Tangier from 1661 to 1684 over the time it was made, circa 1665, there appears a likelyhood that this Fromanteel clock could have been resident there far longer.

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Exhibit № 10

Edward East, London

Circa 1665

Height

34 inches (867 mm)

Case

The Italian Mannerist tabernacle architectural case of ebony onto an oak and pine carcass, the breakfront outset by two tapering columns with gilt-brass multi-piece Corinthian capitals, supporting a broken triangular pediment that flanks a scroll-set faceted semi-circular pediment, fronted by a gilt-brass lambrequin signed Cremstorff A Paris, and topped by a gilt-brass chimney with an urn finial. The flat un-veneered and ebonised back inset with an access door, the front with a rectangular ebony-moulded dial door above the conforming breakfront base, with a hinged-flap door inset with a wooden fret, all standing on a plain ebony-veneered rectangular step-base with four gilt-brass bun feet. The oil lamp slides in from the right side, seated behind the pierced section of the dial, and under the gilt-brass chimney. The movement winding squares located behind the lower rail of the front door (signs of plugged holes) with access eased by the hinged-flap door below.

Dial

The 10¾ by 11 inch (274 by 280 mm) rectangular brass dial with four latched feet, the main plate painted with an Italianate garden scene of a fountain flanked by two statues on plinths, each with an E to their front for Edward East, with figures promenading an avenue of Cypress trees leading up to a hilltop Villa, all set before a mountainous landscape. The upper section painted as a clouded sky with a central arched hour-sector, the static outer with 60 small single-hole minutes, tear-drop half-quarter holes and Roman numeral pierced quarters; the revolving three-layered central hour disc with ‘flag-on-chain’ Arabic numerals, and two diametrically opposed apertures, depicting day on even hours and night on odd hours, each revealing a pierced Arabic hour number and the hour aperture position in relation to the outer arch-sector indicates the minutes past the hour. The paintwork is believed to have been restored by Asprey in the 1980s.

Duration

2 days

Movement

The 9 by 8 inch (229 by 203 mm) irregular-octagonal movement with eight latched finned baluster pillars planted with two trains, driven by a conventional spring barrel with single fusee for the going train and a directdrive spring barrel for the strike train, both wound from the front. The gut fusee driven going train with knife-edge verge escapement and short bob pendulum; the spring barrel driven strike train governed by an hour countwheel mounted on the front of the barrel and striking the hours on a small ‘pork-pie’ bell mounted between the plates. The central hour disc front-mounted onto an arbor pivoted between the front and back plates above the escapement. The plain backplate signed to the lower centre Edward East, Londini in fine early cursive script.

Escapement

Knife-edge verge with short bob pendulum

Strike Type

Internal countwheel hour striking

Provenance

Located in ‘North Africa’, and by 1983 with a Parisian antiques dealer; Asprey, London and advertised in 1987; Private collection UK, sold by Mark Sampson in 1997, for £79,000; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.23

Literature

Cescinsky & Webster, English Domestic Clocks, 1976, p.128, fig.106; Antiquarian Horology, March 1987, Asprey advert, p.440

An exceedingly rare Charles II ebony and gilt-brass architectural two-day striking night table clock

№

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23

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he movement of this clock displays the progression of developments first pioneered by Fromanteel and adopted

by East, such as front latched pillars, apparently confirming its manufacture by East in the mid 1660s, while the use here of a direct-drive spring barrel for the strike train is also notable (see p.72, Exhibit 14 by Joseph Knibb, inventory no.32). The Italian Mannerist architectural ‘Catholic’ case is similar in design to the tomb of Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) in the Roman Catholic church of St. James in Antwerp, suggesting this clock was made for the continental market, which is seemingly confirmed by the gilded case plaque signed Cremstorff A Paris. Cremstorff may have retailed this clock, and he is recorded in Tardy’s, Dictionnaire Des Horlogers Francais, 1972, as Jehan (or Joachim) Cremstorff (or Cremsdorff ), working in Paris from 1663 to 1683. (see also Sotheby’s, 3 July 2019, lot 4, for a watch by Cremstorff A Paris, sold for £2.15m).

In his diary on 24th June 1664, Samuel Pepys noted: After dinner to White Hall and there met with Mr. Pierce and he showed me the Queen’s bed-chamber with a clock by her bed-side wherein a lamp burns that tells her the time of the night at any time. This is the first contemporary evidence of a night clock in England, while Pepys’ particular citation suggests that it was a novel innovation at that time. That night clock had just been supplied to Catherine of Braganza by her appointed royal clockmaker, and Edward’s son, James East (see p.32, inventory no.177, for further notes on Edward and James East). Despite his importance to the East family firm, James East was not apparently admitted to the Clockmakers’ Company, and the business’s clocks continued to be signed for his father.

In 1655, Pope Alexander VII (born Fabio Chighi, ruled 16551670) had ordered Cardinal Farnese to provide a clock that would show the hours at night in silence, and thus the first night clock was conceived and made in Italy. An imported example probably provided the impetus for English clockmakers to follow suit but, in any event, the widespread introduction of repeat work from the late 1670s soon made night clocks redundant. Only 12 English spring night clocks are known to survive and although popular on the continent, English night clocks are extremely rare. With an inherent danger of catching alight, the demand appears to have been relatively small or perhaps many were destroyed; certainly ‘orphan’ night clock movements survive in larger numbers than do those complete with their original cases (as this example).

English night clocks utilise two divergent systems that reflect the differing innovative approach emanating from the two main early schools of English pendulum clockmaking; the ‘Fromanteel school’ favouring the ‘twin-disc’ system (see longcase example p.58, exhibit no.12 and collection inventory no.31), while the ‘East school’ generally used the ‘flag-on-chain’ system. Makers known to have supplied night clocks include the most illustrious: Fromanteel and his followers, Knibb and Tompion; and East and his associates, Hilderson, Jones, Seignior and Stanton.

Appropriately, the movement of the present East night clock uses the ‘flag-on-chain’ system, which operates via a three-

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layered assembly of surprising and ingenious mechanical simplicity. In the central layer, there is a succession of 12 flags pierced for the hour numerals but not assembled in numerical order, chain linked but not fitting tightly to the 10-sided wheel rotating them, the lower part hanging slack below (see right). In front of these is a disc pierced with two diametrically opposite circles through which an individual number is displayed. Those two layers rotate together, drawing a particular hour numeral across the sector in the dial plate, marked for the quarter-hours and minutes, registering the passing of that hour. The ingenious nature of this system is the order in which the numeral flags are assembled, with the next sequential hour numeral placed the fifth flag along, which combined with the way the chain hangs slack below the decagonal wheel, ensures that as one numeral passes behind the solid part of the dial plate at the end of its passage across the sector, the next hour appears at the opposite end to start its passage, and so on.

Exhibit № 11

The Henry Graves Clement

Height

6 foot 3½ inches (1917 mm)

Case

The slender ebony veneered architectural case, to a design attributed to John Webb (1611-1672), with rising hood and fine ebony mouldings, the tympanum mounted with a gilt-brass cartouche surmounted by a winged cupid’s head. The plain frieze supported by gilt-brass multi-piece Corinthian capitals on three-quarter tapered ebony columns to the front and matching quarter columns to the rear, against back-fillets extending up to the base of the entablature. The hood resting on a convex throat moulding above a fullwidth rectangular triple panelled and moulded-frame trunk door, mounted straight to the trunk sides, also with matching moulded panels. The plain ebony veneered plinth raised on four turned bun feet.

Dial

The 8 inch (208 mm) mercury fire-gilded square brass dial with gilt cherub’s head spandrels to each corner, signed Gulielmus Clement Londini Fecit along the lower edge, and held to the frontplate by four latched dial feet. The slender silvered chapter ring with trident half-hours and Arabic minutes, numbered every 5 within the divisions. The finely matted centre with shuttered winding holes and a square chamfered date aperture above VI, with a large and slender silvered subsidiary seconds ring below XII with 4 divisions for each 5 seconds, and very fine early, well-pierced and sculpted, blued steel hands.

Duration

8 days

Movement

The substantial movement with ten finned baluster pillars, latched to the frontplate that is split for each wheel train; the going train with bolt-andshutter maintaining power, originally marked out for a verge and then drilled for a long-pendulum crossbeat (see following notes) but contemporaneously fitted with a very early anchor escapement with a 61 inch, 1¼ seconds, pendulum oscillating in the base for the extra amplitude; the strike train governed by a large outside countwheel, driven by a pinion-of-report and mounted high in the train, striking the quarters on three vertically mounted bells and then, through a pump piece, the hours on the larger horizontal bell above. The outer base pillars guided into place by taper pins and resting on typical seatboard blocks, held by a bracket to the backboard.

Escapement

Very early anchor with with seconds indication and 1¼ seconds pendulum

Strike Type

Single large outside countwheel, high on the train, quarter and hour striking

Provenance

Circa 1850, property of the Duchess of Kent’s Theatre, Woolwich (name changed several times and eventually demolished). Prior to the theatre’s conversion to a cinema in the 1920s, apparently traded to a ‘rag-and-bone’ merchant for 22 shillings and by 1922, sold to;

Circa 1668

A historically significant and important Charles II ebony veneered architectural quarter striking longcase clock with early anchor escapement, seconds dial and 1¼ seconds pendulum by William Clement, London

Henry T Brice, from whom acquired by; FH Green Esq. and sold 1930 for £1,250 to; AS Vernay, shipped to his partner in New York, S. Jussel, and sold 1936; Henry Graves Jnr. (1868–1953), bequeathed to his daughter and given as a wedding gift to her son, sold by Jussel in 1969 to; RT (Peter) Gwynn (1905-1999); John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.46

№

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Exhibited

1969, The First Twelve Years of the English Pendulum Clock, London, exhibit no.24; 2003, Horological Masterworks, Oxford Museum for the History of Science and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, exhibit no.19; 2004, Huygens’ Legacy, Paleis Het Loo, Holland, exhibit no.43; 2018, Innovation & Collaboration, London, exhibit no.54

Literature

Cescinsky & Webster, English Domestic Clocks, 1914, p.113-114; Cescinsky & Gribble, Early English Furniture & Woodwork, 1922, p.290; FH Green, Old English Clocks, 1931, pl.II; Cescinsky, Old Master Clockmakers, 1938, p.52; RA Lee, The First Twelve Years of the English Pendulum Clock, 1969, no.24, pl.67 and 69-72; Antiquarian Horology, September 1962, Penfold, ‘The Life of William Clement’, p.354-356; Antiquarian Horology, June 1969, Hurst, ‘The First Twelve Years of the Pendulum’, p.146 & 155; Antiquarian Horology, December 1978, Lee, ‘Early Pendulum Clocks’, p. 146-60; Horological Masterworks, 2003, p.84-89; Huygens’ Legacy, The Golden Age of the Pendulum Clock, 2004, p.134-135; Opwindende Klokken, 2004, p.12; Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, p.229-230

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n the mid-20th century, William Clement was considered the anchor’s inventor, this on the basis of John Smith’s 1694 testimony in his book Horological Disquisitions, where he noted that ‘Mr William Clement had at last the good fortune to give it the finishing stroke’.

That credit was perhaps to misconstrue Smith’s meaning, for ‘finishing stroke’ allows the prior inclusion of others in the anchor’s process of invention, even a degree of collaboration.

While the crossbeat escapement is now thought to be a Fromanteel application, rather than Knibb, it is equally clear that the Fromanteels, Knibbs and Clement were all associated, and thus the progression from verge, via long pendulum crossbeat, to the anchor escapement, all seen in this extraordinary clock, was likely shared by all of them, in effect, a group effort. It is now considered that Clement’s ‘finishing stroke’ was likely the ground-breaking inclusion of what subsequently became standard: subsidiary seconds directly off the escape wheel arbor.

In apparent confirmation of this, The Spanish Fromanteel c.1667 (also in this collection, inventory no.16) is an ostensibly earlier long pendulum clock without a seconds dial and, with his inventor’s hat on, Dr. Taylor points out, ‘If it had already been developed, who in their right mind would make or for that matter buy, a new clock without the new unique selling point of a seconds hand?’

This clock is considered the earliest surviving example of an anchor escapement with subsidiary seconds. Corresponding with its 1¼-seconds beat of the pendulum, it is also the earliest instance of a seconds ring with 48 divisions, 4 to each 5-second period – while this longer pendulum might seem unusual, its inclusion here is in fact entirely consistent with the innovations of the period, as well as the initial handling of this clock. The winding squares are hidden, in the usual manner, by shutters linked to the bolt power-maintaining system, manually engaged by a lever to the right (III) side of the movement, while the striking of hours and quarters is particularly ingenious for this early period, sounding as they do from a single strike train, governed by an individual countwheel, on a large horizontal hour bell and three vertical graduated quarter bells.

On the basis of internal evidence in the movement, this clock was constructed at a moment of rapid change and development; first scribed for a verge escapement but not drilled; it was in the event drilled for an unattainable long pendulum crossbeat escapement; contemporaneously thereafter, an anchor escapement was fitted, with a 1¼-seconds-beating pendulum that finally proved practical oscillating in the base of the slender case. Michael Hurst wrote in 2003 in the Horological Masterworks exhibition catalogue, ‘the back cock

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appears to be a verge casting and the chops to support the long pendulum have been fitted into a dovetail slot. The distance between the escape and pallet arbors is large so as to reduce the amplitude of the pendulum in order to suit the narrow case. The pallets, which have been renewed, are mounted on the original arbor, which retains a portion of the original stem. The edges of the seconds hole in the dial bear traces of original gilding and thus, in view of the abandoned verge escapement scribing, suggests that this clock is likely to have been among the first, if not actually the first, to have a long pendulum.’

There are knock-on conclusions to be drawn from the foregoing sequence of escapements, both planned and executed, in this historically important clock. That the movement and case were initially conceived for a verge is apparent by the marking out and diminutive proportions, while the gilding on the dial indicates that the clock was not finished until the seconds and long pendulum were applied. The evident fitting within the narrow confines of the present ‘verge-conceived’ case of a crossbeat escapement with long-pendulum must have

presented immediate difficulties with the required amplitude of swing. Equally, a 1-second anchor pendulum, soon to be adopted as standard and registering against a ring calibrated in 5 seconds for every 5-second period, would also have required a new case with a broader trunk. Accordingly, this induced a rethink in the form of an anchor with a long pallet drop and a 1¼-seconds pendulum, which at 61 inches long, resulted in the bob successfully swinging within the broader confines of the case plinth.

Since this clock’s recognition in the 1920s as a highly important, supremely early, long pendulum by the anchor pioneer, William Clement, it has passed through the hands of arguably the most important horological collectors of their day: FH Green, collector and author of Old English Clocks, 1931; Henry Graves Jnr. (1868–1953), the American banker who commissioned the famous Patek Philippe Supercomplication watch, delivered in 1933; RT (Peter) Gwynn (1905-1999), MD of Woolworths, partner of RA Lee, and collector of early English clocks; and finally, Dr John C Taylor OBE. 55

Dismantled dial, showing gilding, spandrel markings and two holes for a later applied plaque, since removed

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Exhibit № 12

The Hurst Longcase Night Clock Circa 1669

Height

6 foot 11 inches (2057 mm)

Case

The architectural case of simplified form in ebonised pearwood-veneer onto an oak carcass, the hood with spoon catch rising to avoid the chimney, with fine original architectural mouldings beneath a restored triangular pediment, below the frieze is an unadorned front door with ‘square’ lock access doors to both sides; one for inserting the night lamp; the other for operating the maintainingpower lever. The hood rests on a restored convex throat moulding above a rectangular raised panelled trunk door mounted straight to the trunk side. The plain ebonised veneered plinth surmounted by a fine overhanging cavetto/ovolo moulding and raised on four later turned bun feet. The inside upper part of the backboard is mounted with a re-instated tinplate chimney, above an integral tin fireback and lamp stand, hinged to a batten, onto which sits a removable twin-wick lamp reconstructed in copper. The chimney protrudes through an aperture in the flat top of the hood masked by the pediment.

Dial

The 10⅞ by 1313⁄16 inch (276 by 350 mm) rectangular, multi-piece, engraved brass and painted dial with four latched feet. The repaired outer brass frame with traces of original fire-gilding; the upper section engraved with columns supporting an arch, pierced with single-hole five minute markers below Arabic engraved minutes, and three-hole quarter-hour markers, its inner edge serrated for minute indication, with the upper corners engraved with figures emanating from stylised flowerheads with scrolling foliage; the lower section with a moral verse in two lined boxes. The central painted Italianate scene, of a temple set against a mountainous landscape, is centred by a subsidiary brass Arabic seconds ring engraved anti-clockwise, with a large revolving blue sky disc above, painted with birds in flight and clouds, and incorporating two opposing apertures with twin-discs behind; one for even numbered hours; the other for odd numbered hours and the next sequential hour arrives at the start of the arch as the previous one leaves it. The hours are indicated by the number of holes through which the light shines, so that seven holes indicates 7 o’clock, while the hours position in relation to the outer serrated arch indicates the minutes past the hour, at night using the minute-hole markers.

Duration

8 days

Movement

The substantial 10¾ by 5¼ inch (273 by 133 mm) rectangular ‘landscape’ movement with five finned baluster pillars, latched to the frontplate. Both trains have large greatwheels projecting below the plates and the four-wheel going train is reverse-wound, so that the escape wheel and seconds hand rotate anti-clockwise, allowing the ‘sky’ minute disc to rotate clockwise.

The early anchor escapement is inverted, with a cut-out in the backplate for the ‘upside-down’ pallets, while the pendulum is suspended from a typical ‘Fromanteel’ single footed, bent and integrally-pinned, backcock.

The bolt-and-shutter maintaining power is activated via a lever mounted on the right hand (III) side. The strike train is governed by an external countwheel, mounted direct onto the barrel arbor through the backplate, striking the hours on a large bell vertically mounted within the plates. The ingenious strike/silent system is actuated by the weight of the night lamp on a lever projecting above the backplate that draws the hammer away from the bell, allowing the strike train to be let-off and the countwheel to remain synchronised, withdrawal of the lamp during the day reactivates the hammer and the hour bell can be struck normally. To increase ventilation up the trunk and minimise the build up of heat from the two flames, the movement plates rest directly on the case cheeks, without a seatboard, and are secured by two screws into the sides of the outer base pillars, through iron case brackets nailed onto each cheek.

An exceptionally rare Charles II ebonised architectural striking longcase night clock, attributed to the Fromanteel workshops

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Escapement

Early anchor, pallets inverted, operating from below the conventional escapewheel

Strike Type

Outside countwheel, hour striking, fixed to the greatwheel arbor

Provenance

Sotheby’s, 5 June 1989, lot 528; Sotheby’s, 5 June 1997, lot 334; Edward Hurst and RA Lee, sold in 1999 for £85,000; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.31

Exhibited

2003, Horological Masterworks, Oxford Museum for the History of Science and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, exhibit no.20

Literature

Robinson, The Longcase Clock, 1981, p.155; Roberts, British Longcase Clocks, 1997, p.71; Antiquarian Horology, March 2000, front cover illustration, and Michael Hurst, ‘Early English Pendulum Clocks’, p.278-292; Horological Masterworks, 2003, p.90-93.

Comments

W

This is the earlier of only two recorded night longcase clocks known to have survived with their original cases. The other is by Thomas Tompion of c.1690, a boxwood longcase with a short pendulum tic-tac escapement (Thomas Tompion 300 Years, p.508-509). Two further ‘orphan’ longcase night clocks survive, but both are timepieces; one by Edward East of c.1670, now in a later marquetry case (British Museum ref. no.1980,1002.1, dated as c.1675); and another unsigned example of c.1675, now in a replica case, (The Golden Age of English Horology, p.388-391).

hile popular on the continent, especially in Italy where the first ‘wanderinghour’ night clock was made for Pope Alexander VII in c.1655, English examples are extremely rare. In his diary on 24th June 1664, Samuel Pepys noted: After dinner to White Hall and there met with Mr. Pierce and he showed me the Queen’s bed-chamber with a clock by her bed-side wherein a lamp burns that tells her the time of the night at any time. This is the first contemporary evidence of a night clock in England, which was supplied to Catherine of Braganza by her royal clockmaker, James East.

Having a naked flame enclosed in a wooden box, night clocks have an inherent danger of catching alight and, after the Great Fire of 1666, it is not altogether surprising that demand was relatively small, while a number of cases were apparently damaged beyond repair, so that ‘orphan’ night clock movements now survive in larger numbers than those with their original wooden cases. In any event, by the late 1670s, the widespread introduction of pull-quarter repeat work made night clocks redundant.

The moral verse inscribed on the lower section of this dial is a philosophical reminder of death’s inevitability, and follows the long tradition of Momento Mori, reminding of the connection between time and man’s mortality. The anonymous inscription is in the style of John Bunyan (1628-1688) and The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) and is all the more appropriate given that this London clock was made only a few years after the Great Plague (1665-6) and Great Fire (1666). The same verse is also found on another anonymous longcase night clock of c.1675 (The Golden Age of English Horology, p.388-391). In contrast that clock is a timepiece, missing its original case, while its surviving movement utilises the ‘flag-on-chain’ system that was favoured by the ‘East school’.

Although the present longcase night clock has had understandable repairs over the years to its case, it retains its integrity and pre-dates the only other complete surviving example by at least 20 years (The Boxwood Tompion, see Thomas Tompion

The winged Houres fuccefsively give place As they performe theyr fixty minute Race.

At the same Inftant when they come they’re paft Each other they purfue, purfu’d as fast, Dividing by theyr fwift, and reftlefse flight Times fhortest Meafures of both Day & Night.

But though thefe Houres pafse & returne againe To hope the like for thofe wee pafse were vaine And for the Future, Which of us can give Himfelfe assurance he an Houre fhall live.

See then thou ufe the Prefent pioufly For on this Moment hangs Eternity.

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300 Years, p.508-509). It is the only early striking weightdriven night clock known (with an ingenious strike/silent mechanism), and the only complete surviving English night longcase that can be dated to the 1660s with an early long pendulum. In addition, with the anchor escapement controlled from below, it also appears to be the earliest surviving example of an inverted anchor escapement.

Dr Taylor points out that both Ahasuerus Fromanteel and his son John, produced novel orientations of escapements; Ahasuerus, in his earliest pendulum Box Clock of c.1658/9 (inventory no.183 in this collection), has mounted the going train above the strike train, requiring the escapewheel to be canted over at about 30°; John in his early anchor longcase, the Spanish Fromanteel of c.1657 (inventory no.16 in this collection), swings the 1-second anchor pendulum on the centreline with the pallet and crutch arbor, but the escapewheel is mounted off-centre, with the pallets themselves angled towards it, so that a symmetrical seconds hand on the dial was not possible… hinting that it may have been made before William Clement arguably made the ‘final stroke’ of a seconds hand applied to the anchor escapement (Garnier, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, p.231).

English night clocks utilise two divergent systems that reflect the differing innovative approach emanating from the two main early schools of English pendulum clockmaking; the ‘Fromanteel school’ favouring the ‘twin-disc’ system (seen here), while the East school generally used the ‘flag-on-chain’

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system (see p.40, Edward East spring night clock, inventory no.23, exhibit no.10). Although only 16 English night clock movements are known to have survived (12 spring and 4 weight), the makers who supplied them are among the most illustrious: Fromanteel and his associates, Knibb and Tompion; East and his associates, Hilderson, Jones, Seignior and Stanton.

The mechanism of this night clock uses the twin-disc system favoured by the Fromanteel school, and it operates with a twolayered assembly giving a succession of hours in the sky disc passing across the track of the hour sector, in this instance indicated by the number of holes rather than numerals. The sky disc has diametrically opposite circular apertures, with a pair of twin-discs for the hours behind (see opposite), the numbers split sequentially between the two. These numeral discs, having tracked across the hour sector displaying a particular hour, are then moved on as they pass a point behind the solid lower part of the dial plate, so that the next sequential number arrives at the start of the sector as the previous one leaves it.

A number of other features and details in this clock are associated with the Fromanteels, which led Michael Hurst in his article for Antiquarian Horology, Early English Pendulum Clocks, in March 2000 to first attribute it to their workshop: Many details to be seen in this clock are associated with the Fromanteel workshop and with John Fromanteel in particular. Among these details are the bent plate fabrication, the integral steady pins, the shape of the back cock, the finned dial feet and the ‘Dutch’ case catches, all of which corroborate this attribution.

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Exhibit № 13

John Fromanteel, London

Circa 1670

Height

6 foot 2 inches (1880 mm)

Case

The architectural case veneered in walnut onto an oak carcass, the rising hood with walnut long-grain mouldings to the tympanum above a plain frieze, which is supported by gilt-brass multi-piece Corinthian capitals on three-quarter tapered walnut columns to the front and matching quarter columns to the rear, against fillets rising behind the entablature. The hood resting on a block-moulded walnut convex throat moulding above a foursection book-matched walnut veneered rectangular trunk door, mounted straight to the trunk sides. The plain walnut book-matched veneered plinth, below the walnut cavetto/ovolo block moulding and raised on four turned walnut bun feet.

Dial

The 9½ inch (242 mm) square brass dial with traces of the original gilding, and cherub’s head spandrels to each corner, signed Johannes Fromanteel Londini Fecit along the lower edge, and held to the frontplate by four latched dial feet. The silvered Roman chapter ring with trident half-hours and Arabic minutes every 5 within the divisions. The matted centre with subsidiary silvered seconds ring mounted below XII, low set, narrow spaced, shuttered winding holes and a square chamfered date aperture above VI, and well sculpted hands in blued steel.

Duration

8 days

Movement

The tall rectangular movement with four latched finned baluster pillars and bolt-and-shutter maintaining power. The two trains with large great wheels on opposing ends of each barrel; the going has an early anchor escapement with long pallet arms mounted on a tapered square section arbor with a corresponding pallet aperture in the backplate; the strike train with an external inertial fly outside the backplate, and governed by an internal countwheel mounted direct on the frontplate side of the strike train greatwheel, striking the hours via a horizontal hammer arbor on a large bell above. The lower pillars guided into place by taper pins and the whole resting on typical early seatboard blocks and held by a bracket to the backboard.

Escapement

Early anchor with long pallet arms to reduce pendulum amplitude

Strike Type

Internal countwheel hour striking, fixed to the greatwheel

Provenance

Private collection UK;

A fine Charles II walnut veneered and gilt-brass mounted architectural striking longcase clock

1996 with Anthony Woodburn and sold for £125,000; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.15 Exhibited

2004, Huygens’ Legacy, Paleis Het Loo, Holland, exhibit no.43; 2018, Innovation & Collaboration, London, exhibit no.60

Literature

Huygens’ Legacy, The Golden Age of the Pendulum Clock, 2004, p.122-123; Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, p.242

№

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15

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his early walnut-veneered longcase clock represents an important step forward, not only in the development of longcases, but also the dials and movements from the Fromanteel workshops. Arguably driven by an increasingly competitive market and the consequential requirement to innovate, and thereby save costs without compromising on function.

The case must be one of the very first to use indigenous walnut veneers that were presumably less expensive than imported ebony, and were yet to become widespread in English furniture until later in the 1670s. It establishes a clear and important move forward from the puritanical ‘Henry Ford’ approach of ‘any colour you like as long as it’s black’, whilst seemingly proclaiming accuracy now displayed to the second. The case design retains many of its true architectural credentials, such as the cornice drip, but has been simplified, reflecting the use of new decorative softer walnut rather than absolute architectural detail. Gone are the raised panels to the trunk sides and door, while the mouldings themselves have also been pared-down with some considered unnecessary altogether. The requirement of additional case mounts is also reduced with the visual impact transferred to the decorative walnut veneers instead.

The movement is set within slender rectangular plates that include various new innovations, some that would remain and would be developed further, each constituting cost savings in materials or labour while not compromising on function and accuracy whilst others were less successful and would not continue. To keep the width of expensive cast-brass front and backplates to a minimum, the barrels are planted relatively low and close together. Usually, both greatwheels are set at the back of the train and their diameter being bigger than the that of the barrels, this sets the winding arbor spacings. In this movement, Fromanteel sets the III side going greatwheel near the backplate and the IX side greatwheel near the frontplate with the countwheel disk rivetted onto the front face of the greatwheel on cast bosses – an inspirational development to the strike train also saving with narrower movement plates. The anchor escapement is early and, in this instance, John Fromanteel has introduced long pallet arms to reduce the amplitude of the pendulum, enabling it function unhindered within the narrow trunk. This escapement geometry continued to be developed further, ultimately into the style of anchor pallets that we recognise as ‘normal’, but by then generally working in broader case trunks.

The dial is ostensibly the same as earlier Fromanteel productions, the dial plate retains traces of expensive mercury gilding, now lost to the outer edges, but the corners still show the markings out for the spandrels, and also signs of the original steady pins. However, the chapter ring is made of silvered brass, rather than the solid-silver faced chapter rings used previously. All these apparent cost savings, that did not affect function, would generally be copied within the London clockmaking fraternity.

Another innovation is the use of a heavy brass fly in the strike train.

Normally the fly is a lightweight air damper, while here the inertia spinning power at the start of each strike assists the train to cock the bell hammer.

Certain elements were clearly viewed as essential; while the case majors on the new walnut veneers, it also retains Fromanteel’s expensive multi-piece Corinthian capitals; while the movement preserves the important bolt-and-shutter maintaining power system, first developed on the Denton Hall Fromanteel of c1658 (collection inventory no.29), essential to winding the clock without disturbing its timekeeping.

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Exhibit № 14

The Time Museum Knibb Circa 1672

Height

10¾ inches (274 mm)

Case

The early and unusually small Knibb Phase I case with ebony veneers and mouldings onto an oak carcass. The very shallow caddy top surmounted by an early form of Knibb’s brass hooped lifting handle, with folded brass pommels.

The typical Knibb flat-top main ebony moulding, above a square front door with an ebony fret inset in the top rail, the sides with glazed apertures and gilt-brass dome-shaped repoussé mounts over the top sections. The typical Knibb plinth moulding supported by four turned gilt-brass bun feet. The seatboard has two brass blocks onto which the movement rests, held by blued steel square section pins.

Dial

The 6 inch (152 mm) square brass dial, retaining the original mercury firegilding, signed along the lower edge Joseph Knibb Londini fecit and attached to the frontplate by three latched dial feet. The slender silvered brass chapter ring with inner quarter division ring, Roman hour numerals and typical fleur-de-lys half-hour markers, the outer ring divided for every minute with internal Arabic minute numerals every 5, with beautifully pierced and sculpted, early Knibb-pattern blued-steel hands. The very fine and skilfully executed matting has a large Tudor rose engraved within a circular central reserve, the four corner spandrels are of Knibb’s early cherub’s head design.

Duration

30 hour

Movement

The delicate fire-gilded plates with seven latched finned baluster pillars, the single fusee and tandem spring barrel held separately by the split frontplate. The IX side hour strike train with a fusee, its arbor mounted with an outside giltbrass countwheel that is divided to strike the hours at all quarters, engraved 1-12 at each hour, and fixed to a secondary wheel driven by a pinion of report behind.

The III side spring-barrel has tandem greatwheels, front and rear; the rear driving the quarter train with a small gilt-brass countwheel divided for the four quarters with pins to lift the pivoted link lever and trip the hours; the front greatwheel driving the going train with knife-edge verge escapement and a short brass pendulum, the faceted bob engraved 1-8 for regulation. The backplate retains its original mercury fire-gilding with fine asymmetric engraving, inspired and possibly executed by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677), with stems of foliage in the bottom left issuing into leaves, a pomegranate and open and closed flower heads, with an individual flower and leaf to the opposite bottom corner. The areas behind the countwheels left blank and signed Joseph Knibb Londini Fecit in fine early cursive script centrally along the lower edge.

An important Charles II early Phase I ebony and gilt-brass mounted Grande Sonnerie striking 30 hour verge table clock by Joseph Knibb, London

Escapement Knife-edge verge with calibrated bob pendulum Strike Type Full Grande Sonnerie striking via linked outside countwheels Provenance Sotheby’s 11 June 1981, lot 239, sold for £22,000 to Bobinet; The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, USA, inventory no.2525; Sotheby’s New York, Masterpieces from The Time Museum, 3 December 1999, lot 80, sold for $145,500; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.32

№

72

32

Exhibited

1982-1998, The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, USA; 2003, Horological Masterworks, Oxford Museum for the History of Science and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, exhibit no.23; 2004, Huygens’ Legacy, Paleis Het Loo, Holland, exhibit no.47; 2018, Innovation & Collaboration, London, exhibit no.67

Literature

Antiquarian Horology, December 2002, John C Taylor, ‘Joseph Knibb’s First Grande Sonnerie Clock?’, p.196-198; Horological Masterworks, 2003, p.102-107; Huygens’ Legacy, The Golden Age of the Pendulum Clock, 2004, p.130-133; Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, p.252-253

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J

oseph Knibb had already been successfully innovating during his last year in Oxford, 1669. He carried out two important turret clock commissions, firstly converting the foliot-controlled clock belonging to the University Church, St Mary the Virgin, to a pendulum. That clock no longer survives, but it is believed that he used it as a test-bed for his second commission, the Wadham clock, that incorporates an anchor escapement. It is thought that Samuel Knibb died in about 1670 and Joseph had arrived in London by January 1671, when he was made a Free brother of the Clockmakers’ Company. In the busy environment of a resurgent city with a competitive horological community, Knibb continued to experiment and his clocks display more innovations than those of any other maker. In just a few years the choice of clocks available had increased dramatically, and Knibb’s customers would have been mightily impressed with the combinations he could offer. Whereas just a short time before they had been confined, with few exceptions, to clocks perhaps striking on the hour, they would eventually be buying Knibb clocks with a choice of strike work, including Roman, quarter, double-six and full Grande Sonnerie striking on two of three trains, each ingeniously designed within the constraints of countwheel governance. This extraordinary example appears to be Knibb’s first Grande Sonnerie clock, dated to c.1672.

Joseph Knibb’s clocks display simplicity in structure and elegance in form and, as is often mentioned, his cases and dials have a gracefulness rarely achieved by other makers. Indeed, he is one of only a few makers whose individual style can be easily

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identified, and throughout the 1670s and 1680s we can see a clear evolution in the designs, which enabled Lee to categorise his table clocks from Phase I to III (The Knibb Family Clockmakers, 1964). The all-round early features of this case, dial, movement and engraved decoration, give every indication of this being one of the earliest, possibly the first, of Knibb’s Phase I table clocks of ‘conventional’ form, probably produced concurrently with the last of his architectural cases. In addition it is also the smallest recorded in the grouping and the only full Grande Sonnerie striking example. The main ebony case mouldings are essentially the patterns that Knibb would continue with on his later Phases, II and III, but the very shallow dome, simple crankhandle and feet are all of the earliest form that Knibb would eventually move away from on his later Phases of table clocks.

This style of engraving was inspired, and possibly executed, by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677), and is recognisable on almost every Knibb Phase I spring clock known, it is interesting to note that Hollar’s death in 1677 also coincided with Knibb’s shift away from the generally larger Phase I spring clocks to his smaller Phase II and III examples, whose engraving no longer shows Hollar’s influence.

This experimental movement appears to have been produced very early in his London career, and it is of important and ‘transitional’ form, harking back to earlier times (see East, exhibit no.9 on p.46, inventory no.23). It aptly displays Knibb’s extraordinary ability to innovate; his inclusion of a continentalstyle spring barrel, in this instance with tandem greatwheels to drive the going and quarter trains, was apparently in answer to a requirement to reduce size. The ingenious linked countwheel governance seen here manifestly proclaims the start of his progression towards fully developed three-train Grande Sonnerie movements, which later in the decade he would continue in small numbers in his Phase II and III examples.

In this instance, with virtually no extra space inside the small case, it also necessitated domed repoussé mounts to the sides to allow sufficient space for both bell hammer actions.

At this time, Grande Sonnerie spring pendulum clocks were an expensive rarity and only one earlier example appears to have survived (The Chronos Fromanteel in this collection, inventory no.158). However, that highly prized and complex Fromanteel is large and, to all intent and purpose, an immovable object.

It seems likely that this small and early example was a special commission from a wealthy client, who specified this most desirable form of striking in a table clock that he could move and display around his house. The result was a unique two-train movement of the greatest striking and mechanical complexity but of extremely small size, where portability clearly took priority over duration. It would be another five years before Knibb’s great competitor, Thomas Tompion, tackled a portable two-train Grande Sonnerie clock, The Silver Tompion (Thomas Tompion 300 Years, p.378-381), which was apparently made for Charles II in 1677, perhaps in competition with Joseph Knibb (Innovation & Collaboration, p.295).

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Exhibit № 15

The ‘Masterpiece’ Jones,

Circa 1673

Height

17 inches (432 mm)

Case

The large well-proportioned burr walnut veneered restored flat-top ‘transitional’ case surmounted by a scroll-knopped brass handle, hinged with ribbed brass pommel plates and matching stops. The bold convex blockmoulding with a step beneath, crowning an architectural frieze inset with walnut D-ended foliate-pierced sound frets to the front, sides and back. All above the mitre-veneered dial door without frame mouldings to the glazing, the side apertures glazed to match the front door, and mitre-veneered in burrwalnut. The back of the case is inset with a similarly veneered and glazed door of a true table clock, displaying the integration of the countwheels and set up clicks within the backplate decoration. The base has a bold walnut cavetto/ ovolo block-moulding and the whole case rests on four walnut bun feet.

Dial

The 9½ inch (245 mm) square gilt-brass dial with finely matted centre that has a date aperture and three winding holes, set almost in line. The narrow silvered chapter ring with Roman hours, fleur-de-lys half-hour markers and Arabic minutes within the divisions, and very fine quality pierced and chamfered blued steel hands, with two strike/silent levers at IX and III, marked for ¼/N and H/N. The corners set with four well-chased gilt-brass winged cherub spandrels and the dial is fixed to the frontplate by four pinned dial feet.

Duration

8 days

Movement

The superb quality movement has eight ringed baluster pillars with long swanneck latches; the three wheel trains have spring barrels with outside set-up clicks and early-type fusees, each with large greatwheels; the going train has a restored knife-edge verge escapement and short bob pendulum with hatch-engraved engraved backcock; the hour strike train is governed on the backplate from an extension of the hour train arbor by a large brass countwheel, engraved with a Tudor rose and Arabic hours, for the hours to be struck on all four quarters on a bell above the plates. The ting-tang quarter train is governed by 4 studs to the quarter pinwheel, spaced as on a countwheel, to index the quarters, as indicated by a delicate blued steel pointer mounted from an extension of the quarter train fusee arbor, against a small silvered division ring, every quarter in the hour dotmarked and numbered 4 for the actual hour itself, for a full 12-hour cycle, the quarters setting off the hours via a lever within the plates. The two Strike/Silent levers simply lift-off the hour or quarter hammers, allowing the trains to stay in sequence. The symmetrically engraved backplate is exceptional, the top corners each opposed with a scroll and single tulip with leaves, above the high signature, in early cursive script, Henricus Jones Londini. Below it, the centre of each blued steel click is cross-hatched, the going train click further decorated with a Tudor rose atop a cross-hatched curve-sided pedestal, with a spray of tulip flowers, stamen and foliage emanating up the centre between the hour countwheel and quarter indication dial. The whole movement resting on two seat blocks and secured to the case with dial turns behind III and IX.

Escapement

Knife-edge verge with short bob pendulum

Strike Type

Full Grande Sonnerie, via linked outside hour countwheel and internal quarter pin-wheel

Provenance

George Dunne Collection, and sold Christie’s, 18 June 1912, lot 41;

An exceptional Charles II full Grande Sonnerie striking burr walnut verge ‘transitional’ table clock by Henry Jones, London

The Borojan Trust (Edward Du Cann MP) and sold Christie’s, 2 November 1976, lot 42, to RA Lee; Private collection UK, sold by RA Lee 1992; №

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72

Private collection USA, sold 2001 by Garnier for £88,000; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.72

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Exhibited

2003, Horological Masterworks, Oxford Museum for the History of Science and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, exhibit no.28; 2004, Huygens’ Legacy, Paleis Het Loo, Holland, exhibit no.52; 2018, Innovation & Collaboration, London, exhibit no.70

Literature

Antiquarian Horology 1992, RA Lee advert, p.532; Horological Masterworks, 2003, p.132-137; Huygens’ Legacy, The Golden Age of the Pendulum Clock, 2004, p.144-145; Opwindende Klokken, p.13; Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, p.260-261

H

enry Jones was born in c.1642 in Boulder, Hampshire and apprenticed to Benjamin Hill in 1654, but soon turned over to Edward East. He was freed in 1663 but continued to work for East until c.1672-3, when he started to work independently at the Inner Temple. By then Jones was an experienced and capable maker, and he set about producing a very fine but small series of extraordinary flat-topped table clocks, of which this is the most complex. Affording such a highly specified production would have been difficult for the newly independent Jones, and it seems likely that it would have required the backing of one of his early wealthy patrons, such as Heneage Finch (1620-1682), a barrister of the Inner Temple and later 1st Earl of Nottingham, who we are aware had already ordered a superb walnut architectural longcase from Jones (also in this collection, inventory no.119).

At this time, having just been created Baron, Finch was in social and financial ascendency and his near-London seat was unusually large; it would later be forcibly purchased from his son, by William III, and renamed Kensington Palace.

Jones would have been keen to display his talents with something a little different to his competitors, and the extraordinary complexity of this Grande Sonnerie clock, taken together with slightly earlier features than others in the series, suggests this was probably the first. While the additional cost of such an extraordinary clock might also have been reason to house it in a totally new and distinct style of special flat-topped, transitional, case. Although this example is expensively veneered in burr-walnut, its main case mouldings appear to partially set the basic form for Jones’ architypal standard spring clock cases that followed; the bold convex cornice moulding is an instantly recognisable pattern that is most particular to him, and that Jones continued to use on his later cases (see the following exhibit no.16, inventory no.59).

The latched movement is experimental and the three trains are planted almost side-by-side with each barrel click and clickspring styled and shaped to be admired on the backplate, with the exception of the centre wheel, each wheel is mounted on an ornamental turned collet, in fact almost every element has

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a special degree of finish by shaping and/or chamfer.

The fusees are of an early ‘East school’ shape with large great wheels and, while the hour-strike train has a conventional but beautifully decorated countwheel mounted on the backplate, the quarter train is governed by a pinwheel and is uniquely indicated on the rear backplate quarter dial. The execution of the backplate engraving is out-of-the-ordinary and exceptionally fine, while the signature is also in an early cursive script.

This full Grande Sonnerie example is certainly the most complex and accomplished of this small series, arguably of all his known clocks, and can be considered his chef d’oeuvre; when RA Lee advertised the clock in 1992, the simple headline was: Is this his Masterpiece?

Almost every aspect of this clock is so special that it seems possible that Jones himself might have considered that it was indeed so.

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Exhibit № 16

Henry Jones, London Circa 1678

Height

11½ inches (292 mm)

Case

The case of ebony veneer on an oak carcass with a cushion-moulded top applied with foliate-cast silver dome mounts, surmounted by a fine foliatetied D-ended silver handle. Typical quadrant main top-moulding, the side apertures glazed and with pull-repeat cords operating to either side, the front door with foliate silver escutcheons and the matching moulded base raised on ebony bun feet, each over-laid with foliate silver mounts.

Dial

The 6 inch (152 mm) square dial with four pinned dial feet, fine matting and skeletonised silvered Roman and Arabic chapter ring with separate lozenge half-hours, intricately pierced and sculpted blued steel hands and silver cherubs head spandrels to each corner.

Duration

8 days

Movement

The substantial brass plates are separated by five pillars rivetted to the backplate, the top pair of typical ringed baluster form, the central one of hexagonal form and the bottom pair square; all pinned to the frontplate.

The internal rack strike on the Dutch system on two bells of different tone, large spring barrels with gut lines to the narrow fusees, reconverted verge escapement, the backplate with typical elaborate brass barrel clicks and central wishbone spring, integrated into the backplate border design containing the signature Henricus Jones along the base.

Escapement

Knife-edge verge with short bob pendulum

Strike Type

Dutch hour and half-hour governed by an early rack

Provenance

Christie’s, 13th December, 2000, lot 103, sold for £149,681;

An exceedingly rare Charles II ebony veneered and silver-mounted Dutch-striking verge table clock of small proportions

The John C Taylor collection, inventory no.59 Exhibited

2003, Horological Masterworks, Oxford Museum for the History of Science and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, exhibit no.33

Literature

Horological Masterworks, 2003, p.154-155

H

enry Jones (c.1642-1695) was one of the most eminent early makers, he was originally apprenticed to Benjamin Hill in 1654, but quickly turned over to Edward East. He became a Freeman of the Clockmakers Company in 1663, was Assistant in 1676 and became Master in 1691. He worked from Inner Temple Lane and during his thirty year working life he took on fourteen apprentices. He made a number of clocks for Charles II, one costing the then vast sum £150. In 1673/4, Jones had cause to report Robert Seigniour to the Clockmakers’ Company, complaining that he had erased his name from a royal clock (or caused Edward Stanton to). In October 1692 he matched Edward East’s contribution of £100 to the Clockmakers Company for 5 poor widows having Annually the Benefitt thereof Forever. Henry Jones died in 1695, but his wife Hannah carried on the business, taking one further apprentice in 1696/7, who was freed in 1704/5 and at least one clock is known which is inscribed on the backplate, Hannah Jones Ye widdow of Henry Jones London.

Henry Jones is one of the makers whose work is instantly recognisable, and the current example epitomises this. Amongst other archetypal Jones features, this includes simple quadrant case mouldings (see also the previous exhibit no.15, inventory no.85), bold chapter ring engraving with typical hands and the continued use of outside clicks and square pillars. Combined with its beautiful silver mounts, these all contributed to this example achieving an auction record in 2000.

№

86

59

87

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Exhibit № 17

Anonymous

Bristol Circa 1680

Height

15¾ inches (400 mm)

Case

Of standard Bristol lantern construction, circular section columns with integral finned ball feet and distinctive urn finials, with detachable side doors. The original lion and unicorn gallery frets above, the front highlight engraved, the matching side frets left plain. Four brass straps for the bell surmounted by a conforming urn finial, with later riveted iron squareshaped hoop and spurs protruding from the column bases.

Dial

The brass dial plate beautifully engraved and of distinct Bristol ornament with Tudor roses, calyx and formalised foliage, enclosed by a narrow brass Roman chapter ring, attached by two integrally cast lugs of Bristol-type, and a Tudor rose engraved alarm-setting disc to the centre. The pierced and shaped brass hand with an alarm setting extension.

Duration

30 hour

Movement

The movement, held by three internal plates, the going with verge escapement and short bob pendulum. The hours are struck on the large bell via a countwheel mounted on the back of the rear cruciform plate, the alarm train is mounted vertically on the inside of the same plate with a verge clapper to the bell above and set via the disc on the dial, both going and strike trains are chain driven, the alarm rope driven. The brass side doors are rare original survivors, however the rear iron dust plate is a later replacement.

Escapement

Knife-edge verge with short bob pendulum

Strike Type

Countwheel hour strike with alarm

Provenance

Brian Loomes, 2005, sold for £11,500;

A good provincial Charles II brass striking verge lantern clock with alarm

The John C Taylor collection, inventory no.169 Comparative George White, English Lantern Clocks, 1989, p.222-230; Literature Brian Loomes, Lantern Clocks & Their Makers, 2008

T

№

90

169

his is a very fine example of an unsigned provincial lantern clock by a Bristol maker, with original verge escapement and bob pendulum.

Bristol was one of the main ports for trade with the Caribbean and the Americas and by 1662, Hearth Tax records indicate that Bristol was one of the largest cities in England after London. This growth in prosperity soon nurtured an independent clockmaking trade of its own and Bristol lantern clocks began to appear from the 1640s, and by the 1670s they differed from those contemporarily made in London.

The engraving remained similar to the first Bristol lantern clocks with Tudor roses and calyx, while the chapter rings were attached with pinned integral lugs, a method that had fallen out of fashion elsewhere by c.1650. This clock displays the later style of ‘Bristol’ pillars, with integral finials and feet, that appear in the 1670s and it also retains its original lion and unicorn frets, which were especially popular in the West Country, and expressed support of the restoration of the monarchy after the demise of Cromwell’s Protectorate.

The first lantern clockmaker in Bristol was Solomon Wasson admitted to the liberties of this cittie in 1642/3, within a year he was followed by the influential maker, Thomas Browne. Regrettably few Bristol makers signed their clocks, but there are a small number recorded, and one such is by John Clarke, who was Wasson’s first apprentice, freed in 1650. White illustrates that example, signed and dated 1679, which is similar in format and construction to this clock (White, English Lantern Clocks, p.227, Fig.V/28).

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Exhibit № 18

Henry Wynne, London

Circa 1680

A very rare Charles II solid silver technical aide memoire volvelle for trigonometrical calculations in navigation

Dimensions

1¾ inches (44 mm) diameter

Description

The obverse engraved with the maker’s signature, H. Wynne fec. and Iungit Consimiles eadem Proprio Partes (trans: ‘similar things in the same proportion’), the centre occupied by five diagrams of spherical triangles, and the lower part of the band with an example. The reverse with a rotatable disc engraved with a spherical triangle with named parts which may be set against sine and tangent divisions on the fixed rim

Provenance

Sotheby’s, 21 Sept 2000, lot35, sold for £9,880; The John C Taylor collection, inventory no.76

Comparative E G R Taylor, The Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England, Literature 1485-1714, 1954, p.243; Clifton, Directory of British Scientific Instrument Makers, 1550-1851, 1995; The Medal 29, 1996, D J Bryden, ‘The Medal as a Technical Aide Memoire’, p.139-147

H

enry Wynne (1640-1709) was apprenticed in the Clockmakers’ Company to Ralph Gretorex in 1654. Free in 1662 and Master of the Company in 1692, Wynne worked at various addresses in Chancery Lane and was a pre-eminent craftsman: among his apprentices were Thomas Tuttell and Richard Glynne. In 1677 Wynne made the magnetic dip needles with which Henry Bond’s proposed longitude solution was tested. For an exceptional double horizontal garden sundial

by Henry Wynne, commissioned in c.1695 by Lord Cornwallis of Brome Hall, see exhibit no.24 on p.116, inventory no.159.

A design for coin-like devices similar to the present instrument was published in circa 1691 by the noted London mathematical practitioner John Sellar (16301697). Only two other examples of the device are known, both being in the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Cambridge. Neither of them, however, is signed, making this the only known signed example. Besides its intrinsic interest, it is important to the history of scientific vulgarisation, for providing the likely name of the maker of the two others known; the present example differs from those in the Whipple in being 5 mm smaller and in using the word consimiles instead of congeneres, the former word being employed in Sellar’s published diagram. It is noteworthy that all three instruments have the spherical diagrams reversed in comparison with Sellar’s published diagram.

№

92

76

Exhibit № 19 Height

14¼ inches

Case

Of English-inspired construction with circular-section post columns, inverted-urn feet and urn finials, pierced gallery frets, the front fret engraved with a coat-of-arms of three cockerels with lion supporters and a helm cresting, the bell held by a further finial to the plain four-legged brass bell-strap pinned to the corner finials.

Dial

The dial with long-tailed single faceted blued-steel hand to the silvered chapter ring with arrow half-hour markings, signed Jacques Layllet AParis, in an upward curve in the lower half of the dial-plate centre also engraved with central dahlia flowerhead below a winged cherub-head and flanking daffodil flowers.

Duration

30 hour

Movement

The strut-retained movement hour striking via a countwheel mounted on the back-strut, the going train with verge escapement mounted on the topplate with pivoted crutchpiece.

Escapement

Verge

Strike Type

Countwheel hour strike

Provenance

Brian Loomes, 2005, sold for £9,500;

Jacques Laylette, Paris Circa 1680

A Louis XIV striking verge lantern clock in the English manner

John C Taylor collection, inventory no.168

№

168 93

Exhibit № 20

Joseph Knibb, London

Circa 1682

Height

12½ inches (318 mm)

Case

The archetypal Phase III case has a cushion moulded dome top, with characteristic gilt-brass repoussé foliate mounts, surmounted by Knibb’s gilt-brass foliate-tied handle with plain turned pommels and plates, above the quintessential flat-topped upper main moulding. The top rail of the front door is inset with a pierced ebony sound fret with Knibb’s cherub and scroll escutcheons, the IX side key slotted, with glazed side apertures, all above the typical moulded base.

Dial

The 6½ inch (165 mm) square gilt-brass dial signed Joseph Knibb London beneath the skeletonised silvered chapter ring with fleur-de-lys half hour marks. The fine matting, with chamfered date aperture below XII, is centred by a rose engraved alarm disc which is set using the tail of the finely pierced and sculpted blued steel hour hand, with matching minute hand. The finely chased winged cherub spandrels are of Knibbs’ early Phase III design with an hour strike/silent, S/N, lever above left of XII. Fixed into the case with typical dial turns and to the movement with three latched dial feet.

Duration

8 days

Movement

The movement with latches to the six typical finned vase-shaped pillars, twin fusees and spring barrels with gut lines, knife-edge verge escapement with bob pendulum. The strike train powers both the hours and the ‘tingtang’ quarters, the alarm train is wound from the dial, between I and II, and its spring barrel is fixed to the inside of the frontplate engaging a crown wheel with the hammer mounted on a verge and sounding on the small bell.

The backplate is symmetrically engraved with typical tulips and scrolling foliage and signed in an arc Joseph Knibb Londini Fecit.

Escapement

Knife-edge verge with short bob pendulum

Strike Type

Rack hour striking with ting-tang quarters and alarm

Provenance

Sotheby’s, 14 May 1987, lot 321; Christie’s, 5 July 2002, lot 89, sold for £117,000;

A very fine Charles II ebony veneered Phase III two-train quarter striking verge table clock with alarm

The John C Taylor collection, inventory no.95 Exhibited

2003, Horological Masterworks, Oxford and Liverpool, exhibit no.40; 2004, Huygens’ Legacy, Paleis Het Loo, Holland, exhibit no.77

Literature

Horological Masterworks, 2003, p.180-183; Huygens’ Legacy, The Golden Age of the pendulum clock, 2004, p.220-221

A

№

94

95

rguably, ‌ one of the most arresting and aesthetically pleasing features to be found on early clocks is a skeletonised dial. Being complicated and time consuming to make, these were rarely used and Knibb thus reserved them for his finest productions, most usually of long duration or with complicated strike work, as seen here.

During the 1680s, as with other makers, Knibb introduced the rack and snail rather than his more usual countwheel governance. Initially, this was specifically to enable pull-quarter repeating, but this clock is unusual in Knibb’s genre, in that it incorporates a rack and snail to govern a much more complicated quarter strike system and, in addition, this was achieved using a single striking train. This also enabled Knibb to use a strike/silent facility that, taken together with the alarm feature, would indicate the clock was also used in a bedroom.

Although dated in Horological Masterworks as a clock of post-1688, comparative inspection of the decorative elements of each component; the repoussé case dome mounts; the early pattern dial spandrels and; the backplate engraving, together suggest this clock is more likely to have been produced in the early 1680s.

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96

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Exhibit № 21

Thomas Tompion, London

Circa 1685

Height

6 foot 9 inches (2057 mm)

Case

The case of ebonised pine in Tompion’s Type 1 format, but with an original forward sliding hood and dial door. The typical main cornice moulding above a frieze with a pierced wood sound fret to the front, supported by mirrored three-quarter Solomonic columns with matching quarter columns to the rear, the hood sides have glazed access doors with concealed ‘secret’ locks, gained only on opening the side-hinged hood door. The hood resting on convex throat mouldings above a rectangular trunk door with three raised panels and a half-round moulded frame. The plain ebonised plinth surmounted by cavetto/ovolo mouldings and resting on four later turned bun feet.

Dial

The 10 inch (254 mm) square gilt brass dial, signed above VI in a scrollengraved reserve Thomas Tompion Londini within the tulip and scrollengraved dial centre, the restored central rosette-engraved silvered alarm disc, set against the tail of the pierced and sculpted blued-steel hand, the silvered chapter ring with a quarter division ring inside large Roman numerals and fleur-de-lys half-hour markers, the corners with singlescrewed cherub & foliate spandrels. The dial slotted and screwed to the posted frame in the usual manner.

Duration

30 hour

Movement

The posted frame movement of Doric columns, with ball feet and square nuts fixing the bottom and top plates, the trains held within three vertical plates, the outer two of cruciform shape; the going train planted to the front with original knife-edge verge escapement and short bob pendulum; the rear strike train governed by a countwheel mounted on the rear cruciform plate and striking on the large bell, held above by a very sturdy steel stand.

The bottom plate drilled for three counterbalanced driving ropes, the rear rope driving an alarm pulley mounted on the inside of the iron backplate.

Escapement

Knife-edge verge with short bob pendulum

Strike Type

Countwheel hour strike with alarm

Provenance

Sotheby's, 6 June 1996, Lot 389;

An exceedingly rare and complete Charles II posted-frame 30 hour verge striking ebonised Type 1 longcase clock with alarm

Private collection UK; Sotheby’s, London, 11 March, 2002, lot 184 sold for £42,197; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.87 Exhibited

2003, Horological Masterworks, Oxford Museum for the History of Science; and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, exhibit no.36; 2013 Time for Everyone Symposium, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena; and NAWCC, Columbia, USA

Literature

Horological Masterworks, 2003, p.166-169; Evans, Thomas Tompion at the Dial and Three Crowns, 2006, listed p.65; Evans, Carter & Wright, Thomas Tompion 300 Years, 2013, p.456-457, listed p.593

Comments

№

98

87

While Tompion’s much prized longcases of 8-day and month duration survive in quantity, his 30-hour productions are scarce, while rarer still are examples complete with their original cases. In humbler pine cases they were more susceptible to damage or loss, and only 4 are known to have survived. Of unusual and particular note in this example, is the ‘secret’ locking system used here on the original access side doors to the hood of the case.

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100

O

f Tompion’s recorded clocks, only 8 large posted-frame 30hour longcase clocks survive, six of these are un-numbered and two are numbered (no.151 & no.257). However, only four of the eight retain their original cases, all constructed in pine; three ebonised and one lacquered. No convincing lantern clocks using these larger castings are known and after no.257 (c.1695 and case missing), only miniature posted-frame hooded wall clocks and lantern clocks survive. However, we are aware that Tompion continued to make 30-hour longcases from a surviving bill to Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford (1661-1724), covering the period from September 1695 to February 1704/5 (British Library Dept. Mss. Add. Ms. 70264, Misc.5), which lists a 30 Houre clock in a black Case that Tompion supplied on 21 August 1701 for £6.

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T

homas Tompion (1639-1713) was the eldest son of Thomas Tompion, blacksmith of Northill Bedfordshire. Despite speculation of a connection with Ahasuerus Fromanteel, it is not recorded to whom he was apprenticed. However, by 1671, he was in London and was admitted after paying a fine as a Brother to the Clockmakers’ Company as a ‘Great’ (turret) clockmaker, finally becoming a full Free Brother in April 1674 by paying a further fine. In March 1674, Robert Hooke had claimed to the fellows of the Royal Society that he could produce an accurate quadrant for less than £10, and set about finding a craftsman who could perform to his exacting standards, finally settling on Tompion in Water Lane. Over the next months Hooke visited repeatedly, revising plans, discussing mechanisms and sharing details from ‘founding shrinking and swelling of metal, bells, screws etc’ to ‘dividing compasses screw upon a rule’. Together Hooke and Tompion worked on the quadrant, which was completed in July 1674 and a plan of it appeared in Hooke’s Animadversions, published the same year.

They then turned their attention to a new balance spring watch. That January, news had arrived at the Society that the pendulum pioneer, Christiaan Huygens, had also devised a spring to regulate watch movements and was looking for a patent, with the backing of some within the Society. Hooke 102

questioned the priority of Huygens’ innovation, claiming he had been working on such devices for decades and reminded the Society that seven years before he had ‘lately contrived a new way of wheel-work for clocks, watches etc. which I think does much excel all the ways yet known.’ He had not produced any clear designs and, distracted by other pursuits, later abandoned the work, nonetheless he now demanded his due. When Hooke went back to the Society records to prove he had already presented his ideas, he found that they were missing. As the Society Secretary and President were promoting Huygen’s right to the patent, he became convinced of a conspiracy. Hooke noted that the debate reached the king, who refused to acknowledge Huygen’s plans but, as a result, a demonstration of the watch itself was necessary to gain the proof; theories were not enough.

On March 8, 1675, Hooke sat with Tompion in Garraways coffee house sketching out a new balance spring: ‘I shewd my way of fixing double springs to the inside of the Ballance spring’. On April 7, they presented their designs to Charles II who was ‘most graciously pleas’d with it and commended it far beyond (Huygens)’ but still the king insisted that they had to complete the watch itself. A month after, they were working with different types of springs and balances and by 17 May, they had a watch to show to the king, which was ‘locked up in his closet’. On the 18th, the king ‘affirmed it very good’ but the next day Hooke was obliged to take the watch back, most probably for adjustments. Meanwhile, Huygens was trying to gain attention with his own watch, which arrived in London in June. However, it had no minute or seconds hands and was not wholly reliable. Hooke returned their improved timepiece to the king in August 1675 and it was later reported to work to within a minute a day, although the arrangement of the balance and spring is still debated. It also had a second’s hand, which outplayed Huygens for good.

In 1674 Charles II was surprised to hear that the French were getting close to solving the longitude problem. In response the king appointed his own Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, and alongside Sir Jonas Moore, they set about plans for constructing a new observatory on the hill above the recently abandoned royal rebuilding project of Greenwich Palace. The task was to create ‘tables of the motions of the heavens, and the Places of fixed stars, so as to find out the much-desired longitude at sea.’ Swiftly, Moore brought in Christopher Wren, Hooke and Tompion to design, build and furnish the new observatory, all done at great speed. There was little money to pay for the building, bricks had to be purloined from the abandoned site nearby, but despite this the main structure was completed in July 1676. Flamsteed was also informed that there was no spare cash beyond his salary for equipment, so he came begging to the Royal Society to borrow Hooke’s quadrant. Two clocks were commissioned at Sir Jonas Moore’s expense from Tompion with 13ft pendulums that ‘make each single vibration in two seconds of time; and their weights need only to be drawn up once

in twelve months.’ The Octagon room at Greenwich was designed with the clock dials framed in the paneling at eye level and a third clock was added later.

After his work at Greenwich, Tompion concentrated on building his clockmaking business for the growing luxury market. On the 24th June 1677, there is an intriguing entry in Hooke’s diary ‘Tompion here instructed him about the Kings striking clock about bells and about the striking by the help of a spring instead of a pendulum, as also the ground and use of the fly and of the swash teeth’. This is significant, not only as it is the first reference of a royal clock commission by Tompion, but also the use of a ‘swash’ rack for striking, which allowed a clock to repeat for the very first time. The only contender for this accolade is the first of his complicated two-train Grande Sonnerie clocks, the Silver Tompion, whose commissioning by Charles II corresponded with another royal clock by Joseph Knibb, dated 1677 (in this collection, inventory no.145). That these two clocks were equivalently decorated, in silver and ebony with velvet dials, seems beyond coincidence and was more likely the king’s own idea.

By 1680, Tompion was already viewed as the clockmaker most recommended in England and he began to number his work to enable batch production and stock control, but also to avoid counterfeiting; particularly of cheap watches from the continent. While never named the Royal Clockmaker, he repeatedly made commissions for successive monarchs, including the year-going Mostyn clock, and when William III died, Tompion had to petition for unpaid receipts of £564.15.0. By the new century his reputation was unassailable and he was without peer; according to one later testimony ‘Mr Tompion... may be looked upon as the first British Mechanic in this art; he is called excellent . . . and ought to have been called so by every man else who is a judge, and has seen his work’.

By now Tompion had large premises in Fleet Street on the corner of Water Lane, where he was employing a plethora of apprentices, journeymen and other workmen. Having become a Freeman of the Clockmakers’ in 1674, he was made Assistant in 1691 and Master in 1703. He took 23 apprentices between 1673 and 1699, one of whom was Edward Banger, who finished his apprenticeship in April 1694. Banger married Tompion’s niece and was taken into partnership in about 1701/2. The partnership broke up with apparent rancor and in c.1707 Banger was dismissed and specifically excluded from any benefit in Tompion’s will. By 1712, he had taken George Graham into partnership, who was married to another Tompion niece and succeeded to the business. Tompion died in 1713 and, by now much feted, he was buried in Westminster Abbey. During his lifetime he set standards of clockmaking that, arguably, were never surpassed and while his extraordinary failsafe repeat-work on his standard clocks is rightly much lauded (see p.188, The Palumbo Tompion, exhibit no.36, inventory no.159), this very rare complete 30-hour ebonised longcase is testimony to his production of humbler clocks of the finest quality.

With his ability to control the quality of every item, whilst using specialist subcontractors to produce vital components, Tompion was arguably the first English industrialist to show the way forward for manufacturing industry. Using his methods, London developed as the clock and watchmaking capital of the world.

Exhibit № 22

Daniel Quare, London

Height

6 feet 10¼ inches (2090 mm)

Case

An exceedingly fine and rare James II walnut veneered all-over panel marquetry month-going longcase clock with pull-quarter repeat

The flat top rising hood with cross-grain walnut mouldings and floral and foliate scroll marquetry panels laid all-over the case sections, including the case sides. With pierced sound frets to the frieze, above brass-capped Solomonic columns and convex throat mouldings, the rectangular trunk door with a glazed lenticle, the matching marquetry panelled plinth raised on turned bun feet.

Dial

The 11 inch (279 mm) square gilt-brass dial signed Dan. Quare, London on the silvered chapter ring with typical half-hour marks, sculpted blued steel hands, the matted centre with typical ring-dot decoration to the centre and within the seconds ring and typically engraved calendar aperture and ring-turned winding holes. The upper spandrels cut to flank the silvered subsidiary dials for pendulum regulation and strike/silent.

Duration

One month

Movement

The massive T-shaped plates with five archetypal Quare workshop ringturned baluster pillars, the going train with anchor escapement, the strike train governed by rack and snail to the front plate, and striking on the large bell above, with typical Quare pull-quarter repeating mechanism sounding on four smaller bells, rack-and-pinion rise-and-fall regulation operated via a subsidiary ring on the dial to the brass-rod pendulum with calibrated rating nut.

Escapement

Anchor

Strike Type

Rack hour striking with Quare’s own pull-quarter repeat

Provenance

Anthony Woodburn, 2004, sold for £120,000;

Circa 1685

The John C Taylor collection inventory no.127 Exhibited

2018, Innovation & Collaboration, London, exhibit no.104

Literature

Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, illustrated p.345

U

nusually this movement includes a pull-quarter repeating system with the quarters sounding on four bells and the hours on a single bell. It also includes rise-and-fall regulation and a strike/silent option, both operated through the dial.

The strike/silent option, combined with quarter repeat, particularly lends credence to its possible original use as a bedroom clock.

The continuation of the marquetry down the sides of the case is a pointer to its quality. Accordingly, this clock is most likely to have been specially commissioned from Quare. The walnut and marquetry case has additional panels of marquetry to the sides of the hood, trunk and base; all-in-all an expensive, as well as highly unusual, additional feature. The movement and dial also confirm its commissioned status, while the dial matting has Quare’s signature ringed decoration, the subsidiaries are most unusual for a longcase, yet almost identical to those found on his finest contemporary table clocks. Meanwhile the movement, from pendulum regulation to Quare’s own rare repeat-work, simply echos this clock’s superiority over his standard productions.

There are only a small number of longcase clocks recorded by other makers that have a pull-quarter repeat feature, including three by Tompion, numbers 13, 64 and 251. Although not seen, by repute a repeating longcase by another maker remains in its original location, together with a series of pulleys up to a bedside pull-repeat cord.

№

104

127

105

D

aniel Quare (1647/8-1724) is thought to have been born in Somerset, but it is not recorded where he learnt his trade. Described as a Great Clockmaker he was admitted to the Clockmakers’ Company as a Brother on 3rd April 1671, the same year as Joseph Knibb and Thomas Tompion. Quare was considerably younger and his rise was slower; whereas Knibb and Tompion were commercial rivals almost from the outset, Quare became Tompion’s great rival from the mid 1680s, and by the 1690s Knibb’s business was in decline. Quare served the Company as Assistant from 1698 and was elected Junior Warden in 1705, rising to Master in 1708. Quare was a Quaker and, although eased by the Toleration Act of 1689, his beliefs often brought him into conflict with the authorities.

Nothing is known of his whereabouts until 1675/6, when he had premises in St. Martin-le-Grand, and by 1681 he was established at Lombard Street. By 1686 he moved to ‘The Dial’ in Exchange Alley, a small thoroughfare much favoured by the horological trade, where he took over the premises of Robert Seignior, changing the sign to ‘The King’s Arms’, and his business truly started to flourish.

In 1687 Edward Barlow (Booth) sought a patent for the sole making and manageing of all pulling repeating pockett Clocks and Watches, but with backing from the Clockmakers’, Quare was encouraged to successfully challenge the application. James II favoured Quare’s design as it had just one push-piece whereas Barlow’s had two, and in any case it was pointed out that ... the same [are] being now made by several clockmakers. Tompion is reputed to have made the watch submitted by Barlow and yet he told Constantyn Huygens, the Dutch statesman and scientist, that he had never seen Barlow, the priest who had invented repeating watches.

In 1691/2 Quare supplied William III with a repeating watch costing £69 17s 6d, and at Hampton Court a fine 10-feet year-going walnut solar/mean-time longcase clock still stands in the king’s bedchamber (RCIN 1040). He is also known to have supplied a small dual balance or pendulum controlled travelling clock (at Windsor, RCIN 30111) and three barometers (two of which are at Hampton Court, RCINs 1033 and 1041). On 4th December 1694, Huygens wrote in his diary that he… was in Kensington. The King called me again as he came out of his Cabinet, saying: “Zuylichem, Zuylichem” [Huygens was Lord of Zuylichem] and showed me a barometer which the Quaker Quare had made for him, and it was such that it could be carried from one place to another. By 2nd August 1695, Daniel Quare had been granted a 14-year patent for his portable pillar barometers... the first ever given for a barometer... and described as ...a portable weather glass or barometer, which may be removed or carried to any place though turned upside down without spilling one drop of quicksilver or letting any air into the tube (see exhibit no.33, inventory no.4002 on p.172).

It was not until circa 1704 that he began to number his clocks in series, which continued after he died and exceeded 300 items, but his business may have retailed twice that number, while the

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last clock recorded signed by Quare without Horseman is no.162.

His business in portable barometers flourished from circa 1695 until circa 1718, and it seems likely the numbering of these began at a similar time, and that series reached at least no.148.

In papers held at Friends House, Quare wrote of his meetings with the newly crowned king, George I… Having had the Experience of my work for many years before he came to the Crown, sent for me… at his Palace, and then offered to make me his Clock and Watchmaker in Ordinary, but I made some hisitation of accepting it, for that I thought I must swear. The king was aware of his religious beliefs and Quare goes on to hint at a position without official title ...the King… bid me tell him, That he would order a Patent and Pension for me to be his Clock and Watchmaker, during life. Whatever the exact relationship, the King told him that he could call to see him at any time and, accordingly ...The Yeoman of the Guard lets me frequently go up without any body for leave, as otherwise he would tho’ persons of quality.

The measure of Quare’s success, advancement and export trade can be seen from the list of guests at his daughter Ann’s wedding in 1705. Envoys from Florence, Hanover, Venice, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark and Prussia were all invited. The weddings of a further son and daughter in 1712 added the Earl of Orrery, the Duke of Argyll and other noble dignitaries to the guest list, whilst in 1715 the Prince and Princess of Wales failed to attend his daughter Elizabeth’s wedding only because parliament forbade royal attendance at dissenting places of worship. Amongst others, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough signed the register and the Princess did attend the subsequent wedding dinner.

An interesting reference concerning Quare’s eyesight, presumably in these latter years but not datable, comes from a letter about the Duke of Argyll, saying that I once saw him come into Quare’s shop, while I was discoursing with the Master of it, about a small Improvement in Watches, not in the Movement Part, but in the striking ... but Quare could not take it well, having just then lost his Sight. [Ipswich Journal, 3:4:1756].

In 1712, his former apprentice Stephen Horseman had married Quare’s niece, Mary Savage, and in circa 1717/18, Quare took Horseman into partnership. He took a total of fifteen apprentices and in 1717, in Philosophical Transactions, one of his workmen, Joseph Williamson, wrote: Having been informed lately of a French book in which the Author speaks of making Clocks to agree with the Sun’s apparent Motion; and suppofeth it was a thing never thought of by any before himfelf... he rebuffs, asserting his authorship on an earlier clock... found in the late King Charles the second of Spain’s cabinet, about the year 1699 or 1700... supplied by... Mr. Daniel Quare... and... This I [Williamson] am well satisfied is a clock of my own making.

Daniel Quare died aged 75 on 21st March 1724, and using the partnership name, Horseman continued the business until he was declared bankrupt (London Gazette, 28th November 1730) but, curiously, it was over two years before the stock was advertised for sale, on 19th April 1733, in the Daily Post: To

be sold by auction for the benefit of the creditors of Quare and Horseman all the clocks, watches, movements, mathematical instruments and sun dials consisting of great variety that were taken by Statute of Bankruptcy in the dwelling house of the late celebrated Mr Quare.

Daniel Quare’s reputation continued long after his death, and association with his name was clearly a powerful marketing tool; twenty-five years later, clocks by the Grignions were signed ... from the late Mr. Quare. Later still, and in the colonies, John Adams wrote a letter to the Boston Gazette, dated 27 January 1766 about the fundamentals of human life ... A clock also has a constitution ... this is the proper business of Quare, Tomlinson and Graham, to execute the workmanship like artists, and come as near to perfection... Over 40 years had passed, but Quare was still held up as being one of the foremost makers of the time.

Adams was later to be 1st Vice-President, 1789-1797, and 2nd President of the United States, 1797-1801.

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Exhibit № 23

The Cornwallis Tompion Circa 1687 from Brome Hall, Suffolk

A unique James II wrought iron and brass 8-day striking turret clock movement by Thomas Tompion, London

Dimensions

Height 22¼ inches (565 mm), width 27⅛ inches (690 mm), depth 15⅛ inches (385 mm)

Dial

The 12½ inch (318 mm) square brass dial, signed Thomas Tompion, Londini Fecit along the lower edge of the dial plate below the silvered chapter ring with Roman hours, sword hilt half hour marks and Arabic minutes. The seconds ring, intersecting at XII, and engraved 6, 12, 18 etc. with every other second divided by an engraved line. Simply shaped but sturdy blued-steel hands and a coarsely matted centre. The dial secured to the frame via four pinned dial feet.

Duration

8 days

Movement

The substantial forged iron frame with rectangular-section bars secured by heavy square nuts, a lower section stamped with an L within an oval (for the Leufsta forge, Uppsala, Sweden). The 8 inch diameter wooden grooved barrels and steel arbors mounted within three pairs of vertical bars; the going-train bars extending above the outline of the frame to accommodate the escape wheel arbor and the pendulum suspension point; the strike-train bar forged in the form of a stylised Y to offer a secure point of fixing for the lower left hand dial foot, all wheels of finely finished brass with four crossings. The going train with anchor escapement and a two-part pendulum rod of heavy flat steel measuring 12 feet 10½ inches in length with a heavy horizontal lenticular lead bob, 13½ inches in diameter with a T-shaped threaded bar, the top of the bob with concentric line decoration and marked 1 to 12 for regulation, the strike train with a 9½ inch brass countwheel to the rear with a curved detent, regulated by a ratchet ‘fly’ terminating in a pair of small shape vanes. Together with three pairs of hands and lead-off work and framed motion work, with the original(?) crank winder.

Overhauled in 2013 by The Cumbria Clock Company and, without altering the original Tompion mechanism, a compound light weight 2-second pendulum was designed to work on the new oak display stand (as pictured opposite).

Escapement

Anchor with 2-second pendulum

Strike Type

Countwheel hour striking

Provenance

Probably originally ordered from Tompion by Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis of Eye (1655-1698) for Brome Hall, Suffolk; Sold at the sale of contents of Brome Hall on 23 June 1953; Sotheby’s, 29 May 1982, Sale of Nine Clocks, lot 6; Bonham’s, 9 July 2013, lot 71, sold for £75,900; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.112

Exhibited

1954, Science Museum, London

Literature

East Anglian Times, September 1953, Nixseaman, ‘Brome Hall Votive Clock and Bell’, further correspondence followed on 18.6.1954 and 25.6.1954.

Horological Journal, Symonds, ‘Thomas Tompion's Turret Clock’, February 1954, p.85-7, further correspondence followed in March 1954, p.172; April 1954, p.243; and June 1954, p.376; Antiquarian Horology, July 1954, p.456, Society meeting held at the Science Museum where the clock was exhibited, becoming the subject of debate, continuing August 1954, p.507, and September 1954, p.50; RW Symonds, Furniture Making in 17th and 18th century England, 1955, p.228-232, figs. 319-28; Antiquarian Horology, 1976, ‘Iron Marks on Turret Clocks’, Berg and Nettell, p.78-81;

№

110

112

Evans, Thomas Tompion at the Dial and Three Crowns, 2006, listed p.65; Evans, Carter & Wright, Thomas Tompion 300 Years, 2013, p.344-345, 602

T

his historically important Tompion turret clock is the only known 8-day example, and one of only two extant turret clocks known to survive by him, the other being the 30-hour Hampton Court clock (also in this collection, inventory no.114).

In 1671, Thomas Tompion was admitted to the Clockmakers’ Company as a ‘Great’ (turret) clockmaker, and it is apparent from contemporary evidence that a small but significant part of his business included the making of turret clocks. None of his recorded public clocks are thought to have survived; in 1674 Tompion supplied a clock for £45 for the Wardrobe Tower at the Tower of London and; in 1688/9 he made a clock for £90 for the new Chelsea Hospital. Two further public clocks are also recorded: one made for the Inner Temple in 1686 at a cost of £60 and; a further clock supplied to Woolwich in 1700/1 for £80 (Thomas Tompion 300 Years, p.593). Highlighting the reputational importance of public clocks, as Christopher Wren was attempting to finalise the west front of St Paul’s Cathedral in 1700, he sought to have a clock installed in the south tower, and such was Tompion’s prestige that newspapers announced the famous watchmaker in Fleet Street, is making a clock... which it is said will go one hundred years without winding up... far finer than the famous clock at Strasburg. Sadly, this sensational but somewhat fantastical turret clock was never made.

By the early 17th century, ironworks all around Europe were producing steel using the cementation process, by carburising iron. With a background in smithing, Tompion would have understood and appreciated the properties of the best irons and steels; English iron, mostly from the Weald of Kent and the Forest of Dean, had high levels of impurities and its performance was limited. By the 1630s the finest iron in Europe was produced in Sweden, from where it was being exported to London in large quantities and converted to steel locally.

Swedish law required each iron bar to be stamped with the forge’s mark for quality control. It was graded into ‘first’ and ‘second oregrounds’, after the Öregrund area, and amongst the former was the Leufsta forge (now Lövsta). In their article in Antiquarian Horology, 1976, ‘Iron Marks on Turret Clocks’, Berg and Nettell discuss the Leufsta forge, saying the finest iron in Sweden came from this forge and was much sought after by the steel makers in Sheffield. It is likely that both surviving turret clocks were actually made in Tompion’s workshop, and the Leufsta forge stamp (L within an oval) indicates that he was using iron bar of the very finest Swedish quality.

For normal domestic clockmaking each bar would have been cut and worked, resulting in the loss of the stamp, but in the instance of this clock the iron bar was used in its raw state and the stamp survives (as does a stamp on the only other surviving turret clock from Hampton Court, also in this collection, inventory no.114).

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Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis of Eye (16551698) was descended from a successful London vintner and the family had resided at Brome Hall in Suffolk since the early 15th century. His ancestor, Sir Thomas Cornwallis (1518-1604), had rebuilt Brome Hall in the mid 16th century, and was the last Treasurer of Calais before its recapture by the French in 1558, and one amusing saying of the time goes: Sir Thomas Cornwallis, what got ye for Calais? Brome Hall, Brome Hall, as large as a Palais!

Aged 18, Charles Cornwallis succeeded his father as 3rd Baron in 1673, and that year he also married Elizabeth Fox (d.1681). He was to become one of the most politically accomplished men of his age, but his path to success was not initially smooth, and aged 21 he was indicted for murder.

While drunk and disorderly on the night of 18th May 1676, Lord Cornwallis and Charles Gerrard threatened a night watchman who defended himself capably, however two young men were passing by and intervened. Gerrard attacked one of them, Robert Clark of Whitehall, breaking his neck and killing him. The fate of Gerrard is not apparently documented, but later that year Cornwallis was tried separately for the murder of Clark before the Lord High Steward (Heanage Finch, 1st Baron Finch and owner of the Jones longcase in this collection, inventory no.119), together with various Justices and 35 Peers of the Realm, at Westminster Hall.

In An Impartial Account of the Trial of Lord Conwallis, a pamphlet anonymously published in 1679, but thought to be

by Cornwallis himself, is the following account of the verdict… the Prifoner came to the Bar, and the Deputy Lieutenant of the Tower held the edge of the Axe towards him, while my Lord High Steward fpake thus unto him… My Lord Conwallis, you have been Indicted for Murder, pleaded Not guilty, put your felf upon your Peers ; and your Peers upon confideration of the whole matter, have acquitted you, and found you not guilty, fo you are to be difcharged… although in fact, six of his Peers had found him guilty of manslaughter. Meanwhile, the notorious memoirs of Philibert, Count de Gramont (1621-1707) gives us further insight into the character of the young tear-away: Lord Cornwallis had married the daughter of Sir Stephen Fox, treasurer of the King’s household, one of the richest and most regular men in England. His son-in-law [Lord Cornwallis] on the contrary was a young spendthrift, was very extravagant, loved gaming, lost as much as anyone would trust him, but was not quite so ready in paying. His father-in-law disproved of his conduct, paid his debts and gave him a lecture.

Cornwallis clearly took heed and his son was placed in the care of his father-in-law, Sir Stephen Fox. In May 1688 he judiciously remarried to Anne Scott, 1st Duchess of Buccleuch, widow of James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, and in celebration he may have ordered this Tompion turret clock, later followed by the Brome Hall Cornwallis Wynne sundial (see the following exhibit no.24 on p.116, inventory no.159). By 1689 and now aged 34, Cornwallis had been constituted Lord Lieutenant of Suffolk, and he is said to have gained 'the especial favour of

King William', who called him to the Privy Council in 1691/2, soon making him First Lord of the Admiralty in 1692/3. By 1697 he had come by the lucrative position of High Steward of the Corporation of Ipswich, however after a short but meteoric political career, Cornwallis died suddenly in 1698, aged 43. His son by his first wife, also Charles, succeeded him as 4th Baron Cornwallis, inheriting Brome Hall.

A view of Brome Hall in the County of Suffolk was engraved

by Jan Kip (1652/3-1722) for Britannia Illustrata of 1708, and on the façade of the central tower there are four central roundels, one accommodating a clock dial. An indication that there was probably a clock at the house beforehand comes in the form of an Elizabethan bell bearing the cast inscription Thomas Cornwaleis me debet 1592 above the family crest. RW Symonds suggests that this clock was ordered from Tompion in about 1690 to replace the Elizabethan clock, and that it was supplied with three dials for three sides of the central tower (Furniture Making in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century England, 1955).

Jeremy Evans writes that while some contemporary accounts

114

from Brome Hall have survived, those for the period 1665-1689 are missing, which are the ones most likely to have revealed details of its acquisition, however the 1689-1720 accounts do show that a turret clock was in use in 1699. After the death of the last Marquis of Cornwallis in 1823, Brome Hall was sold to Matthias Kerrison and in 1840 his son, General Sir Edward Kerrison Bt., carried out extensive remodeling, removing the Elizabethan wings as well as the top of the central tower.

A turret was built over the entrance to the new stable block, where the clock was set up, using the Cornwallis bell, with three lozenge-shaped dials. There it remained until its removal for sale on 23rd June 1953.

The lead-off work for three dials is believed to be original and, from available evidence, it seems most likely that the clock was acquired by Charles, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, between 16861688 and probably installed with its three dials in the central tower, possibly to celebrate his marriage in May 1688 to Anne Scott, 1st Duchess of Buccleuch.

For a short biography of Tompion see page 102.

Exhibit № 24

The Cornwallis Wynne Sundial

Circa 1695 from Brome Hall, Suffolk

Dimensions

Sundial 27 inches (686 mm) diameter, plinth 51 inches (1295 mm) high

Dial

The sundial signed Henricus Wynne Londini Fecit and constructed for latitude 52° 24’ N. Bearing the Arms and motto of the Cornwallis family.

The bronze gnomon is floral border engraved and fixed to the 27 inch circular cast-bronze dial plate by hidden rivets. The dial plate is engraved with various scales and tables, the primary hour-scale (by the inclined gnomon shadow) in the outer ring being graduated in one-minute intervals, within which there are inner rings calibrated to indicate direction in terms of azimuth or bearing. The planispheric projection (by the vertical gnomon shadow) is also engraved with an inner and outer hour-scale, graduated with hour-angle divisions (meridians) and parallels of declination to the limits of 23½ degrees north or south of the celestial equator or equinoctial line. Two engraved arcs, representing the ecliptic, the apparent path of the sun, extend from the points where the 6 o’clock meridians or hourcircles cut the equinoctial and graze the north/south extremities of the projection at the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The signs of the zodiac are inscribed at their respective intervals along these two arcs. At the east/ west extremities there are date-scales, for months and days, to determine the date from an observation. Conversely, the date being known, the sundial may be readily orientated and aligned in the meridian, without recourse to the more usual and protracted methods involved in setting up an ordinary horizontal dial. Other scales engraved on the dial include a semi-circular lunar hour-scale (situated within the arc of the inner hourscale of the planispheric projection), by which the time may be deduced from an observation of the moon, and two sets of altitude scales, for use with a pair of compasses or dividers. The names of certain fixed stars are inscribed within the boundaries of these scales, together with the values of their respective hour-angles or angular distances measured eastwards of the so-called first point of Aries, the vernal equinox. On the planispheric projection this is the point, at the eastern extremity of the grid system, on the date-scale in March, at which the ecliptic and equinoctial intersect.

By knowing the angular distance of the sun from this point, for a given date, the time of night may be deduced from the position of one or more of these stars. Two calendrical tables are also engraved on the dial plate on either side of the Cornwallis coat-of-Arms.

A very fine and rare William III bronze double horizontal sundial

by Henry Wynne, London, on a volute carved stone plinth

Base

The carved stone base, in the style of Daniel Marot (1661-1752), with an octagonal moulded edge top, inset for the large circular dial, above four volute carved supports with acanthus terminals flanking scallop shells and foliage. The volutes resting on a further octagonal moulded base, leading down to a substantial square foot.

Provenance

Probably originally ordered from Wynne by the 3rd Baron Cornwallis of Eye (1655-1698) for Brome Hall in Suffolk, perhaps to go with the turret clock ordered from Tompion (see previous exhibit no.23, inventory no.112); Summers Place Auctions, 21 October 2014, lot 12, sold for £26,000; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.159

№

116

159

Exhibited

2018, Innovation & Collaboration, London, exhibit no.105

Literature

Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, illustrated p.346

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T

he double horizontal sundial is a dual instrument indicating both time and the direction of the sun. The primary time instrument working from the fiducial edge of the inclined part of the gnomon, which lies parallel to the earth’s polar-axis and aligned in the north/south plane of the meridian. The resulting shadow indicates the time against the outer hour-scale on the dial plate, in hours and minutes. The secondary ‘Sun’ instrument is the sharp vertical edge of the triangular-shaped support to the gnomon, which lies in the axis of the observer’s zenith, and the shadow of which indicates the position of the sun at the point where the straight edge of the shadow intersects the hour-line on a planispheric projection of the celestial sphere, corresponding to the time indicated on the main dial. This secondary observation provides various astronomical data, including the sign of the zodiac in which the sun is situated, the times of sunrise and sunset, the length of the day in terms of the number of hours in the day from sunrise to sunset, the altitude and azimuth (direction) of the sun, together with the means to determine the time when certain ‘fixed’ stars would transit the meridian.

The double horizontal sundial was the invention of the mathematician William Oughtred (1575-1660) and produced for him by his friend and the most notable instrument maker of his day Elias Allen (c.1588-1654) a freeman and Master (16378) of the Clockmakers Company. His apprentice and successor was Ralph Greatorex (1625-1712), who is mentioned in John Aubrey’s Brief Lives as also a great friend of Oughtred. In turn, Greatorex’s first apprentice was Henry Wynne (fl.16541709) who, working near the Sugar-loaf in Chancery lane, became distinguished for the excellence of his mathematical instruments and, in 1690, became Master of the Clockmaker’s Company.

From the 1670s Wynne was producing the finest and largest double-horizontal sundials known in this country, which are in any case rare since their construction requires a high degree of mathematical knowledge and considerable skill in the accurate engraving of the planispheric projection. One of his standard dials was supplied to Charles II, probably in 1679, and can be found in the royal collection at Windsor Castle (RCIN 30901).

Although probably ordered by Charles, 3rd Baron Cornwallis (1655-1698), the arms on the dial are those of his ancestor, Sir John Cornwallis, who died in 1544 (impaled with the families of Bucton, Braham, Tyrell and Stanford, his antecedents by marriage) and it is possible these arms were taken from an earlier published book, or based on a Cornwallis tomb in Brome Church. Cornwallis is said to have been in the especial favour of King William and was his 1st Lord of the Admiralty 1692/3. He died in 1698 to be succeeded by his son, Charles Cornwallis, 4th Baron Cornwallis of Eye. For further information on Brome Hall and Charles, 3rd Baron Cornwallis (1655-1698), see p.112.

A view of Brome Hall was published in 1708, and it seems Cornwallis ordered this sundial for the gardens in c.1695 to go with the Cornwallis Tompion clock that appears to have been installed in the main tower in c.1687/8 (see the previous

exhibit no.24, inventory no.112), and at this time, Wynne was held in almost as high esteem for this particular type of double horizontal sundial, as Tompion was for his clocks.

The plinth is in the style of Daniel Marot, who had arrived in London in 1694 and, although it has losses and repairs consistent with its age and use outside, it appears to be contemporary with, and was certainly bespoken for, Wynne’s unusually large dial.

There are threaded holes for levelling screws on the underside of the dial, but no provision has been made in the top of the plinth, instead there are three self-draining slots, each containing a bronze ball-bearing on which the dial rests and is orientated.

Begging the question as to whether the dial threads are later or were never put to use?

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Exhibit № 25

The Hague Tompion, No.258 Circa 1695

Height

11¾ inches (298 mm)

Case

The well-proportioned mid-sized Phase 2 case with ebony veneers onto an oak carcass. The original ‘out-size’ thistle-bud handle, surmounts a cushiondome top above typical Tompion architectural top mouldings. The front door has a fine ebony sound fret inset in the top rail and both door stiles have Tompion’s own gilt-brass foliate-drop escutcheons, the sides inset with matching sound frets above glazed apertures, the rear with an inset glazed door with a mitred half-round moulded outer frame. The front door sill is correctly punch-numbered 258, below the mask that is inset with a further pierced-wood fret, and the whole case is raised on conforming ebony mouldings and typical ebony block feet.

Dial

The 5½ by 6 inch (140 by 152 mm) gilt-brass dial has three latched dial feet, and is signed Thomas Tompion LONDINI Fecit within a palm frond cartouche by Graver 155, flanked by subsidiary silvered rings for strike/silent and pendulum regulation. The typical silvered-brass chapter ring has an internal quarter division ring inside the Roman hours with sword-hilt halfhour markers, the outer with Arabic minutes and cross half-quarter markers between, with delicate pierced blued steel hands. The finely matted centre has a D-ended mock pendulum aperture, the lower gilt-brass spandrels are early-pattern winged cherubs and single-screwed, the upper spandrels are matching half-versions.

Duration

8 days

Movement

The substantial mid-size movement held by seven latched finned baluster pillars with twin fusees and spring barrels; the going train with pivoted verge escapement and brass rod lenticular pendulum suspended from a cranked-brass regulation bar atop the plates, with pinion adjustment. The strike train governed by a rack-and-snail sounding the hours on the larger porkpie bell, the quarters struck on the smaller bell using Tompion’s own failsafe system, with single-cock and post interlocking blued steel levers, pulled from either side of the case. The backplate, by Graver 155, is signed in the lower centre Thomas Tompion LONDINI Fecit within an egg-and-dart framed oval cartouche and is profusely engraved with scrolling foliage and flower garlands, all within a scored line border, and punch-numbered 258 at the base. The movement is secured within the case by means of two steel bolts into the base pillars.

Escapement

Pivoted verge with spring suspended lenticular pendulum

Strike Type

Hour strike with Tompion’s own pull-quarter repeat

Provenance

Private collection Holland, reputedly a marriage gift to the family in 1908, by descent until sold;

A very fine William III Phase 2 ebony and gilt-brass mounted striking verge table clock with pull-quarter repeat, the first of the mid-size series, by Thomas Tompion, London

Glerum Auctioneers, The Hague, 18 December 1990, lot 2056, to an unknown purchaser; Sotheby’s, Important Clocks, 11 Mar 2002, lot 180, sold for £205,556; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.85 Exhibited

2003, Horological Masterworks, Oxford Museum for the History of Science and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, exhibit no.46; 2004, Huygens’ Legacy, Paleis Het Loo, Holland, exhibit no.82

№

120

85

121

Literature

Horological Masterworks, 2003, p.204-207; Huygens’ Legacy, The Golden Age of the Pendulum Clock, 2004, p.238-239; Opwindende Klokken, 2004; Evans, Thomas Tompion at the Dial and Three Crowns, 2006, listed p.76; Evans, Carter & Wright, Thomas Tompion 300 Years, 2013, p.344-345, listed p.602.

Garnier & Carter, The Golden Age of English Horology, 2015, ‘Tompion’s miniature and mid-sized series of domestic table clocks’, p.144-149

Comments

T

As the first of a new model of mid-size table clocks, it is possible that no.258 was a special order, and from the evident scratch marks it appears to have been exported direct to Holland. There it apparently stayed for the intervening 300 years, passing in 1908 to the last Dutch owners as a rather generous wedding present, and only recently returning to England.

ompion first tackled clocks of smaller dimensions in circa 1683, with the beautiful harlequin pair of table clocks housed in gilt-brass and blued-steel cases, no.21, and the Lonsdale Tompion no.23 (for both see Thomas Tompion 300 Years, p.416-421). A year or so later Tompion then produced two standard wooden cased Phase 1 miniatures, no.47 and no.51 (see Thomas Tompion 300 Years, p.324-325).

However, these were all timepieces and it was not until the early 1690s that he would produce striking examples while working on Royal commissions, including the silver and brass cased balance/pendulum control campaign clock for William III, and the smallest recorded wooden cased table clock, no.222, for Queen Mary. It may be that these diminutive commissions encouraged Tompion to offer smaller sizes of standard table clocks incorporating his superb pull quarter repeat system but, whatever the reason, from circa 1693 Tompion first began to produce miniatures, soon followed by mid-size versions.

The mid-size domestic striking and repeating table clock series was produced between circa 1695 and 1713. The current clock, no.258, is not only the first, but also the only example decorated by arguably Tompion’s finest engraver, G.155, who also decorated the year-going Mostyn Tompion (British Museum no.1982,0702.1). Apart from the necessity of having sets of smaller-scale movement component castings, Tompion also had to consider the implications of scaling down his dials and cases. The case was reduced in size accordingly but, without alternatives for the first one, he used existing patterns for the mounts. The dial has ‘winged cherub’ spandrels, which were almost obsolete on his usual size of Phase 2 clocks by this time, and the case is surmounted by a standard ‘thistle bud’ handle.

These smaller clocks have every element scaled down beautifully and in proportion, so that it is quite difficult to ascertain their size when looking at an image or photograph, but this example in particular affords us a fascinating insight

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123

into Tompion’s thought process; it appears that no.258 and no.286 were the result of an initial ‘batch’ of castings, but he would wait almost 7 years before finishing no.286. However, he then produced a new and smaller ‘foliate-tied’ handle especially for the mid-size cases that followed, the first used on no.286, finished c.1702. As time progressed further, Tompion used some standard mounts but also produced additional ones for specific use with his mid-size clocks: • Cherub’s head spandrel (seen here), superseded by ornate cherub’s head spandrels • Thistle bud handle (seen here), superseded in 1702 by foliate-tied handles • Foliate drop (seen here) or scroll escutcheons • Satyr mask door bottom rail mount As was Tompion’s practice, having perfected the mid-size movements, they were made to a standard pattern that hardly changed. They were produced in batches, so each could be

finished as and when required. Over the whole period of their manufacture, the mid-size clocks show the usual developments in production at the same time as they can be seen on his full size examples - changes in engravers as well as engraving patterns, modifications to the repeat levers from a cock and post to double-cock and the introduction of recesses to the base of the plates, while the cases progress to his Phase 3 inverted bell top format.

There are only 12 mid-size clocks recorded by Tompion, and this would also become the favoured size for Graham’s standard table clock. Graham continued to use the ‘foliate-tied’ handles, the ‘ornate cherub’s head’ spandrels and the ‘scroll’ escutcheons on the majority of his Phase 3 table clocks up until his death in 1751, by then 50 years after they were first introduced.

For a short biography of Tompion see page 102, and for a brief explanation of his striking and pull-quarter repeat system, see page 189.

Tompion’s mid-size striking table clocks, in start date order: SIG. NO. DATE

CASE

TT 258

c.1695

Ebony Ph.2. Thistle bud handle. Foliate drop escutcheons.

T&B 286

c.1697 fin. c.1702

TT 369

c.1702

Ebony Ph.2. Foliate-tied handle. Scroll escutcheons. Satyr door mount.

Ebony Ph.2. Silver mounted Foliate-tied handle. Foliate scroll fret. Scroll escutcheons. Satyr door mount.

TT 376

c.1702

TT 391

c.1703

T&B 430

c.1705

T&B 445

c.1706

T&B 454

c.1707

TT 461

c.1707 fin. c.1711

Ebony Ph.2. Foliate-tied handle. Foliate scroll fret. Scroll escutcheons. Satyr door mount.

Ebony Ph.3. Raised mouldings. Foliate-tied handle. Scroll escutcheon.

T&B 467

c.1708

Ebony Ph.3. Foliate-tied handle. Scroll escutcheons.

TT 515

c.1711

T&G 545

c.1711 fin. c.1713

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Ebony Ph.2. Foliate-tied handle. Scroll escutcheons.

Ebony Ph.2. Seatboard no.577. Foliate-tied handle. Scroll escutcheons.

Ebony Ph.2. Foliate-tied handle. Mask foliage & fruit fret.

Scroll escutcheons. Satyr door mount.

Ebony Ph.3. Foliate-tied handle. Scroll escutcheons.

Ebony Ph.3. Raised mouldings. Foliate-tied handle. Shell & eagle head fret. Scroll escutcheons. Satyr door mount.

Ebony Ph.3. Raised mouldings. Foliate-tied handle.

Foliate scroll fret. Scroll escutcheons. Satyr door mount

DIAL Ph. 2 rect. dial. G.155. Subs: pend reg. (inner div.) & S/N Mock pend. Winged cherub spandrels.

Ph. 2 rect. dial. G.195. Subs: pend reg. (outer div.) & S/N Mock pendulum. Date sq. Ornate cherub’s head spandrels Ph. 2 rect. dial. G.195. Subs: pend reg. (outer div.) & S/N Mock pendulum. Ornate cherub’s head spandrels (silver) Ph. 2 rect. dial. G.195. Subs: pend reg. (outer div.) & S/N Mock pendulum. Ornate foliate spandrels Ph. 2 rect. dial. G.195. Subs: pend reg. (outer div.) & S/N Mock pendulum. Date sq. Ornate foliate spandrels Ph. 2 rect. dial. G.195. Subs: pend reg. (outer div.) & S/N Mock pendulum. Ornate foliate spandrels Ph. 2 rect. dial. G.195. Subs: pend reg. (outer div.) & S/N Mock pendulum. Ornate cherub’s head spandrels Ph. 2 rect. dial. G.195. Subs: pend reg. (outer div.) & S/N Mock pendulum. Ornate cherub’s head spandrels Ph. 2 rect. dial. G.195. Subs: pend reg. (outer div.) & S/N Mock pendulum. Ornate cherub’s head spandrels Ph. 2 rect. dial. G.515. Subs: pend reg. (outer div.) & S/N Mock pendulum. Ornate cherub’s head spandrels Ph. 2 rect. dial. G.515. Subs: pend reg. (outer div.) & S/N Mock pendulum. Ornate cherub’s head spandrels Ph. 2 rect. dial. G.515. Subs: pend reg. (outer div.) & S/N Lozenge half hour marks. Mock pend. Ornate cherub’s head spandrels.

MOVEMENT G.155. Cock and post levers.

G.195. Double cocked levers.

G.195. Double cocked levers.

G.195. Double cocked levers.

G.195. Double cocked levers.

G.195. Double cocked levers.

G.195. Double cocked levers.

G.515. Double cocked levers.

G.515. Double cocked levers.

G.515. Double cocked levers. Plates recessed.

G.515. Double cocked levers. Plates recessed G.515. Double cocked levers. Plates recessed

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127

Exhibit № 26

Daniel Quare, London

Circa 1695

Height

8 feet 6 inches (2591 mm)

Case

The flat top German purpose-made case with brass mouldings around the scarlet turtleshell Boulle inlay with Berainesque première partie brass and pewter marquetry, pierced brass sound frets to the frieze above brasscapped Doric columns, concave throat mouldings, the rectangular trunk door with brass edge moulding and glazed wheatear-moulded lenticle, the matching Boulle inlaid plinth raised on an extended skirting with two bun feet at the front but none at the rear; its heavy weights always ensuring the case is supported against the wall behind.

Dial

The 14 inch (355 mm) square gilt-brass dial signed Dan. Quare London on the silvered chapter ring, blued steel hands, the minute hand counterpoised, the matted centre with low and typically ring-turned winding holes, urnand-scroll spandrels

Duration

One year

Movement

The massive 8 by 10 inch (203 by 254 mm) movement with six ring turned baluster pillars, typical of Quare’s workshop, with individual sub-assemblies for both seven-wheel trains, the going with anchor escapement, strike train governed by an external rack to the front plate.

Escapement

Anchor

Strike Type

Hour rack strike

Provenance

Sotheby’s, London. 20 November 1936, lot 92, the property of a lady; G H Bell, Winchester, 1971; Christie’s, 7 October 1987, lot 121; Island Auction Rooms, 7 August 2008, sold for £282,300; The John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.179

Exhibited

2018, Innovation & Collaboration, London, exhibit no.109

Literature

Antiquarian Horology September 1971, G H Bell advert on back cover;

An exceptionally important William III turtleshell, brass and pewter inlaid Boulle, year-going, striking longcase clock for the Continental market

Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, illustrated p.358-9

D

№

128

179

aniel Quare was the most prolific maker of year going clocks of his generation and, conforming with the outline in Garnier & Carter, The Golden Age of English Horology, 2015, p.284-5, this is a fascinating example of his highly successful export trade. The case is of apparent princely Germanic manufacture, its construction using dowels rather than English clout-head wrought iron nails, while the case interior was also papered in the 18th century, thus the movement appears to have been ordered for casing locally, where it probably stayed for 100 years or more. It compares closely with a cabinet on stand with domed top of similar Boulle work illustrated in M RiccardiCubitt, The Art of the Cabinet, 1992, col. pl.56, conceivably from the same German or Austrian princely workshop. Riccardi-Cubitt also there comments ‘in Germany Boulle work assumed an impressive richness and grandeur, being used... to express the pride of ruling princes’. It is likely that Quare would have specified the internal dimensions, particularly a height for the drop of the year-going weights. With only 10 days spare capacity, it is apparent that the local cabinetmaker reduced this to a minimum, making the case pleasingly smaller than Quare’s English-made year-going examples which, being taller, tend to allow for a greater drop and thus more spare capacity past the year-duration. The majority of Quare’s long duration movements are timepieces only and his six-month clocks usually have six wheels, while the year-going clocks tend to have seven, as with this example. But this also exceptionally has a strike train, requiring 58,500 blows on the bell in a year from a 22kg weight.

For a short biography of Daniel Quare see page 106.

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hen this clock was acquired in 2008, the case was in a perilous state with a substantial proportion of the delicate inlay lifting and with poor repairs. After 2 years of careful deliberation, the decision was made to conserve and restore the previously rich inlay, using the foremost Boulle conservation workshop, working on projects for the Victoria & Albert and Rijks Museums. An open-ended conservation program followed specifically without a fixed budget to avoid any compromise. This enabled the conservers to stabilise every element of the delicate case veneers and restore the losses and poor repairs of the past. Completed in 2015, after five years of continuous conservation work, the results are quite astounding and superb; the case is now in a condition that reflects its importance and, in every way, has been returned to its former ‘Princely’ grandeur.

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Exhibit № 27

Daniel Quare, London

Circa 1695

Height

14¼ inches (362 mm)

Case

The oak carcass veneered in ebony, the cushion-domed top with foliate scroll mounts to all four sides centred by addorsed animal heads and surmounted by a gilt-metal knopped handle with Quare’s distinctive ringturned decoration and matching turned pommels. The full-height dial door with a pierced sound fret to the top rail, and gilt-metal Tompion-pattern foliate-drop escutcheons with a later ‘winged’ mount on the bottom rail.

The case sides with pierced sound frets over rectangular panels, the whole standing on gilt-metal turned bun feet.

Dial

The 6½ by 7¼ inch (165 by 184 mm) rectangular gilt-brass dial signed Dan. Quare, London within the foliate-scroll engraved band below the strike/ silent lever and above the silvered chapter ring having triple sword-hilt halfhour marks, pierced blued-steel hands, the matted centre with calendar aperture above VI and mock-pendulum aperture below XII. The winding apertures with Quare’s familiar workshop ring turns.

Duration

8 days

Movement

The substantial twin chain fusee movement with six typical Quare ring turned baluster pillars, the going train with knife-edge verge escapement, the strike train governed by a rack and snail and hour-striking on the large bell above, with Quare’s own pull-quarter repeating mechanism sounding on four smaller bells with a cocking lever mounted on the backplate, the backplate itself engraved with a line border and symmetrical, entwining, foliate scrolls and signed Daniel Quare LONDON in a central wheatearbordered oval.

Escapement

Knife-edge verge with short bob pendulum

Strike Type

Rack hour striking with Quare’s own pull-quarter repeat

Provenance

Partridge, New Bond Street, sold 1991 for £29,500;

A good William III ebony veneered striking verge table clock with pullquarter repeat

The John C Taylor collection, inventory no.6 Literature

Dawson, Drover & Parkes, Early English Clocks, 1982, movement illus. and desc. p.372-375 pl.532-536, case illus. p.479 pl.710

Comparative Garnier & Carter, The Golden Age of English Horology, 2015, Quare chapter Literature p.261-312

№

134

6

135

T

his can be described as an archetypal pre-numbered Quare table clock, from his own workshops with an elongated rectangular dial, signed to the top, and dating to c.1695. This clock was made while he was still producing square dials and prior to introducing arched dials in c.1704. The movement exhibits Quare’s workshop ringed pillars and his familiar pullquarter repeat system, with separate in-line hammer arbors and cocking lever to the backplate. The case too is archetypal and adorned with his own dome mounts and handle, but it is interesting to note that the door escutcheons seen here are of Tompion’s foliate drop pattern, which was in use between c.1693 and c.1704; the bottom rail mount is a later addition.

As discussed in The Golden Age of English Horology, Quare was the consummate businessman and, unlike Tompion, he was happy to make a profit from signing and retailing clocks from other makers. Mostly these would have been at a lower price point than his own workshop clocks, such as this example, which are of a higher specification and, therefore, cost.

Overall, this case is of Quare’s highest quality, which compares favorably with the cases being produced for his great rival, Thomas Tompion. As the leading clockmakers they were both charging the same amount for their repeating spring clocks, which was almost double that of other London clockmakers: On Saturday 28th November 1690, Constantyn Huygens Jnr. (1628-1697), the statesman, poet and elder brother of Christiaan, noted in his diary (now held at Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague): Afterwards we went to see Lownes (probably Jonathan Lowndes), the watchmaker in Pall Mall, where I saw some repeating clocks. He was asking £16 sterling for one that went for eight days, struck the hours and repeated. ... Then rode to a watchmaker called Daniel Quare, alias the Quaker, who lives in Exchange Alley, near the Royal Exchange. He was asking £28 for one that did the same thing; it would be 10 or 12 days before it was made.

Two days later Huygens wrote: In the afternoon I went to see Tompion, and bought a repeating standing clock from him for £17, returning the silver one (watch) I had had from him, for £11... which added up to the same price as a repeating table clock from Daniel Quare, £28.

For a short biography of Daniel Quare see page 106.

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137

Exhibit № 28

The Milbourn Tompion

No.333, Circa 1699

A very fine William III archetypal Type 3 burr walnut month-going longcase clock by Thomas Tompion, London

Height

7 feet 8 inches (2337 mm)

Case

The Type 3 burr walnut case with forward sliding hood, the caddy top flanked by two brass ball and flame finials, pierced walnut sound frets to the front friezes above brass-capped Doric columns flanking the hood door, concave throat mouldings, the rectangular trunk door punch-numbered 333 on the leading edge, cross-banded plinth raised on a walnut skirting. The backboard with a peened iron bracket in the usual manner to secure the movement.

Dial

The 11 inch (279 mm) fire-gilded brass dial signed Tho: Tompion Londini Fecit beneath the silvered chapter ring with Roman hours and sword-hilt half-hours, Arabic minutes and cross half-quarters, and finely pierced blued steel hands.

The matted centre with seconds ring and pin-adjusted calendar aperture, shuttered winding holes, shutter lever to left edge of dial between IX and X, double-screwed gilt-brass Indian mask & scroll spandrels, with engraved scrolling foliage between, attributed to Graver 195, four latched dial feet.

Duration

One month

Movement

The substantial and archetypal month-going movement with six latched finned baluster pillars, lower centre missing. The going train with anchor escapement, bolt and shutter maintaining power, and brass-rod pendulum with lenticular bob and calibrated rating nut. The strike train governed by a large external countwheel. The backplate punch-numbered 333 to the bottom centre, with two original brass cased weights.

Escapement

Anchor

Strike Type

Countwheel hour strike

Provenance

Sotheby’s, 20 November 1936, lot 92, property of a lady, sold for 580 gns; Sir Eric Milbourn, sold Christie’s, 8 June 1967, for £2400; Private collection UK, sold Christie’s, 13 Nov 2000, lot 104, for £311,750; The John C Taylor collection, inventory no.60

Exhibited

2003, BADA, Duke of Yorks, Masterworks promotional stand; 2003, Horological Masterworks, Oxford Museum for the History of Science and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, exhibit no.47; 2013, Time for Everyone Symposium USA, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena and NAWCC Columbia, PA

Literature

Horological Masterworks, 2003, p.208-211; J L Evans, Thomas Tompion at the Dial and Three Crowns, 2006, listed p.77; Evans, Carter & Wright, Thomas Tompion 300 years, 2013, p.474-475, 604

T

№

138

60

ompion catered for a variety of customers (royal, noble and otherwise) with differing means and requirements; he produced longcase clocks from humble 30-hour examples (see the posted-frame 30 hr. longcase, exhibit no.21 on p.98, inventory no.87), through to complicated commissions (the Grande Sonnerie Taylor Tompion no.387, inventory no.22. See pages 168-169). To collectors, clocks sitting within the number series (c.1682 onwards) are generally the most sought after and the longer the duration (from 30-hour, 8-day to month-going) the more coveted they become.

Tompion introduced his desirable ‘fully-developed’ Type 3 longcase, with forward sliding hoods and a hood door, in c.1697. All originally had large caddy tops and because of their height, the majority have suffered losses.

Of those Type 3 Tompion longcases sold at auction since the 1970s, surprisingly few (only 6 in total) have survived without losses or alterations. That the Milbourn Tompion no.333, a top-of-the-range burr walnut month-going clock, is complete and in superb condition, gave rise to an auction record price when it last sold at Christies in 2000.

For a short biography of Tompion see page 102

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142

143

Exhibit №. 29

The Pelham Tompion Sundial

Circa 1710

Dimensions

12 inches (305 mm) square

Description

The dial signed Tho Tompion London and constructed for latitude 50° 54’ N. The heavy cast-bronze gnomon decorated with finely engraved scrollwork, 7⅛ inches (180 mm) high and riveted to the square cast-bronze dial plate beneath.

The plate itself very finely engraved with scroll and strapwork spandrels to the corners and an hour-scale reading to one-minute, with equation tables within, and the following instructions above the gnomon for setting the time:

A very fine and rare Queen Anne bronze square horizontal garden sundial engraved with equation of time and setting instructions by Thomas Tompion, London

Set the watch so much faster or slower than the time by the Sun, according to the Table for the y day of the month when you set it; and if the watch go true , the difference of it from the Sun any day afterward will be the same with the Table The dial reads from the outside and, when positioned correctly, North to South.

The hour scale with decorative curl-scroll finished ends, has internal rings divided for half-quarters as well as the quarters, the scale centre with Roman hours and decorative fleur-de-lys half-hour markers between and laid out clockwise; from IIII to XII for the morning on the West side and; XII to VIII for the afternoon on the East side. The scale’s outer division ring graduated to one-minute and marked with Arabic numerals every 10 minutes. The centre engraved with an equation of time scale, showing adjustment from true-solar to mean-solar time, in minutes and seconds, every two days of the year; from January to June on one side of the gnomon and; July to December on the other. Originally fixed to a stone pedestal using the four vacant holes in the spandrel corners.

Provenance

Probably commissioned by Sir Thomas Pelham, 4th Bt, later 1st Lord Pelham of Laughton (1653-1712) for Halland House at latitude 50° 54’ North, thence by descent, with his two Tompion clocks (no.284 and no.545), to his son; The 2nd Lord Pelham of Laughton, later Marquess of Clare and 4th Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne (1693-1768), twice serving as Prime Minister, the dial remaining at Halland House, thence by descent to his cousin; Lord Pelham of Stanmer, later 1st Earl of Chichester (1728-1805) who pulled down Halland House and moved the sundial to Stanmer, with the Tompion clocks, no.284 and no.545, by descent until;

Sir Thomas Pelham, 4th Bt, 1st Lord Pelham of Laughton (1653-1712)

19th century, probably given to a servant on the Chichester Estates at Falmer, thence by descent until sold by Sotheby’s, 30 October 2002, lot 93 for £50,636; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.109

Halland House by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm, 1783

№

144

109

Exhibited

2013, Time for Everyone Symposium, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena & NAWCC, Columbia 04/11/2013 and 14/11/2013; September 2014, Corpus Christi Cambridge Exhibition; November 2014, Worshipful Company of Clockmakers Exhibition

Literature

Evans, Thomas Tompion at the Dial and Three Crowns, 2006, listed p.108; British Sundial Society Bulletin, vol. 22 (ii), Sept. 2010, Maciek Lose, ‘An unrecorded Silesian Sundial by John Rowley’, p. 40-5, fig, 10; Evans, Carter & Wright, Thomas Tompion 300 Years, 2013, listed p.634

Five Tompion garden sundials are known to survive: two in the Royal Collection (RCIN 11959 and 95190), made as a pair for the Privy gardens at Hampton Court, The Wrest Park sundial made for 12th Earl, later 1st Duke, of Kent (also in this collection, inventory no.126), The Pump Room Sundial in Bath and this example, the Pelham Tompion sundial.

Commissioned for latitude 50° 54΄ North, this dial will operate correctly on an East/West parallel that dissects Southern England; from Hastings on the East coast, through the counties of East and West Sussex, Dorset, Hampshire, Somerset and Devon; to Morwenstow, in the most northerly parish on the west coast of Cornwall.

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F

or reasons of efficacy, Thomas Tompion started numbering his regular output in c.1681/2 (Thomas Tompion 300 Years, pp.148-152), which gives us an insight into the development of his productions. Tompion took Edward Banger into partnership in c.1701 and the items produced switched, over time, to a dual signature. However, the partnership came to an abrupt end in c.1707/8 with Banger being dismissed for reasons unknown, and afterwards there appears to have been a concerted effort to revert to Tompion’s signature alone, the valuable batch-made stock, such as partnership signed longcase dials, were overlaid with new solo signature plaques. In apparent emphasis of this, some items that returned to the workshop for repair had Banger’s name physically removed and overlaid with updated signature plaques.

Clearly this sundial was originally specially made for a

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wealthy customer, most probably for the gardens of a large house set within a landed estate. Signed for Tompion alone, one can say with some certainty that it was produced outside of the Banger partnership, while the comparatively late style of engraving suggests a date post 1705, advocating production between 1707/8 and 1712, when George Graham was then taken into partnership. Tompion’s octagonal Pump Room sundial in Bath is a more simple production with inward facing hours, no equation table and a solid plain gnomon, however the hour-scale layout and divisions are similar, which appears to re-affirm the date of production, as we know Tompion gave that sundial to the city in 1709, together with the Pump Room longcase timepiece, that was appropriately an equation clock not requiring tables (Thomas Tompion 300 Years, pp.119 and 537-9). John Davies, in his paper, John Rowley, Master of Mechanicks, presented to the British Sundial Society annual conference, 2008, proposed that post c.1700, John Rowley (1668-1728) was Tompion’s sub-contractor producing sundials sold to accompany his clocks. Rowley was the first dial maker to transpose the numerals of the hour chapters so that they are

read from the outside rather than inside, suggesting this mode was specified by Tompion to Rowley, who had made the style his own. Additionally, the engraved spandrel pattern of the Pelham dial is similar to those on a Rowley square horizontal dial in the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford (inv. no.41686).

This important sundial first re-surfaced in 2002 in a Sotheby’s instruments sale, the owner had inherited it ‘by descent’ recalling it ‘resting on a plinth in the gardens of their 200 year old family cottage in Sussex’. While for centuries the wealthy travelled widely, until the late 19th century the provincial populace rarely did, and families stayed in one area for generations, as appears to be the case in this instance. This begs the question as to how such a fine sundial resided in the garden of a humble Sussex cottage, by implication since the 19th Century. Perhaps the dial had been a gift from a squire to a faithful gardener? Whatever the particular circumstances, the dial was in a local working family’s hands and unlikely to have moved very far.

Taking the Sussex provenance, with the East/West parallel, and a date of c.1710; only three large houses standing at that time, match this latitude in Sussex and, surprisingly, all three are or were the landed family seats of known Tompion customers: John Ashburnham, 1st Lord Ashburnham (1656-1710) of Ashburnham House, was from an ancient family, but their fortunes had wavered; their lands were first confiscated by Elizabeth I and then restored by Charles I, only to be forced to sell during the Commonwealth, for supporting the king.

They were recovered after the restoration and further favours in 1661 had gained the family the freehold of leased estates in Bedfordshire. However, Ashburnham spent little time or money on his ancient family estates in Sussex and, in 1690, he bought back the lease of the Ampthill estate in Bedfordshire from his tenants, and this became his main home for the last twenty years of his life. Two surviving letters from 1697 show communication with Tompion and the banker, Richard Hoare, both from Ampthill (see Thomas Tompion 300 years, p.230).

The house at Ampthill was modern, having been rebuilt in the 1680s, and he concentrated at first on laying out the gardens and between 1704 and 1707, he altered the house again. While these timings ostensibly coincide with the production of this sundial, all evidence shows Ashburnham was concentrating on improving Ampthill, which lies far to the North of this sundial’s latitude.

Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond (1672-1723) of Goodwood House, was the illegitimate son of Charles II by his French mistress, Louise de Kérouaille. He first rented Goodwood to hunt with the Charlton, eventually buying the house and lands in 1697. He was a regular customer of Tompion’s and the first documentary evidence is an advertisement on 21st February 1695 in The London Gazette, for the loss of his Tompion gold striking watch. Four bills to the Duke of Richmond or his factor, Mr. Bernard, from Tompion survive amongst the Goodwood papers (see Thomas Tompion 300 years, p.246-249).

These cover the period September 1700 to January 1709 that potentially cover the date of this instrument, but sadly none of the bills mentions a sundial. The estate remains intact and no secondary or reputed evidence of a Tompion sundial located in the gardens has, thus far, come to light.

This leaves Sir Thomas Pelham, 4th Bt, later 1st Lord Pelham of Laughton (1653-1712) as our most likely contender to have commissioned this sundial for Halland House on his Laughton estates, and evidence has appeared since the sundial’s sale in 2002 that would appear to circumstantially demonstrate that he was.

Courtyard at Halland House by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm, 1783

The Pelhams were an old family, but their story in relation to this sundial starts with his father, Sir John Pelham, 3rd Bt, (1623-1703). In 1654, he inherited the baronetcy together with Laughton Place estate and Halland, a vast Elizabethan courtyard house completed by his grandfather in 1595. He was elected MP for Sussex in the First Protectorate Parliament and continued in the Second. After the Restoration, Sir John was MP for Sussex from 1660-81 and 1689-98, but just before he stepped down at the age of 75, he appears to have ordered longcase no. 284 from Tompion for his retirement to Halland (Thomas Tompion 300 years, p.245). Two of his three sons survived: Thomas Pelham, who succeeded to the estates and title as 4th Baronet, and; Henry Pelham of Lewes (c.1661-1721) who was left enough money to buy his own estate, paying £7,500 for old Stanmer House and its lands in 1713.

The first son, Sir Thomas Pelham, 4th Bt, (1653-1712) was also an active politician, elected variously as MP for East Grinstead, Lewes and Sussex. In 1681, Thomas had advantageously married Lady Grace Holles, daughter of the Earl of Clare but more importantly, heiress to her brother, who in 1694 was created Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne (1st duke of 2nd creation). Thomas and Grace had two sons, Thomas PelhamHolles (1693-1768) and Henry Pelham (1694-1754). Sir Thomas had succeeded to his father’s estates in 1703 and was raised to 147

the peerage as 1st Lord Pelham of Laughton in 1706. He then appears to have retired back to Halland, making improvements to the Elizabethan house and gardens. With Halland House the last property on our list of Sussex seats of correct latitude for this dial, Lord Pelham is our primary candidate to have commissioned this sundial, and it would have complemented his Tompion longcase no.284, which requires an equation table, as this sundial has, to regulate it to mean-solar time. Furthermore, we know Lord Pelham contacted Tompion again shortly before he died aged 59, as he ordered and took delivery of a mid-sized repeating table clock, no.545, from him and his new partner, George Graham (Thomas Tompion 300 years, p.245).

In 1711 Lord Pelham’s first son, Thomas Pelham-Holles, inherited the Holles and Clare estates in the counties of Middlesex, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire from his uncle, the Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne, assuming the additional surname. On the death of his father in 1712, Thomas became the 2nd Baron Pelham of Laughton and this inheritance brought him further wealth from the Pelham family estates; so that by the age of 19, he held land in eleven different counties, including Sussex, and as a result had significant influence in a number of parliamentary constituencies. In 1714 he was created Earl of Clare and in 1715, as a mark of appreciation for his electoral support of the Whigs in the general election, George I elevated

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him to Marquess of Clare and Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne (1st duke of 3rd creation). In 1717, the duke used his influence to return his younger brother, Henry Pelham (1694-1754), as MP for Seaford in Sussex. From that moment, aged only 23, Henry’s rise was steady and sure, helped significantly by his brother’s power and influence. In 1743 he was made Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and with Newcastle in the House of Lords, the two brothers controlled a vast web of political influence and patronage and were the dominant forces in British politics during much of the reign of George II. Henry died in office in 1754, and the duke followed his brother into the post of Prime Minister, holding it from 1754-1756 and again from 1757-1762.

In 1717 the duke had married Henrietta Godolphin (d 1776), daughter of the 2nd Earl of Godolphin, but they had no surviving children. With the prospect of the dukedom becoming extinct once again, in 1756 George II also created him Duke of Newcastle under Lyne (Line) with a special remainder for inheritance to his nephew Henry Fiennes Clinton, Earl of Lincoln (1720-1794).

Importantly for this sundial and the two Pelham Tompion clocks, in 1762 he was also created Baron Pelham of Stanmer with inheritance to his cousin and male heir, Thomas Pelham of Stanmer (1728-1805). Thus on his death in 1768, the Earl of Lincoln inherited the Holles and Clare estates, together with his

Newcastle dukedom, while the title Baron Pelham of Stanmer, together with the bulk of the Pelham estates in Sussex went to his cousin, Thomas Pelham of Stanmer.

Although of the junior line, Thomas Pelham of Stanmer (1728-1805) had come by the Stanmer estate through his grandfather, Henry, who bought it in 1713. His uncle had commissioned the French architect Nicholas Dubois to build a new house that was completed in 1727, but died without issue in 1725. His father then inherited and died in 1737. Thomas was elected to the House of Commons for Rye in 1749, a seat he held until 1754, and then represented Sussex until 1768. He served as a Lord of the Admiralty from 1761/2, as Comptroller of the Household from 1765 to 1774, and was admitted to the Privy Council in 1765. In 1768, Thomas Pelham succeeded his cousin Newcastle, as 2nd Baron Pelham of Stanmer, and he was created 1st Earl of Chichester in 1801.

It should now be revealed that the vaguely located ‘old family cottage in Sussex’ of the Sotheby’s 2002 vendor, was in fact in the village of Falmer, directly adjacent to and walking distance from, Stanmer House. On his inheritance in 1768, the 2nd Lord Pelham of Stanmer immediately moved some of the contents of Halland House to Stanmer, including the two Pelham Tompion

clocks, while other chattels, such as Halland’s important Mortlake tapestries were sold for pittance in 1769. Stanmer sits on approximately the same latitude as Halland House, which is correct for this sundial, and re-siting it at Stanmer seems both logical and likely, particularly once the two highly-prized Tompion clocks were also in situ. Several different dates, from 1770 to 1780s, are given as to when Halland House was dismantled, but Lord Pelham appears initially to have tenanted out the vast house, as it was painted by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm in 1783, referring to it in one view as Halland Farm (Burrell Collection).

To finally and absolutely embrace the sundial’s 2002 provenance, in 1776 Thomas Pelham bought the adjoining manor of Falmer, extending to some 3,000 acres and including the whole village, he then combined Falmer with Stanmer and, on his creation as Earl in 1801, renamed the entirety The Chichester Estates. During the 19th century, the Earls of Chichester continued to develop and improve the estate, the church was reconstructed in 1838, the Pelham Alms houses were built in Falmer in 1869, additional woodlands were planted and a formal lawn was created adjacent to Stanmer house in the 1840s, that was further extended in the early 20th century.

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We will probably never be able to ascertain when the sundial left Stanmer, but we can speculate as to why. Firstly, the Victorian fashion for extensive lawns largely came about from 1830 with the invention of the lawnmower, and was the downfall of many labour intensive 17th and 18th century formal gardens that were often the setting for a house’s sundial. Secondly, the intriguing inclusion in the Sotheby’s provenance description of a ‘plinth’ begs the question as to whether the original Halland House pedestal had survived.

It would feasibly have been carved in stone by the Flemish sculptor, Jan van Nost the elder (died c.1711), as are the three surviving examples, which are all royal or noble, with appropriate cyphers. This example would probably have had a simpler stone pedestal without cyphers, to match its unadorned dial, and it is also possible that the pedestal was by then in poor condition. Finally, the sundial’s equation table was calculated for the Julian calendar, which has an error of 11 minutes in the length of the solar year. Started in 46 BC, by 1582 the calendar was out by over a week and to correct this

Stanmer House

Pope Gregory XIII introduced his Gregorian calendar. It was not adopted in England until 1752, but in so doing, this sundial became truly ‘out-of-date’, and the solar time indicated could no longer be corrected by the equation of time engraved on the dial.

By the mid 19th century sundials were no longer in everyday use and the present dial, for any or all of the reasons above, may have been considered redundant. Perhaps this was why the ‘cottage’ family acquired the sundial, conceivably gifted by the earl or countess to a faithful servant? Since 1776, the Pelham’s estate workers would have been drawn from Falmer as well as Stanmer, which is appropriate to the sundial’s implied 19th and stated 20th century provenance. Interestingly, being in Falmer and approximately 200 years old in 2002, the 1st Earl of Chichester would have owned, and most probably built, the ‘family cottage’, and it was not until the early 20th century that the Chichester Estate lands and properties started to be dispersed. In 1947, Stanmer was sold to Brighton Council, together with much of the parish and village of Falmer, including the pond, the green and many of the cottages.

The two Tompion clocks bought by successive Lord Pelhams of Laughton for Halland House, in c.1697 and 1712, appropriately span the date of this sundial and were subsequently sold as ‘Property of the Earl of Chichester’; the walnut month-going longcase no.284 in 1950 and; the Tompion & Graham table clock no.545 in 1995. Sadly, all that now remains of the Elizabethan courtyard mansion are some red bricks with stone quoins forming part of a farmhouse garden wall. One can now only imagine the first Lord Pelham standing somewhere nearby, reading apparent-solar time on his new Tompion garden sundial and adjusting it to mean-solar time using the equation table provided, possibly first re-setting a Tompion watch and then walking inside to regulate his monthgoing longcase no.284 and, nearer to the end of his life, also his small table clock, no.545.

For a short biography of Tompion see page 102.

A List of Tompion Sundials: LOCATION

SHAPE

SIZE

PEDESTAL

REFERENCE

Hampton Court – 1 of a pair with below

Circular

20½"

Van Nost pedestal

B.S.S. Bulletin, 4:1997

Hampton Court – 2 of a pair with above

Circular

20"

Van Nost pedestal

RWS, Fig. 271

Pelham Dial

Square

12"

No pedestal

SAR 30:10:2002 l. 93

Wrest Park Dial – with two latitudes: 52° 8', Latt of ye under plain, for Wrest Park; 50° 26', Latt of ye upper plain, for a location in Cornwall or Devon.

Circular

21"

Van Nost pedestal

SAR 15:6:2004 l. 46

Pump Room Dial, Bath

Octagonal

Melbourne, Derbyshire – Documentary evidence only ‘Brass horizontal’ (Tompion 300 Years, bill dated 1707, illus. p.236).

150

13"?

Modern pedestal

HJ 3:1960, p.166

‘Large’

Van Nost(?), working at Melborne 1700-1711

Rt. Hon. Thomas Coke (bill dated 1707)

151

Exhibit № 30

Daniel Quare, London

Circa 1700

Height

5 inches (127 mm)

Case

The octagonal horizontal red turtleshell veneered and ormolu mounted case surmounted by a conforming lockable glazed gilt-brass bezel hinged door, and resting on gilt-brass foliate scroll feet. The chamfered angles applied with ribbon-tied foliate ormolu mounts with gilt-metal sound frets to each side, intricately pierced and engraved with foliage, strapwork and shells. All resting on a purpose-made conforming ebonised plinth.

Dial

The 4 inch (102 mm) square chamfered-corner gilt-brass dial signed Dan Quare LONDON on a silvered cartouche-shaped aperture in the matted centre, lunette cut-out beneath XII for the strike/silent dial, central alarm disc, silvered chapter ring, foliate pierced and engraved spandrels in the Japanese taste.

Duration

8 days

Movement

The movement with chamfered-corner, square brass plates secured by six baluster pillars pinned through the frontplate, with twin chain fusees. The verge escapement mounted in the vertical plane, the short pendulum with the original calibrated polygonal, pear-shaped bob swinging to the side of the plates within a purpose-made cut-out and with two spring-loaded brass catches to the underside to secure the pendulum whilst travelling, the alarm with separate spring barrel mounted in the ‘upper left’ quadrant of the movement and wound through the chapter ring beside chapter X, hour strike on an underslung large bell on the backplate via a rack and snail on the frontplate, pull-quarter repeat pulley mounted on the front plate with the quarters and the alarm sounding on a smaller bell inside the hour bell, the back plate entirely engraved with tight scrolling foliage with turnscrews to secure the movement to the case.

Escapement

Knife-edge verge with calibrated short bob pendulum

Strike Type

Rack hour striking with pull-quarter repeat

Provenance

Christie’s, July 2005, lot 158, sold for £98,000; The John C Taylor collection, inventory no.165

Exhibited

2018, Innovation & Collaboration, London, exhibit no.110

Literature

Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, p.360

A superb and exceedingly rare William III turtleshell veneered gilt-brass horizontal verge striking table clock with pull-quarter repeat

№

152

165

153

154

155

156

T

his clock has all the appearance of being a special commission as a luxurious boudoir alarm clock, for its format is out of the normal ‘English’ run, being designed along the lines of German or Dutch table clocks, having a horizontal dial, the movement with horizontally-set plates but a short-bob pendulum swinging in the vertical plane.

It may well have been destined for the continental market, in which Quare specialised (see Garnier & Carter, ‘Quare’s export trade’, in The Golden Age of English Horology, 2015, p.283-5), the subtly rich decoration combination of gilt brass and turtleshell being perhaps more suited to the continental market.

Developing this theme, the pierced and engraved spandrels of the dial are distinctly in the Japanese taste, and therefore would have chimed well with the Chinoiserie and Japonerie cabinet rooms as were commonly found in continental princely palaces both in and out of town. The Japanese chrysanthemum-flower motifs in the spandrels would have corresponded well with the oriental porcelain that commonly crowded such cabinet rooms, adding to the luxurious atmosphere.

For a short biography of Daniel Quare see page 106.

Exhibit № 31

The Spanish Tompion

No.381, Circa 1702-4

A highly important Queen Anne turtleshell and gilt-brass three-train full Grande Sonnerie striking verge bracket clock with days of the week and calendar, of royal provenance and historical significance by Thomas Tompion, London

Height

32¼ inches (819 mm)

Case

Case design, attributed to Daniel Marot (1661-1752), of breakarch form with oak carcass veneered in turtleshell, the ogee caddy top surmounted by a giltbrass figure of Apollo on a short pedestal with satyr mask above gilt-brass moulding with pierced gilt foliate ‘stomacher’ drape beneath, flanked by four multi-piece gilt-brass gadrooned finials on short pedestals above a giltmetal foliate frieze with cherubs interrupted at the front by the gilt-brass break-arch, sides with pierced gilt foliate panels, the chamfered angles with gilt-brass caryatid volutes and acanthus angle volutes beneath, on gilt-brass moulded base with gadrooned feet.

Dial

7¾ by 11½ inch (197 by 292 mm) breakarch dial signed Tho Tompion LONDINI Fecit, gilt matted centre with mock pendulum aperture, doublescrewed female Minerva mask & foliage spandrels, standard silvered chapter ring, with paired subsidiary dials for pendulum regulation on the left, strike selection on the right, engraved Son.6/Sil.6/Son.1/Sil.1, a sectoral aperture in the arch displaying the day of the week in Spanish with appropriate deity and the date of the month aperture above.

Duration

8 days

Movement

The superb triple fusee full Grande Sonnerie movement with seven latched finned baluster pillars, pendulum spring-suspended from brass regulation bar, quarters able to strike on one or six bells, hours on a further bell. Trip quarter repeat via blued-steel interconnecting levers on the foliate engraved backplate (engraver: G.195) signed Tho Tompion LONDINI Fecit within a wheatear cartouche beneath a basket of flowers and over a pedestal, punchnumbered 381 at the base of both plates.

Escapement

Pivoted verge with spring-suspended lenticular pendulum

Strike Type

Three-train full Grande Sonnerie with trip repeat

Provenance

Probably commissioned by Prince George of Denmark for presentation by his wife, Queen Anne of Great Britain, to Archduke Charles von Habsburg (1685-1740), the Grand Alliance’s pretender to the Spanish throne during the War of Spanish Succession (Marlborough’s war); The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, USA, inventory no.1161; Sotheby’s New York, 2 December 1999, lot 81, sold for $2,092,500; The John C Taylor collection, inventory no.33

Exhibited

1980s to 1999, The Time Museum Rockford, Illinois; 2003, Horological Masterworks, Oxford Museum for the History of Science and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, exhibit no.50; 2004, Huygens’ Legacy, Paleis Het Loo, Holland, exhibit no.87; 2013, Time for Everyone Symposium, Pasadena and Columbia, USA; 2014, Corpus Christi, Cambridge; 2014, Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, Guildhall Library;

Archduke Charles von Habsburg (styled as King Carlos III of Spain by the Grand Alliance)

2018, Innovation & Collaboration, London, exhibit no.112 Literature

Horological Masterworks, 2003, p.220-225; Huygens’ Legacy, The Golden Age of the pendulum clock, 2004, p.252-255; J L Evans, Thomas Tompion at the Dial and Three Crowns, 2006, listed p.78; Evans, Carter & Wright, Thomas Tompion 300 Years, 2013, p.396-399;

№

158

33

Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, p.362-365

159

T

his clock is the first in a group of four Grande Sonnerie spring clocks in turtleshell cases with gilt mounts; the others being the Hanover, no.417, the Portland, no.422 and the Conyngham, no.436. Each case is veneered only to the front and sides, while their flat backs are painted to match in faux turtleshell, suggesting each was made with a matching bracket for fixing to the wall. The last in the group, no.436, remained in the Royal Collection until removed as a perquisite on the death of William IV in 1837 and, while none of the wall brackets are currently known to survive, in 1794 Vulliamy had charged (in relation to no.436) For mending the Bracket & Gildg it with burnishd Gold, confirming its survival at that date.

The bell selection and days of the week subsidiaries are engraved in Spanish and Tompion’s serial number, 381, suggests a start date of c.1702, so when rediscovered in the 1980s, this clock was thought to have been made for Philip V of Spain. However, England was already in conflict with Spain in the War of the Spanish Succession and so the use of Spanish and a sale to a Spanish king, at this time unrecognised by England, seems initially incongruous.

However, the historiography of clocks from Tompion’s renowned Grande Sonnerie series has already revealed the likelihood of this series as important royal and diplomatic commissions (see the pages following).

In December 1703, the Archduke Charles of Austria (1685-1740), the pretender to the Spanish throne as advanced by the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV of France, made a state visit to the court of Queen Anne. Archduke Charles was by then recognised by the Grand Alliance as ‘Carlos III’, hence the suitability of a clock inscribed in Spanish to be used by him once actually installed as Spanish king, as hoped for from a victorious conclusion to the ‘Marlborough war’, ousting Louis XIV’s younger grandson, Philip of Anjou, who was already installed in Madrid as Philip V. As Tompion batch made, it is likely this movement was already on the shelf unfinished and taken up for this special commission. This provenance is strengthened by the way the following spring clock in the series, the Habsburg Tompion no.410, can be dated at c.1704.

Significantly, it has almost identical engraving to the backplate (see p.168), strongly suggesting that it was finished concurrently with no.381, and because it bears the Habsburg arms it was destined for Archduke Charles’s father, the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I, a crucial member of the Grand Alliance.

It is most likely that both clocks were ordered during the state visit of 1703; the first turtleshell example no.381 for Archduke Charles, as King Carlos III of Spain, while the second clock, no.410, was commissioned in an ebony Phase 3 case for his father, Leopold I (1640-1705), the Habsburg emperor.

Archduke Charles von Habsburg would fail in his attempt to become King of Spain, but went on to succeed his elder brother, Joseph I, as Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy from 1711 until his death in 1740.

For a short biography of Tompion see page 102.

160

161

162

163

Hour rack hook

Strike release detent

Strike release arm

Hour rack Triple quarter detent for locking gathering wheel Hour gathering wheel cock

Quarter gathering/ locking wheel

Hour gathering/ locking wheel

Repeat trip detent Quarter rack hook

Hour hammer tail

Quarter rack assembly with nag’s head

Snotty nose assembly

Quarter lever assembly with nag’s head

Snotty nose assembly spring

Snotty detent

Fail-safe snotty nose Snotty wheel for hour snail adjustment

Hour snail

The Spanish Tompion No.381 – Key to Grande Sonnerie striking sequence

164

Activated in ① passing or ❶ repeat ② ❷ Rack hook raised and gathering wheel locked ③ Quarter rack drops to engage snail ❹ Quarter rack gathered and hour rack readied and locked ❹ Quarter detent operates quarter rack nag’s head

❹ Quarter strike released and hour strike ready ❺ Fail-safe snotty nose adjusts hour snail but only on the hour and first quarter ❻ Hour rack drops to engage hour snail ❼ Hour rack gathered ❽ Snotty returns to resting position

Quarter snail on minute wheel

The Spanish Tompion, No.381, three-train full Grande Sonnerie striking and trip repeat system The striking is set up using the top right subsidiary ring: Son.1 or Son.6 for full strike, or Sil.1 or Sil.6. for silent, but the clock will still repeat with either. The quarters are struck first (on either one or six bells, dependent on which has been chosen on the subsidiary), one run for quarter past and then in sequence going up to four runs on the hour, followed at each quarter by the hour on a single larger bell.

The system is activated either in passing or by pulling the repeat cords via the twin engaging levers on the backplate, which trips the quarter work and in turn sets off the Grande Sonnerie striking. The left hand engaging lever has an arbor through to the front plate with the repeat trip detent which releases the quarter rack hook. Between the plates the arbor has a detent which holds back the quarter train until the lever is released, and a leaf spring mounted inside the backplate returns the engaging levers.

The quarter snail is mounted on the front of the minute wheel which also has four equally spaced lifting pins mounted on the rear. The sequence begins approximately two minutes to the quarter when one of the minute wheel pins lifts the quarter lever assembly via its pivoted and sprung nag’s head. As the assembly rises the linkage lifts the rack hook assembly which also incorporates the rack tail and strike release arm.

As the quarter lever assembly continues to rise the rack hook is lifted clear of the rack teeth but the gathering/locking wheel is prevented from turning by the middle lever of the triple quarter detent until, at the quarter, the rack is allowed to drop.

This is assisted by a spring which prevents bounce on the snail.

As the rack drops a locking block moves away from the path of a corresponding block on the gathering wheel and the quarter train begins to turn, the gathering wheel starting the first of its revolutions, gathering one rack tooth during each turn. A pin positioned on the gathering wheel opposite the rack tooth pushes down on the triple quarter detent. This in turn engages an extension to the nag’s head so its tip clears the quarter lifting pin, allowing the whole quarter release arm to drop in readiness for the next quarter and the detent assembly to return to its former position. The gathering pallet performs its task and on the last lift the rack is brought back into the locked position.

When the quarter rack assembly drops, its strike release arm takes up a ‘cocked’ position while the quarters are sounding and as it falls it passes the strike-release detent. The release arm is pivoted and sprung and its angled tip slides past the correspondingly angled tail of the strike-release detent. As the last quarter tooth is being gathered and the rack assembly release arm rises, it engages with the flat edge under the detent which is pinned at the other end and in turn lifts the hour rack hook and prepares the hour rack for release.

As the hour rack hook is lifted it engages a sprung detent under the hour gathering wheel cock, and is thus held clear of the rack to allow a clean drop, and again a spring acting on the

❷ Triple quarter detent locks gathering wheel. ❹ Assists nag’s head on release to clear quarter lifting pins

❷ ❷ Quarter rack hook raised

❶ Trip release via pull repeat

Quarter lifting pins

❶ Passing release of nag’s head by minute wheel pins

Quarter strike ready in passing or repeat

❷ ❷ Quarter rack hook raised ❹ Hour rack hook raised and locked ❸ Nag’s head engages snail ❸ Quarter rack drops and is then ❹ gathered

Quarter strike released and hour strike ready

165

hour rack arbor helps ensure a safe drop. The strike train is released once a locking block on the hour rack drops from the path of a corresponding locking block on the hour gathering wheel.

The hour gathering wheel is similar to that of the quarter train except that it has two gathering pallets and the wheel gathers one rack tooth during each half turn. As the wheel turns, one pallet pushes aside the tail of the locking piece thus allowing the rack-hook to drop. The train continues to turn until the locking block on the rack engages with one of the locking blocks on the gathering wheel and the striking is finished.

In order to provide an accurate number of hour blows when the repeat is activated just before or just after the hour, Tompion employed an ingenious system to avoid the possibility of the hour rack tail falling onto the wrong step of the hour snail. A ‘snotty nose’ assembly adjusts the position of the hour snail when the quarter rack tail engages the fourth and lowest step of the quarter snail. It works when the clock strikes in passing at the hour, and also if the repeat is activated during the first quarter. When the clock strikes the hour the position of the hour snail is adjusted so that the hour rack tail falls to the step of the new hour.

When the quarter rack tail engages the lowest step of the quarter snail it engages the tail of the snotty detent which unlocks and activates the snotty nose. The ‘snotty nose’ travels upwards under the influence of its spring and engages one of twelve teeth of the snotty wheel running on the same pipe as the hour snail. The snotty wheel and snail are allowed a few degrees of forward movement against a light spring so that when the snotty nose engages the tooth the snail is shifted forwards presenting the next, correct, hour step to the hour rack-tail. During the first strike, the upper lever of the snotty nose assembly is engaged by a tail on the striking hammer and the snotty nose assembly is pushed back down, the angled tip of the middle lever pushing past the snotty detent which springs back to lock the assembly in its resting position.

❶ Trip release via pull repeat lever and cord Repeat trip detent lifts quarter rack hook, releasing the system

❹ Hour rack hook raised and locked

❸ Nag’s head engages snail and ❺ snotty detent

❺ Snotty nose holds snail in fail-safe position

Snotty nose for hour snail fail-safe Hour strike and snotty nose returns to rest

❻ Hour rack drops and is then ❼ gathered ❽ Hammer tail pushes snotty nose back into resting position

Snotty detent locks snotty nose assembly in resting position

❺ Snotty nose holds snail in fail-safe position

Tompion’s three-train full Grande Sonnerie series These were a sequential development from Tompion’s twotrain Grande Sonnerie movements, and are arguably the most important series of domestic clocks ever made. The repeating trains do not require any manual power to be induced by pulling the repeat cord and therefore are best described as ‘trip’ repeating, requiring additional reserves of power in the strike and quarter springs than is otherwise required for the normal sounding, in passing, of the hour and quarter striking.

The three-train full Grande Sonnerie series includes both spring and weight driven clocks and was aimed at his most influential clientele; the known and putative provenances read like a Who’s

Who of contemporary English and European sovereign princes, as well as leading, influential courtiers: • No.131, c.1688, The Royal Exchange Tompion. Walnut Type 2 longcase. Tompion’s first full Grande Sonnerie clock, possibly ordered by William III. • No.133, c.1688. Ebony Phase 1 table clock, possibly ordered at the same time as no.131 by William III. • No.169, c.1690. Ebony Phase 1 table clock, possibly a diplomatic gift to Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy, on his entry into ‘The Nine Years War’ against France.

• No.217, c.1693, The Selby Lowndes Tompion. Ebony architectural, two-tier table clock made for William III, gift to William Lowndes, secretary to the Treasury (in this collection, inventory no.9).

• No.274, c.1696, The Medici Tompion. Ebony architectural two-tier table clock made for Cosimo III de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, diplomatic gift from William III, the bill for which remained unpaid on his death.

• No.275, c.1696, The William III Tompion. Walnut Type 3 longcase, but now with quarter train removed, apparently by BL Vulliamy (Royal Collection, RCIN 934887).

• No.300, c.1698, The de Conde Tompion. Ebony Phase 3 table clock made for Henri Jules de Bourbon, Prince de Conde, a Bourbon cousin of Louis XIV.

The Spanish Tompion No.381 circa 1702-4 probably made for ‘Carlos III’

• No.381, c.1702-4, The Spanish Tompion. Turtleshell bracket clock probably made for the Archduke Charles of Austria, recognised by the Grand Alliance as Carlos III, pretender to the Spanish throne, possibly a diplomatic gift due to War of Spanish succession (this example, inventory no.33).

• No.387, c.1703, The Taylor Tompion. Walnut Type 3 longcase, probably ordered by George of Denmark on Queen Anne’s accession (in this collection, inventory no.22).

• No.410, c.1704, The Habsburg Tompion. Ebony Phase 3 table clock made for King Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, possibly a diplomatic gift due to War of Spanish Succession.

• No.417, c.1705, The Hanover Tompion. Turtleshell bracket clock made for Queen Anne or her husband, George of Denmark, given by George I to his mistress.

• No.422, c.1705, The Portland Tompion. Turtleshell bracket clock made for the Duke of Portland (Portland Collection).

• No.436, c.1706, The Conyngham Tompion. Turtleshell bracket clock made for George of Denmark and in the Royal Collection until 1837 when taken as perquisite by the Marquis of Conyngham (Fitzwilliam museum, Cambridge).

• No.443, c.1706. Originally with Phase 3 case now lost.

• No.477, c.1708. Ebony Phase 3 case.

The Habsburg Tompion No.410 circa 1704 made for Carlos III’s father, Leopold I

168

• No.488. finished later by Graham.

The Selby Lowndes Tompion No.217 circa 1693 (collection inventory no.9)

Tompion No.387 circa 1703 (collection inventory no.22)

The Spanish Tompion No.381 circa 1702-4 (collection inventory no.33)

The Habsburg Tompion No.410 circa 1704

169

Exhibit № 32

Anonymous

Circa 1705

Height

41 inches (1042 mm)

Case

The arched hood, surmounted by three pedestals with lacquered gilt-brass ball finials, and supported by walnut Solomonic columns with integral water-gilt capitals and bases flanking the glass tube and registers. The trunk with burr walnut veneers bordered by cross-grain side mouldings leading down to symmetrical shaped supports in detailed scroll marquetry with opposing dolphins. The turned removable cistern cover, allowing access to the leather based cistern, fitted with an adjustable brass screw-knob for setting and parking the mercury.

Dial

The slot adjusting silvered register dials with wheatear borders, calibrated 2831 and engraved with the various weather conditions, the left-hand referring to Summer and the right-hand to Winter. The friction fit brass recording index sliding up-and-down, and mounted on the Winter register.

Provenance

Anthony Woodburn, 1996, sold for £12,500;

A fine Queen Anne walnut and marquetry portable stick barometer

John C Taylor collection, inventory no.4003 Comparative Goodison, English Barometers and Their Makers 1680-1860, 1977, p.206-221; Literature Banfield, Barometers, Stick or Cistern Tube, 1985, p.18-25

O

n 2nd August 1695, Daniel Quare was granted a 14-year patent for his portable pillar barometers… the first ever given for a barometer… and described as …a portable weather glass or barometer, which may be removed or carried to any place though turned upside down without spilling one drop of quicksilver or letting any air into the tube.

On the same day, The Clockmakers’ Company made a report... of their proceedings against Mr. Quare’s Patent for portable Weather-Glasses, and that the Patent was passed, and there may be suits of law or trouble to some Members who make or sell those Weather-Glasses.

It ordered that the Company will defend any Members or their servants, and also Mr. John Patrick, who assisted the Company... in any action or suits brought against them on that account.

Portable barometers were in use well before Quare applied for and obtained his patent, and his probable patent method is described by Garnier & Carter in The Golden Age of English Horology, p.298-299. Meanwhile the simple and effective leather covered cistern for portability became commonplace, as used here.

№

170

4003

171

Exhibit № 33

Daniel Quare, London No.58 Circa 1710

Diameter

38½ inches (978 mm)

Case

The rectangular, break arch, gilt-brass hood has three turned finials, the side finials with ‘worm gear’ adjustment for the two scale indicators, the central extended finial with a hollow brass pipe to take the glass tube. The hood and box sides are line and foliate engraved, while the front signature box has a wheatear engraved border, signed Invented & Made by Danl. Quare London, the right side of the box is punch-stamped 58 on the rim. The brass hood has a small walnut backboard with symmetrical decorative ‘ears’, which is fitted with a brass loop for wall hanging. The typical columnar case of walnut with two turned brass collars dividing the three main walnut sections; leading up to the brass hood is the top section which is turned, fluted and tapered; with a Solomonic (twist) column in the middle and; a cistern cover to the base, shaped and with turned circular decoration. The removable walnut threaded bottom allows access to the tube and is fitted with an adjustable brass screw-knob for setting and ‘parking’ the mercury.

Dial

The glazed silvered register dial calibrated 28-31 in the normal manner and engraved with the various weather conditions, the left-hand referring to Winter and the right-hand to Summer. The sliding steel recording index pointers are adjusted, up-and-down, by turning the side finials, working via two internal worm-gears mounted behind.

Provenance

Mallet, 1994, sold for £30,000;

A fine and rare Queen Anne Type III walnut and gilt-brass mounted pendent and portable pillar barometer

John C Taylor collection, inventory no.4002 Literature

Garnier & Carter, The Golden Age of English Horology, 2015, p.261-312 and p.328-329. Listed p.310

Comparative N. Goodison, English Barometers and Their Makers 1680-1860, Woodbridge, Literature 1977, p.206-221; E. Banfield, Barometers, Stick or Cistern Tube, Trowbridge, 1985, p.18-25

O

№

172

4002

n 4th December 1694, the Dutch statesman, scientist and poet, Constantijn Huygens, wrote in his diary that he visited William III… was in Kensington.

The King called me again as he came out of his Cabinet, saying: “Zuylichem, Zuylichem” [Huygens was Lord of Zuylichem, the name of his Dutch estates] and showed me a barometer which the Quaker Quare had made for him, and it was such that it could be carried from one place to another. By 2nd August 1695, Daniel Quare had been granted a 14-year patent for his portable pillar barometers… the first ever given for a barometer… and described as …a portable weather glass or barometer, which may be removed or carried to any place though turned upside down without spilling one drop of quicksilver or letting any air into the tube.

Daniel Quare’s portable pillar barometers were produced to different price points dependent on materials and complexity. It is likely he first started numbering his barometers at a similar time as his clocks in c.1704, and as categorised and listed in The Golden Age of English Horology, p.296-312, Quare’s least expensive barometers had a simple sliding pointer and were invariably constructed in ebonised fruitwood. Perhaps his most expensive models were the ivory reversible double-dialed examples, which were supplied for home and export (in various languages – different on opposite registers). This model was of Quare’s mid-level Type III pendent form in indigenous walnut, with a single register but with Quare’s worm-gear adjusted indexing.

For a short biography of Daniel Quare see page 106.

173

Exhibit № 34

The Chesham Quare Circa 1710

Height

10 feet 1 inch (3073 mm)

Case

The ogee-caddy top case with cross-grain walnut mouldings and burr walnut veneers. With pierced faux-sound frets to the shaped friezes above and below the main hood mouldings, set above brass-capped Doric columns and concave throat mouldings, the rectangular trunk door with gilt-metal spandrel mounts to the corners, the sides with ‘pouch’ extensions for the two pendula. The matching burr walnut panelled plinth raised on a single skirt with moulded block feet.

Dial

Specifically designed 15 by 16½ inch (381 by 419 mm) gilt-brass dial with dual, interlocking chapter rings for mean and solar time, each with its own subsidiary seconds ring above, each flanking the central ring with twin hands for annual calendar (the date of month indicated in four quadrants) and equation of time indication below the swept-ogee arch top, signed Dan. / Quare on the interlocking silvered chapter rings and London on the dial plate immediately below, the sculpted hands of blued steel, the matted chapter-ring centres with ring-turned winding holes, the margin-spaces of the dial plate with applied giltmetal masked spandrels of typical, but specially designed, Quare ornament.

Duration

One month

Movement

The twin month movements, contained in a single large frame, the IX side pendulum beating mean solar time seconds, annual (Julian) calendar and equation of time (now 13 days out to the present Gregorian calendar); The III side pendulum beating sidereal seconds (0.99727 mean solar time seconds).

Both pendula adjusted by calibrated rating nuts.

Escapement

Twin anchors with two, mean and solar seconds, pendula

Provenance

Possibly commissioned by Prince George of Denmark (d. 1708), consort to Queen Anne, but completed after his death and sold elsewhere;

An extremely rare and important Queen Anne burr-walnut veneered, dual indication, mean and solar time, longcase timepiece

Possibly thus acquired by William Cavendish, 2nd Duke of Devonshire, who, on the evidence of the Glynne equinoctial ring dial he commissioned, was interested in high-end instruments and clocks; thence to his 3rd son; Lord Charles Cavendish (1704-83); thence to his elder son; The Hon. Henry Cavendish (1731-1810), FRS, noted scientist, the discoverer of hydrogen and known collector of precision clocks, whose residuary legatee was his cousin; Lord George Henry Cavendish (1754-1834), ennobled 1831 as 1st Earl of Burlington (second creation), by whom possibly bequeathed to his 4th son; The Hon. Charles Compton Cavendish (1793-1863), 1st Baron Chesham; Thence by descent through the Lords Chesham, until sold in 1997 by 6th Lord Chesham, through Charles Lee, for £350,000; The John C Taylor collection, inventory no.21 Exhibited

2004, Huygens’ Legacy, Paleis Het Loo, Holland, exhibit no.90; 2018, Innovation & Collaboration, London, exhibit no.116

Literature

Ernest Watkins, Apollo, May 1938, p.275-276 illus.; HA Lloyd, Some Outstanding Clocks Over 700 Years, 1958, illus. pl.88a; J Betts, The Double Clocks by Daniel Quare, Antiquarian Horology, Spring 1998 p.30-35 illus.; Harris, Letter, Antiquarian Horology, Summer 1998, giving the date of the Greenwich Hospital clock as 1716; Huygens’ Legacy, The Golden Age of the pendulum clock, 2004, p.262-267; Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, p.374-377 (illus)

№

174

21

Comparative Garnier & Carter, The Golden Age of English Horology, 2015, Quare chapter p.261-312 Literature

175

T

his is one of only two complete double-timepiece solar/siderial longcases known by Quare; it has never before been on the open market and is the only one left in private hands, the other being The Greenwich Hospital Quare. There is also a movement and dial signed Quare & Horseman, no.148, with a later case, that sold in 1987 and was bought by the British Museum (Ref no.1987, 1104.1).

HA Lloyd explained the method of representing the variations of Mean and Solar time ‘in a clock by means of a kidney-shaped cam was worked out by Christiaan Huygens in 1695. In his last recorded letter, which was written on 4th March, 1695 to his brother Constantan [sic.], then secretary in London to King William III, he speaks of his newly invented clock . . . [that] showed the solar hour without need for equation tables. This was achieved by making a kidney shaped cam turning once a year. When a pin at the end of an arm fixed to a wheel or rack bears against the edge of this kidney it will approach or recede from the centre of revolution and transmit a forward or backward motion to a hand mounted on the arbor of a toothed wheel engaging with the rack. The kidney is revolved once a year by means of an endless worm on the end of a rod driven by the movement . . . Actually, only a segment of the wheel is ever in contact with the wheel carrying the equation hand, but a whole wheel is cut to provide a counterpoise’ [HA Lloyd, Collectors’ Dictionary, 1964, p.77-8].

The present clock incorporates two independent movements within the same frame, thus having twin going trains (for solar time and mean or sidereal time) with twin escapements and pendula.

The setting out of the intersecting twin chapter rings is a masterwork of the engraver’s art and this clock (and its pair ar Greenwich) is at the pinnacle of English clockmakers’ achievement in the quest for accuracy, allowing the direct comparison within one clock of two differing methods of registering time, following the adoption of the pendulum.

It is not known for whom the present clock was made, but being a clock displaying two forms of time, Mean and Solar, it is of a type that would have interested Prince George of Denmark, consort of Queen Anne. He has been identified as a major commissioner and collector of precision and other clocks by

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Tompion, some of which display two forms of time, and as set out in the chapter ‘George of Denmark, Tompion’s Most Ambitious Patron’, in Garnier & Carter, The Golden Age of English Horology, 2015, p.1337. The clocks identified therein as commissioned by Prince George do not include one with the present clock’s combination of Mean and Solar time, a lacuna that this clock would fulfill. Like others ordered

by Prince George, its likely date of completion, circa 1710, means it would not have been delivered by the time of the prince’s death in 1708, and would then have been sold elsewhere.

This would allow the present clock to have been acquired by the 2nd Duke of Devonshire, who on the strength of the Glynne equinoctial dial (Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth) that he commissioned was evidently interested in high-end, precision instruments and clocks.

From him it could have descended through his third son to his grandson, the noted, if reclusive, Georgian scientist, the Hon Henry Cavendish, FRS, (1731-1810) who is recorded as purchasing another dual time clock in 1764, the Mean and Siderial regulator clock by George Graham, no.634, sold at the executors’ sale of the 2nd Earl of Macclesfield, president of the Royal Society (subsequently in the Time Museum).

Macclesfield had used it in his private observatory at his country house, Shirburn Castle, Oxfordshire. If Henry Cavendish owned the clock it was likely housed in his suburban villa at Clapham, then in Surrey, now south London, where he had an observatory.

No written or published record has currently been found of Henry Cavendish’s ownership of the present clock by Quare, but on the basis of his recorded purchase of the Graham clock, and his noted, occasional habit of spending his considerable fortune on luxury objects and furnishings, such as a suite of drawing room furniture by the leading cabinetmakers Mayhew and Ince, if he either purchased or inherited it, the subsequent descent of the present clock can be suggested. This is because Henry Cavendish’s residual legatee in his will of 1804 (National Archives) was his cousin ‘Lord George Henry Cavendish’, 3rd son of the 4th Duke of Devonshire, who was in 1831 created Earl of Burlington (1st of the 2nd creation); his 4th son, the Hon George Compton Cavendish, was in 1858 created Baron Chesham, and the clock would then have descended through the Lords Chesham, until sold direct to Dr Taylor in 1997. In like manner, many scientific papers of Henry Cavendish’s descended through the 1st Earl of Burlington (George Wilson, The Life of Henry Cavendish, Cavendish Soc. Publications, London, 1851).

For a short biography of Daniel Quare see page 106.

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Exhibit № 35

Richard Glynne, London

Dimensions

6.8 inches (170 mm) diameter

Description

Signed Rich Glynne Londini Fecit, the circular base plate is composed of an outer rim raised on three, screw-adjustable, feet for levelling in conjunction with two spirit levels at right angles set on the central plate rotatable within the outer rim by means of a cog-wheel meshing with a toothed ring on the underside of the rim, operated by knurled knobs on the upper surface of the rim; the centre of the base set with a magnetic compass with an engraved 32-point compass-rose enclosed within a degree scale in four 90 degree quadrants, numbered from the north point, and a blued-steel needle (its ends labelled N and S.) Marked around the rim of the base is an equation of time scale.

Circa 1710

An exquisite small and rare Queen Anne solid silver inclining dial with its original shagreen travelling case

The hour ring, hinged at the north point of the instrument, with three spokes and engraved hour scale as VI-XII-VI, divided to two minutes. Opposite this, against the south point of the instrument, is a hinged arm engraved with scales calibrated to 30 minutes, which passes through a slot in the hour ring and which is adjusted against it for latitude. On the inner edge of the hour scale is a degree scale in four quadrants.

The spring-loaded gnomon is mounted on the broadest of the three spokes.

Case

Contained in its original circular shagreen-covered, wooden case, the central silver disc to its hinged lid engraved with an anchor in an oval reserve surmounted by an upright lion holding aloft a second anchor, and flanked by crossed fronds.

Provenance

Sotheby’s London, 2 Feb. 1970, lot 19; Time Museum, Rockford, Ill, USA, inventory no.177; Sotheby’s, October 2002, lot 22, sold for £73,237; John C Taylor collection, inventory no.105

Exhibited

1971-1999, The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, USA; 2019-20, The Luxury of Time, Nat. Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, cat. no.2:4

Literature

R

The Luxury of Time, Clocks from 1550-1750, 2019, p.16

ichard Glynne (1681-1755) was apprenticed to the instrument maker Henry Wynne (see exhibits 18 and 24, pages 92 and 116) in 1696 and became free in 1705.

In 1712 he opened his first workshop at the sign of the Atlas & Hercules in Cheapside and in 1718 he moved to a shop in Fleet Street. Glynne retired in 1730 and his stock was subsequently sold at the shop of the renowned optician, Edward Scarlett.

№

182

105

Exhibit № 36

The Palumbo Tompion No.537, Circa 1712

Height

Clock 16¾ inches (425 mm); Travel case 18½ inches (470 mm)

Case

The typical Phase 3 case comprises an oak carcass with ebony veneers and mouldings, the inverted bell top is surmounted by a well cast gilt-brass acanthus and thistle bud handle with rosette terminals. The front door is applied with Tompion’s gilt-brass masked and foliate cast sound fret to the top rail, having raised mouldings to the aperture and a shell centred giltbrass foliate mount below and with typical gilt-brass cartouche escutcheons.

The sides are applied with raised break arch mouldings. The front door sill is clearly stamped 537 twice below the fruitwood mask with inset pierced wood fret. The front and rear doors retain the original lock and hinges and the base rests on ebony moulded block feet.

Dial

The 7 by 8 inch (178 mm by 203 mm) dial retains the original fire gilding and is signed Tho: Tompion & Geo: Graham London within foliate engraving

by Graver 515 and flanked by subsidiary dials for pendulum regulation and strike/silent. The silvered chapter ring has Roman & Arabic numerals with diamond half-hour and half-quarter hour marks. The finely matted centre has a mock pendulum aperture and the original finely sculpted blued steel hands. Mask-and-foliate spandrels in the lower dial quadrant with double screws, in Tompion’s manner, foliate upper quadrant spandrels abutting the subsidiary rings. The three dial feet are typically latched to the inside of the front plate and the rear of the dial is scratch marked 537.

Duration

8 days

Movement

The substantial movement has seven latched finned and knopped pillars, the spring barrels and fusees retain their original chains, the going train has a pivoted verge escapement with the pendulum spring suspended in Tompion’s usual manner from a brass regulation bar atop the backplate with foliate engraved cocks. The strike train rack striking the hours on the larger bell via a rack system operating on the inside of the backplate. The repeat train operates on Tompion’s all-or-nothing system with double-cocked interlocking blued steel levers on the backplate repeating the hours and quarters, the latter on the smaller bell. The hour bell inked with repairers marks for Jan 23, 1761 and Aug 14, 1788. The backplate by Graver 515 is engraved with fine quality scrolling foliage, flowers and strapwork within a line border and centred by an oval cartouche signed Tho: Tompion & Geo: Graham London. The cartouche having a central urn above with a bird atop between a pair of cornucopiae and further birds. On either side are more birds, garlands and strap work encircled by two serpents. The centre base of the backplate is clearly numbered 537 above the line border. The movement is secured in the case in Tompion’s usual manner with two steel bolts through the baseboard into the bottom pillars and by two foliate engraved backplate brackets, both also stamped 537.

Escapement

Pivoted verge with spring suspended lenticular pendulum

Strike Type

Hour striking with Tompion’s pull-quarter repeat

Travelling Case

The contemporary wainscot oak travelling case is of typical joinery construction, the main box has double opening doors to the front, each with two iron hinges; these are held in place when closed by the dovetailed and double hinged lid and secured by a wrought iron lock with a strap keeper. Each side has an iron lifting handle with strap and nail fixings and diamond shaped backplates. The interior of the case has stays for the top case mouldings and is lined with old faded blue velvet.

A very fine Queen Anne Phase 3 ebony striking verge table clock with pull-quarter repeat by Thomas Tompion and George Graham, with a contemporary wainscot oak travelling case

№

184

152

185

Provenance

Rudolph Palumbo Collection, thence by descent until sold 2013, for £330,000; John C Taylor collection, inventory no.152

Exhibited

1951, Graham Bi-centenary exhibition, Royal Society of Arts, catalogue no.7

Literature

RW Symonds, Thomas Tompion, His Life and Work, 1951, illus. p.157, fig.134 and p.207, fig. 200; Horological Journal, December 1951, p.794

T

his is the earliest of only two known spring clocks with the joint signatures of Tompion & Graham, the later clock being no.545, made for Sir Thomas Pelham, 4th Bt, later 1st Lord Pelham of Laughton (1653-1712), see pages 144 to 151. It survives in extraordinarily original condition and has every element numbered, including the two shaped and engraved case brackets. For a short biography of Tompion see page 102.

A travelling box (packing case) is mentioned in a bill from Tompion to the Duke of Richmond: His Grace the Du[ke o]f Richmonds Bill from Tho: Tompion.

1708 August 23 For mending, and cleaning, a Spring Clock, put on a new Spring to the pendulum, new fastnings to fasten the Clock to ye Case a new Key, and mending the packing Case with a new Lock and Key, and Hinge to it, a new Ground Glass for ye ffore Doore, portradge and watridge & c, £1:12:06.

Although this travelling case has had various repairs and some replaced ironwork, the original remaining front door hinges, top left and bottom right, are the same pattern of iron hinge used by Tompion on his longcase trunk doors. The miniature travelling box of the Barnard Tompion, no.460 (Science Museum, object no.2019-199), shows how closely fitted these purpose-made cases were, and they would afford little protection to their precious cargo otherwise. The top mouldings of the clock are level with the top of the main box (see following p.191), with the handle and dome neatly contained within the lid, it also illustrates that the box doors could be opened to reveal the dial, perhaps for using the clock during overnight stays at coaching inns.

Many expensive and highly prized table clocks of the 17th and early 18th centuries would have been supplied with travelling boxes for safe passage between town and country houses. Later in the eighteenth century, when clocks were more commonplace and less likely to be moved, these simple oak cases became redundant.

Without a use and being separated from their clocks, it seems many were lost or destroyed. Today, fewer than 20 period examples are known to have survived (including another from this collection, by Tompion’s workman, Charles Sympson, inventory no.166).

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Quarter hammer tail Hour release arm Quarter rack pin (mounted behind) All or nothing

Strike/silent arc

Released Cocked

Strike/silent lever Quarter rack tail

Warning stop lever

Leaf spring

Warning lever

Quarter snail

Three lever assembly

Cannon lever

The Palumbo Tompion No.537 188

Quarter rack

The Palumbo Tompion No.537 Striking and pull-quarter repeating system This striking and pull-quarter repeating movement already has power in the strike train, so power only has to be provided for the quarters. The repeat assembly is mounted on the right side of the front plate and, from the front, turns anti-clockwise; the quarters are struck first followed by the hours. The strike/silent arbor is at the top right of the front plate and has a steel arc with an angled face which pumps the strike/silent lever when turned anti-clockwise.

Tompion’s striking repeat system operates via a main repeat arbor which protrudes through the backplate where it is squared onto the double-cocked interlocking repeat levers (see overleaf ).

An internal toothed sector engages the repeat pinion and this system only requires a quarter rack assembly on the front plate.

The main repeat arbor also engages with the leaf spring on the inside of the backplate and this provides the power. The quarter rack assembly to the front plate only requires three teeth because the independent hour striking rack, mounted between the plates, only needs to be tripped.

The quarter rack assembly also rotates anti-clockwise and is checked when the rack tail hits the appropriate step on the quarter snail. The all-or-nothing piece ensures that the system only engages when it has been fully cocked so that a short pull will run without blows. The pivoted rack tail engages with the quarter snail and the quarter rack is raised at the end of the pull and lowered at the end of the run. The hour striking is warned and released on the completion of the quarters by a pin carried on the upright arm of the quarter rack. This pin lifts the arm which in turn raises the internal hour rack hook to release the train.

On the left of the front plate is a three-lever assembly on one arbor. First is the strike-release lifting piece which is lifted by the pin on the canon-pinion and drops at the hour, and whose end is sprung to prevent damage if the hands are turned backwards.

Second, on the left, is the warning stop lever which engages with a spring-loaded piece on the end of the repeat assembly to prevent the system from being cocked if it is activated during the warning period. Third, mounted on the upper side of the lifting-piece and spring-loaded so that it can move back and forth, is a pivoted arm whose upper end sits in the fork of the strike/silent detent. The strike/silent detent is in turn pivoted at its centre and pumps the trip lever in towards the front plate for striking and away when silenced. When the pivoted arm is close to the front plate it lifts the rack hook and also acts as the warning piece.

When the clock is silenced the fork pumps the pivoted arm away from the front plate so that it misses the rack hook lever.

Repeat great wheel and click work

Internal motion rack engaging pinion

Cocked Released

Main repeat arbor

Repeat leaf spring

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191

Exhibit № 37

The Chandos Delander

Circa 1715

Height

8 feet 7 inches (2616 mm)

Case

The case possibly designed by the architect, James Gibbs (1682-1754), with an oak carcass veneered in ebonised fruitwood, the breakarch hood with five (replacement) gilt-metal urn finials on wood plinths, the front angles with substantial gilt brass columns over integral foliate scroll, canted pedestals, the breakarch side panels set with elaborate gilt-metal frets, the dial door composed of a heavy cast shaped gilt brass bezel frame having a breakarch top and concave lower corners conforming to the similarly shaped, concave throat moulding, the trunk with canted front angles, the rectangular door with related gilt brass moulded frame and two raised, shaped panels with wood mouldings, the shallow-breakfront base set with a rectangular panel over a double-skirted foot, raised on boldly modelled gilt brass scroll feet.

Dial

Conforming gilt brass moulded frame to the 13 inch (330 mm) wide dial plate secured by four latched feet, the plate and frame shape conforming to the hinged gilt brass bezel on the hood, the breakarch top set with a spherical moon with mechanically operated shutters to indicate phase, the concavesided lower section set with a sector engraved with concentric calendars for Sun’s Place (in the Zodiac), times of Sun’s Rising and Setting, Sun’s Right Ascension, Sun’s Declination, and days of month, all within a chamfered silver frame below the maker’s signature plate Delander LONDON, ivory plate spandrels (originally painted to represent the Sciences) enclosing the silvered Roman and Arabic chapter ring with fleur-de-lys half-hour and lozenge half-quarter marks, enclosing an upper subsidiary ring for seconds numbered for every 6 seconds below XII and a lower subsidiary above VI for lunar calendar, calibrated 1-29, enclosing a concentric equation of time ring, the matted centre overlaid with cast and pierced silver decoration of lambrequins and floral festoons below solid reserves engraved (left)Tempus aequale, et inequale horologio hoc indicator, and (right) Differentia est aequatio temporaria Flamstedy; replacement blued-steel hands.

Duration

One month

Movement

The rectangular, heavy-gauge plates secured by six pinned finned baluster pillars, the 5-wheel trains reversed, hour strike via inside rack on bell above, with the equation cam mounted on the frontplate, and double-wheel duplex escapement having a large escape wheel on the backplate and smaller (replaced) internal pin escape wheel, the whole secured to the baseboard by 3 latched brass brackets at the base of the plates.

Escapement

Delander’s duplex

Strike Type

Inside rack hour strike

Provenance

Documented as made for James Bridges, 1st Duke of Chandos (1673-1744), probably for his out-of-London country seat, Cannons House, Enfield, Middlesex (now outer NW Greater London); the subject of counter-suits in the Court of Requests in 1722 between Delander and the duke over nonpayment; subsequently sold by lottery by order of the court;

A unique George I silver-mounted, month-going equation and year calendar longcase clock with duplex escapement by Daniel Delander, London

James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos

by Herman van der Myn

James Cox (c.1723-1800), of Shoe Lane, London, jeweller, mechanical clock, watch and ‘toy’ maker, famed for automata destined for the Oriental market; sold at his sale by Benjamin Lucas, auctioneer, May 1765; Sotheby’s London, 9 Oct. 1989, lot 303, sold to R A Lee; Christie’s London, 11 Dec. 2002, lot 80 sold for £214,882; John C Taylor collection, inventory no.104 №

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104

Literature

Antiquarian Horology, Dec. 2020, Evans & McBroom, ‘The Chandos Delander’, p.521-530

193

194

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The rediscovered provenance Searches by Jeremy Evans and Anne McBroon in the Burney Newspaper Collection of the British Library have enabled the reconstruction of the present Delander clock’s provenance, as follows: First, a May 1765 advert for auction of ‘the Stock and Effects of Mr James Cox, of Shoe Lane, jeweller’ announced the sale would include ‘a most curious astronomical clock, that goes a month, made by Delander’. Two further newspaper reports of the sale give additional particulars of the clock, which can be conflated to read as follows: The clock was made by Mr Daniel Delander for his Grace the late Duke of Chandois and was afterwards put up for raffle, at the Court of Requests, to fifty subscribers, at ten guineas each.

It goes a month. It shows equal and apparent Time by different minute hands, the Sun’s Place in the Ecliptic, Rising and Setting, Declination, right Ascension, and Amplitude, the Day of the Month, the Age of the Moon and her Phases, and the Time of High Water. The case is of the finest black Ebony, highly finished and decorated with rich Ornaments, elegantly designed and strongly gilt, the Dial-plate adorned with Festoons of Silver Flowers, and Paintings on Ivory, representing the Sciences, and on the top are the figures of Ceres, Mercury, and Fame. It is without its fellow in Europe.

The information surrounding the 1765 sale that the clock was made for Chandos and was resold by public lottery at the instruction of the Court of Requests (essentially the court solely for claims of unpaid debts), allows it to be identified as the subject of a 1722 law suit by the maker against the Duke of Chandos, as reported in the Weekly Journal or Saturday’s Post, 16th June 1722, ‘We hear the Duke of Chandois has brought his Writ of Error against the Judgment given in a Cause betwixt his Grace and Mr Delander Watchmaker’.

Some notes on Chandos and his worsening finances in the 1720s are of help here: James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos (1673-1744), Privy Councillor, Deputy Lieutenant, and FRS, was something of an exception on numerous counts: a leading English nobleman who was (unsurprisingly) also a landowner, politician and statesman, but also (more surprisingly, for a nobleman) a merchant trading to the Levant, plus a financial speculator and war profiteer. In this he was no different from many an over-mighty, exceedingly rich man throughout history, overconfidant that he could ride the bucking bronco of his rising debts. Charitable activity provided an additional veneer of respectability: in 1721 he was appointed governor of the Charterhouse, and in 1739 was one of the founding governors of the Foundling Hospital.

He succeeded on his father’s 1714 death to his family’s ancient, but obscure, ancestral barony as 9th Lord Chandos, and so took his seat in the House of Lords, having previously until then been MP for Hereford since 1698. Almost immediately 196

thereafter, he was created Earl of Caernarvon by George I, who subsequently in 1719, recognised Brydges’s pre-eminence by raising him to the highest rank in the peerage, creating him Duke of Chandos. The final accolade was his appointment to the king’s Privy Council in 1721.

His mercantile activities are shown by the way in 1700 he had become a member of the ‘old’ East India Company, and in 1718-36 he was governor of the Levant Company, the commercial corporation of merchants trading to the Turkish empire and which controlled the appointment of the English, and then British (with the Union of England and Scotland in 1707), ambassador to ‘the Sublime Porte’, the Sultan’s court in Constantinople/Istanbul.

Despite his undoubted profitable merchant trading, Chandos’s exceeding great wealth in large measure sprang from his time (1705- 13) as paymaster-general of forces abroad, that is all through the period of the Marlborough wars against Louis XIV of France. Like many other contemporaries would have done (if not on the same gargantuan scale, causing some adverse comment at the time) he milked the vast sums advanced through his hands to pay the troops, so that on relinquishing the post at the end of the war in 1713 he was worth some £600,000 (approx. £60 million, or more, today), making him one of the very richest subjects in the realm.

Such vast wealth enabled Chandos as perhaps the greatest spender of his day, so gaining the sobriquet ‘The Apollo of the Arts’ amongst his contemporaries, on account of his lavish artistic patronage. He had inherited the estate of Great Stanmore with its manor house called Cannons in 1713 from his first wife’s childless uncle. This he proceeded to rebuild in 1714-25 at a reputed cost of £200,000 under a bewildering succession of the leading architects, and in the most lavish way, filling the house with old master paintings, objects d’art, the latest and most fashionable furniture, silver and clocks, as seemingly in the present Delander clock: ‘O’er all the Waste, a blooming Change prevails / A Desart rising to a grand Versailles’, as one commentary has it. Samuel Humphreys waxed lyrical that ‘Magnificent o’ver all the Fabrick shin’d / The rich Profusion of a Royal Mind’, while John Macky called it a residence ‘inferior to few Royal Palaces in Europe’, and a French visitor in 1728 described the house as ‘panelled in marble and all the doorcases also are either made of marble, or of walnut, or inlaid. The locks and door-handles are of silver, and most of the chimneypieces are fitted with silver fire-backs and grates. There is silver everywhere... The outlay has been immense, but carried out in the worst taste in the world,... It appears that the only aim has been to spend...’ [T Friedman, James Gibbs, Yale, New Haven & London, 1984, p.113].

Having consulted Sir John Vanburgh, Chandos’s executant architects ranged through William Talman (in 1713), John James (in 1714), a brief flirtation with Sir James Thornhill (in 1717) during retention of James Gibbs (in 1715-19) and thereafter the surveyors John Price and latterly Edward

Shepherd (in 1723-5). Gibbs received fee payments totalling £5,500 between August 1716 and May 1719, a sum otherwise then sufficient to build a very substantial house.

Despite Gibbs’s dismissal, the exterior elevations were nonetheless completed by the last two executants mainly to his designs, the two main fronts then being recorded in the immensely popular and influential architectural publication, Vitruvius Britannicus (continuation volume, by Badeslade & Rocque, 1739), a series of volumes initiated in 1724 by the architect Colen Campbell recording the more important, architecturally classical mansions of England. The house’s parapet was crowned by some 21 statues, including Mercury and Fame, as on the Delander clock, which with its profuse gilt and silver mounts (since reduced in number, as evidenced by vacant fixing holes on the case) would have fitted in perfectly within the milieu predominated by silver and gilt at the mansion. Equally, the way Chandos continually switched architects is echoed in the present clock, its ivory plate spandrels (originally painted with the Sciences) evidently replacing earlier ones, perhaps of silver ornament, matching the silver central dial mounts still in evidence. Chandos was evidently a tinkerer, unable to leave alone, his great wealth allowing changes at whim.

Today Chandos is principally remembered for his patronage in 1717-19 of the composer Georg Handel (1685-1759) at Cannons, where he was resident as Caernarvon’s master of music, and there composing the ‘Chandos Anthems’ and his opera ‘Acis and Galatea’, the former laying the ground for his

future success as a choral composer and the latter becoming his most popular opera. Another noteworthy example of Brydges’s patronage was of the Rev. John Theophilius Desaguliers, FRS, ostensibly the Cannons house chaplain, but more taken up in perfecting the estate’s outstanding fountains and other waterworks throughout the 105-acre pleasure grounds. The architect Nicholas Hawksmoor commented, ‘I cannot but own that the water at Cannons... is the main beauty of that situation and it cost him dear’.

Profligate as was his spending on the house, its contents and grounds, Chandos’s downfall was in fact due to the financial upheavals of 1720 in the interlinked collapses of the South Sea Company (known as the South Sea Bubble) and the York Buildings (Water) Company. Chandos had been a heavy speculator in the shares of both concerns, additionally having recommended his chaplain, Desaguliers, to the York Buildings Water Co. on account of his expertise in water pumps and machinery; both companies had ventured way beyond their initial commercial brief into unrelated, and frankly commercially risky fields, leading to a feverish speculative rise and then rapid collapse in their stock prices, in a typical boom and bust. Simply put, Chandos lost more than a fortune.

Even though Chandos continued to build and beautify the house and park at Cannons after the financial crash of 1720, his finances were increasingly precarious. Becoming infamous, creditors congregated and started to push for payment, the legal action over the Delander clock in 1722, clearly resulting in its resale by public lottery, under court 197

order. At Chandos’s death in 1744 his son and heir, the 2nd Duke, inherited an impecunious estate and was forced in June 1747 to sell the complete contents and even the very materials of the magnificent mansion in two gargantuan auction sales running over several days: A Catalogue of all the Household Furniture, &c, beginning 1 June 1747, and A Catalogue of all the Materials of the Dwelling-House, Out-Houses, &c, of His Grace, James, Duke of Chandos, Deceas’d At his late Seat call’d Cannons, beginning 16 June 1747. Thus significant architectural elements of the house were relocated to buildings elsewhere: the columns of the portico of the National Gallery, London, being but one example.

The exciting, newly rediscovered provenance of the present Delander clock enables it to be added to the list of Chandos’s preeminent artistic and scientific patronage, adding considerable colour to our appreciation of his endeavour, overly spendthrift as that may have been, in commissioning one of the most important clocks of the early 18th century.

James Gibbs by John Michael Williams

The possible designer, James Gibbs (1682-1754) Now that the original owner of this clock has been rediscovered, the possibility must be entertained that the Duke of Chandos’s principal architect from 1715 to 1719, James Gibbs, was advanced to help design the clock. This is the same process as happened with the duke’s chaplain and hydraulic engineer, Desaguliers, at the York Buildings (Water) Company. The first reason for suggesting Gibbs as designer is circumstantial, for there are a number of clock case designs in the extensive collection of his drawings which Gibbs left to the University of Oxford, and now in the Ashmolean Museum (illustrated in T Friedman, James Gibbs, Yale, 1984, p.72, pl.56), demonstrating that Gibbs was interested in clock case design. The second is methodological, namely the way the mouldings of varying projections sweep into and merge with each other within the gilt brass framing to the ivory plate spandrels, etc. on the dialplate, can be paralleled with the way such equivalent mouldings in his plasterwork ceilings do the same. This is unlike other architects of the time, and is seen in the ceilings at his London churches of St Martin’s in the Fields, and the Marylebone Chapel in Vere Street, plus the chapel at Witley Court, in Worcestershire, and All Saints, in Derby, now the cathedral, at the Great Room of Bart’s Hospital and also a ceiling from no.11 Henrietta Street, now preserved in the V&A Museum. Third is a stylistic comparison, the silver swags to the dial-centre mount being reminiscent of the decoration within the tympana over the principal windows of his church of St Mary le Strand, both as built and again in a preliminary design for the same church (Friedman, op. cit., p.45, pl.16).

198

Delander’s Duplex series and the Chandos clock Daniel Delander was born in 1678 and apprenticed in 1692 to Charles Halsted, but later transferred to Thomas Tompion, he was freed in July 1699 and continued as a journeyman, initially working exclusively for his former master. Delander continued his association with Tompion, and subsequently Graham, but was also making in his own right, finally dying in 1733.

The introduction of a new precision escapement in early 18th Century clocks was most unusual and thus Daniel Delander’s adaptation and application of the Duplex escapement for longcase clocks in circa 1710 is an exceptionally important horological development. It was produced during a period when domestic precision timekeeping was not fully determined and, although Towneley had developed a form of deadbeat escapement that Tompion used for the observatory clocks at Greenwich, it was specifically for scientific use and barely utilised elsewhere. However, on the evidence of tests done on the Sidereal Tompion no.483 (in this collection, inventory no.117), it may be that Delander’s duplex was concurrent with the development of the deadbeat?

At this time, standard longcase clocks were almost exclusively regulated by the anchor escapement, and Daniel Delander’s duplex can be viewed as one of the earliest attempts to refine precision domestic timekeeping. As the escape arbor moves in two-second intervals, all the duplex clocks have the seconds dial calibrated in six, rather than the more usual five, second divisions. Although this escapement was not taken up by other

199

clockmakers, this may have been due to its additional complication of manufacture and considerable consequential extra costs.

It can be presumed that Delander’s series of duplex clocks was his bid to be seen as an independent clockmaker, worthy of high merit in his own right, and the difficulty of manufacture limited its use to a small number of very special, and presumably very expensive, longcase clocks.

In circa 1710, Daniel Delander adapted and applied the duplex escapement for use on a small number of longcase clocks, which he generally numbered, that is with the exception of the present clock. Delander only numbered this series of duplex clocks and the highest number currently recorded is 18. This series can be sub-divided into two phases; Phase 1 being the earlier clocks, up to no.11, with standard square dials and conventional Type 3 pattern cases, as used by his master, Thomas Tompion; and Phase 2, being the latter part of the series, no.s 12 to 18, perhaps made from circa 1715, and having shallow ogee-arched dials and a new style of fully-developed case with canted corners.

The present clock in all its complications and grandeur in its specially designed unique case, undoubtedly fits such a purpose, especially apposite for its intended setting at Cannons House, as recently reestablished by Evans and McBroom. This clock, however, stands apart from what may be described as his general series of duplex clocks, superb as those are, and might be considered as the turning point between the earlier Phase 1 and later Phase 2 types. It has a unique case, the hood design in conformity with shape of the unique dial. The canted front angles of the Chandos clock case are further developed in the later numbered series clocks, their hoods having a continuation of the canted corners, which in the present clock hood are only hinted at in the foliate scroll volutes placed ‘on the cant’ below the Corinthian columns. The movement is akin to the Phase 1 square dial duplex longcases, but greatly complicated by the additional equation and year calendar work, absent on the ‘standard’ duplexes.

200

Phase 1 Delander duplex No.5, circa 1712

The Chandos Delander, circa 1715

Phase 2 Delander duplex No.15, circa 1718

201

Exhibit № 38

The Bertele Williamson,

Circa 1720

Height

6 feet 10¾ inches (2102 mm)

Dials

Both 13 by 19½ inches (330 by 495 mm): The front dial signed Josephus Williamson Londini Fecit with plumed mask-and-scroll spandrels, the matted centre overlaid with a foliate mask incorporating a banner inscribed Tempus Aequale [Mean Time] with seconds dial, the upper corners with subsidiary dials, that on the right for lunar date and universal high tide (adjustable for worldwide application), that on the left for weekday with engraved planetary deity, the arch with a revolving moon sphere within a monthly calendar ring (the calendar hand needing resetting manually at the end of the short months to the first of the following month);

An exceptional George I doubledialled (front and back) equation clock movement with spherical moon by Joseph Williamson, London, in a later purpose made burr walnut case

The back dial signed in the same manner with similar spandrels, the centre with seconds dial and inscribed Tempus Apparens [Solar Time] with silvered subsidiary Solar seconds ring and chapter ring, the latter with fleur-de-lys half-hour marks, the upper corners with subsidiary dials, that on the left for pendulum rise-and-fall regulation (calibrated 0-60), that to the right for strike/silent, the arch set with a year calendar ring enclosing ¾ circle sector with rising-and-falling shutters for length of daylight hours, inscribed at the base Tempus Ortus [Sunrise] & Occassus Solis [Sunset], itself centred by a twice XII hour ring for reading against the shutters as during the year they rise and fall.

NB: the ‘universal’ tide dial ‘consists of two concentric rings, the outer one fixed carrying the days of the moon’s age and an inner ring, with a friction clutch, marked I to XII twice over, so that, when the time of high tide at new moon at any port in the world be ascertained, that hour can be set under the 29½ division of the outer ring, and the dial will record the daily changes for that port.

№

202

90

Duration

8 days, with the option of winding from either side

Movement

The movement of great complexity and ground-breaking inventiveness (employing both friction clutches and differential gearing for seemingly the first time in clockwork) with five ring-turned pillars pinned to the front of the main, rectangular part of the plates which have diagonally-aligned, integral vertical arms extending from the upper corners flanking a single, central vertical extension, thereat with five additional conforming pillars, the going with maintaining power to semi-deadbeat escapement, the hour strike by rack on vertically-aligned bell within the ‘tree-top’ part of the plates, the variation of the rate of the solar dial effected via an equation kidney run via a vertical rod and worm off the mean time train, the conversion to ensure clockwise rotation of the hour and minute hands of both mean and solar dials effected via differential gearing.

Escapement

Anchor

Strike Type

Rack-and-snail hour striking

Case

Purpose made for the academic and collector, Professor von Bertele, the oak carcass veneered in burr walnut with identical appearance to front and reverse, having flat-top hood with dial doors front and back and brasscapped Tuscan columns to the four angles, the arched pierced-wood sidefret panels fully detachable to view the movement either side, rectangular trunk doors front and back, over plain plinth on moulded skirting.

203

204

Provenance

Discovered by HA Lloyd in an ordinary longcase with its rear dial against the backboard in the office of a garage proprietor in Twickenham, on whose death his executors eventually sold to: Professor Hans von Bertele, Germany; The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, USA, inventory no.1087; Sotheby’s New York, 19 June 2002, lot 127, sold for $101,575; John C Taylor collection, inventory no.90

Exhibited

2018, Innovation & Collaboration, London, exhibit no.118

Literature

Antiquarian Horology, Dec. 1955, H von Bertele, ‘The Equation Clock Inventions of Joseph Williamson’, p.123-127; HA Lloyd, Some Outstanding Clocks over Seven Hundred Years, 1350-1950, 1956, p.82-5, & pl.88(b), 90-95, & fig.13; HA Lloyd, Collectors’ Dictionary of Clocks, 1964, fig.504-505; Atwood & Andrews, The Time Museum, an Introduction, 1983, p.9;

J

R Garnier & L Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2008, p.380

oseph Williamson’s clockmaking origins are obscure, there being no record for him of an apprenticeship in the Clockmakers’ Company, although it is sometimes said he was apprenticed in 1683. He appears to have entered the Clockmakers’ Company late, but advanced to Junior Warden in 1721, and Master in 1724 or 1725, dying in office that year. He certainly (on his own attestation) worked sometime for Daniel Quare (for whom I then wrought mostly), partly making equation clocks, plus he claimed to have been the actual maker of all such clocks made in England up until 1719, and having been the inventor of the kidney equation device.

In 1719 his letter to the Royal Society, asserted ‘his Right to the curious and useful invention of making clocks to keep time with the Sun’s Apparent Motion’. In these claims Williamson (notwithstanding the superlative quality of his equation clocks) was being disingenuous, for not only are the equation clocks signed by Tompion not by Williamson, the actual invention of the equation kidney to render the clock hands to register (varying) Solar time was due to Christiaan Huygens, who in 1695 (his last surviving letter) wrote to his brother Constantijn (then William III’s private secretary in London) outlining the kidney equation device. As a result, we can deduce that Quare sub-contracted his equation clocks to Williamson, who then proceeded to make such clocks also on his own account, such as in the present clock.

Despite HA Lloyd’s comprehensive description and analysis of the present clock in his 1956 book, its significance has since been generally misunderstood; indeed subsequent to Lloyd, merely the large globe moon was generally singled out as being probably the first of its kind (an accolade that seemingly should be allowed the Chandos Delander equation longcase clock, exhibit 37).

As Lloyd made clear, in several (more significant) respects the movement of the present clock is pioneering: ‘Three friction clutches are used in this clock, for the tide dial, the lunar globe and for setting the solar equation disc and annual calendar hand… Tubular friction tight arbors had been used for many years, but this is a very early use of frictional discs in horology’, continuing ‘So far, beyond the introduction of a universal tide dial and of disc friction clutches, nothing unusual has appeared but Dr Beretele discovered on removing the solar dial, that this is a truly historic piece inasmuch as in the conversion from mean to solar a true differential gear is employed, the first known in horology and nearly two hundred years before a similar arrangement in motor cars’.

205

Exhibit № 39

The Kingwood Graham No.639, Circa 1722

An exceedingly rare and fine George I month-going Type 3 Kingwood parquetry longcase precision timepiece with dayof-the-week sector by George Graham, London

Height

7 feet 10 inches (2388 mm)

Case

The Type 3 case with an oak carcass and superb decorative Kingwood veneers (known then as Princes wood) laid in intricate parquetry patterns with strikingly beautiful circular floral rosettes, with caddy top flanked by four brass ball finials and centred by a further matching finial on a pedestal, pierced sound frets to the double friezes above brass-capped Doric columns, concave throat mouldings, cross-banded plinth raised on a Kingwood veneered double skirting. The backboard with screw-fixed brass T-bracket to attach to the corresponding movement L-bracket.

Dial

12 inch (305 mm) square gilt-brass dial twice signed Geo: Graham London beneath the silvered chapter ring and on an applied silvered oval in the matted centre, which is also pierced with a day-of-the-week sector below XII and calendar aperture above VI and below the shuttered winding hole, the silvered chapter ring with typical lozenge half-hour marks, fine pierced and sculpted blued steel hands, double-screwed Indian mask & scroll spandrels with foliate scroll engraving between (engraver G.515), the shutter lever to a slot on the right of the dial by III, four latched dial feet.

Duration

One month

Movement

The substantial 6¼ by 10½ inch (159 by 267 mm) stepped and chamferedtop regulator movement with six symmetrically positioned latched stepbaluster pillars, punch-numbered 639 at the bottom centre of the backplate, with L-bracket to fix to the case, going train of high count with bolt and shutter maintaining power and an early deadbeat escapement, brass-rod pendulum with massive lenticular bob and calibrated rating nut.

Escapement

Deadbeat

Provenance

1948, Charles Frodsham Ltd. sold to: Private collection Australia; Private collection USA; Anthony Woodburn, 2000, sold for £279,000; The John C Taylor collection, inventory no.103

Exhibited

November 1951, Graham Bi-centenary exhibition, Royal Society of Arts, catalogue no.2; March 2006, The dedication of the Harrison memorial, Westminster Abbey; July 2006, The Excitement of Time Exhibition, The Royal Society; October 2006, Science day, Buckingham Palace

Literature

Antique Collector, Jan/Feb 1949, Dawson, ‘Decorative Veneers on Early Clock Cases’, illus. fig. 6, 6a & 6b; Dawson, Drover & Parkes, Early English Clocks, 1982, illus. p.299, pl.426 to 429; J L Evans, Thomas Tompion at the Dial and Three Crowns, 2006, listed p.83; Evans, Carter & Wright, Thomas Tompion 300 years, 2013, listed p.609; Garnier & Carter, The Golden Age of English Horology, 2015, listed p.201

№

206

103

207

208

209

A

t‌the time the Kingwood Graham regulator was made, the veneer would have been known as Princes wood. Princes wood was the most expensive cabinet wood in general use in the late 17th Century, and this was almost certainly the reason for its name – only those with princely incomes could afford it. Whenever found, princes wood furniture was an indication of status and wealth, but thereafter it occurs commonly in the great houses of the period.

Numerous pieces of princes wood furniture were supplied to the Royal Household in the 1680s and 1690s, among them a cabinet for £23 and a large wring table for £14, both supplied by Gerrit Jensen. William Farnborough also supplied princes wood furniture to the crown in the late 1680s. Although it continued to be popular in France, where it was known as bois de violette princes wood largely went out of use in Britain until the 1770s. When it returned to favour it was called kingwood, possibly to avoid confusion with the Jamaican princes wood [A Bowett, English Furniture, p.45].

The Kingwood Graham is so named after its stunning use of geometric ‘Kingwood’ veneers on the case, unique in Graham’s oeuvre. This clock was undoubtedly a special order for an extremely wealthy client, the case alone may have been his most expensive to date, and the addition of a beautiful day-of-the-week sector will have added to its costs. This is not to denigrate its historical importance and scientific interest, as it contains one of Graham’s earliest regulator movements with his deadbeat escapement, which appears to have come into use as early as c.1719.

Soon after assuming control of the business on Tompion’s death in 1713, Graham was moving in the highest intellectual and commercial circles in London. His rise in the Clockmakers’ Company (Assistant from 1716, Warden 1719, Master 1722) and Fellowship of the Royal Society (elected March 1721) are well documented, but his involvement in Freemasonry is less well known.

Graham was a member of the small but highly fashionable Freemasons’ Lodge at Rummer’s Tavern, Charing Cross and his known associates, amongst others, included: the polymath J T Desaguliers (who bespoke a special timer); the Dukes of Richmond, Montagu, and Buccleuch (all known customers and Buccleuch bespoke longcase no.734); Sir Hans Sloane PRS; Martin Ffolkes PRS; Lord Mayor Sir William Billers; George Heathcote, MP; Alexander Stuart FRCP; Sir Henry Bateman, 1st Viscount Bateman, MP; William Bucknall, MP; Benjamin Hoadly, royal physician and a successful dramatist; and John Byrom.

Byrom’s journal informs us that they were also both members of the Cabala Club, a rather shadowy group of Fellows of the Royal Society that met at the Sun Tavern, in St. Paul’s Churchyard, and later at the King’s Head, in Holborn.

They discussed matters outside the formal business of the Royal Society, such as magic, miracles and the occult, possibly driven by sceptical curiosity rather than belief, and probably because they dared not do so among the Fellows.

By the early 1720s, when the Kingwood Graham was made, both the Royal Society and Freemasonry put Graham in regular contact with wealthy clients of a scientific bent, exactly the sort who would have commissioned this stunning precision longcase timepiece.

Exhibit № 40

The Hooper Graham

No.650, Circa 1724

Height

9¼ inches (235 mm)

Case

Exceptionally, the frame and front fret are fire-gilded, but otherwise of Graham’s usual lantern construction with circular section columns, ball feet and urn finials, detachable side doors, pierced gallery frets; the front fret engraved with foliage. The plain four-legged brass bell-strap pinned to the post finials, the bell itself held by a further squat finial above. The top-plate with integral hoop and punch numbered 650 at the rear, with iron spurs to the two rear ball feet.

Dial

Fire-gilded and signed Geo: Graham London in curves within sector-shaped reserves in the matted centre, below XII and above VI. The large, solid silver, Roman chapter ring with typical lozenge half-hour marks and internal quarter division ring. The alarm is set using the central silvered alarm disc against the tail of the single blued-steel hand.

Duration

30 hour

Movement

The posted frame movement with single going train with knife-edge verge escapement and short bob pendulum, alarm train mounted on the inside of the back plate with verge oscillated clapper (repaired but original) to the bell above, both going and alarm trains are rope driven.

Escapement

Knife-edge verge with short bob pendulum

Strike Type

Alarm only

Provenance

Private collection UK;

A very fine George I miniature brass verge lantern timepiece with solid silver chapter ring and alarm

by George Graham, London

John Hooper collection, until sold 2004 for £30,000; The John C Taylor collection, inventory no.124 Exhibited

2019-20, The Luxury of Time, Nat. Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, cat. no.4:5

Literature

The Luxury of Time, Clocks from 1550-1750, 2019, p.28

T

his is one of only four substantiated Graham lantern clocks (there is also a hooded wall clock with similar posted frame, no.647). Like Tompion before him, all are miniatures, but this clock, no.650, is extraordinary: it is the only example by either Tompion or Graham with a solid silver chapter ring and furthermore, the frame, dial plate and front fret have all been expensively fire-gilded, suggesting that it was a special production, commissioned and finished for a wealthy customer’s own personal use.

Despite the rarity of Graham’s lantern clocks, we are aware of the later provenance of one other example made shortly after this one, which demonstrates the standing of his client base for the most humble of his productions. In 1748 the third Astronomer Royal, James Bradley, purchased a similar lantern alarm, no.667.

As it was made in c.1726, it was clearly bought from Graham ‘refurbished’ and, having neither fire-gilding nor a silver chapter ring, it was entirely for practical use

by Bradley at the Royal Observatory (NMM inventory no.ZBA5479).

Tompion’s earlier lantern clocks have a conventional riveted iron hoop, and from c.1710, he introduced a single cast top-plate with an integral hoop, which was continued by Graham, and seen here. Interestingly, this was a practice continued some 40 years later by Graham’s own apprentices, Thomas Mudge and William Dutton, and afterwards also maintained by their successors.

№

212

124

213

214

215

Exhibit № 41

The Chester Beatty Graham watch

No.696, dated 1733

Diameter

49 mm

Case

The inner case with plain glazed dial bezel, hinged to the pierced and engraved back with scrolls and a mask below VI, the rear also engraved 696 on the inner wheatear border, below the hour-repeat push bow pendant, the plain centre with winding square and decorative wheel in the middle. The inside punch numbered 696 and hallmarked for 1733, further stamped IW* for the casemaker, John Ward of Boars Head Court, Fleet Street, the bell screw-fixed.

An extremely fine George II gold pair-cased quarter repeating cylinder pocket watch by George Graham, the outer case by Ishmael Parbury

The outer repoussé case signed on the lower back Parbury (the chaser, Ishmael Parbury) with a scene in which a seated figure of Minerva, as Britannia, raises a veil from a globe displaying the Americas. Outside the cartouche are pierced sections, between four panels containing: Surveying instruments; waywiser and plane table; Navigational instruments; backstaff, azimuth compass(?), chart, crossstaff, telescope and dividers.

Astronomical instruments; telescopic quadrant, Gunter quadrant, square(?), protractor, dividers.

Time instruments; sandglass, watch, clock and sundial.

The bezel, scratch marked 696 inside the back rim, with further pierced sections between panels containing flowers. The inside further stamped IW* for John Ward and London hallmarks for 1733.

Dial

The fine and original enamel dial with Arabic numerals outside the division ring and Roman hours within with original blued steel beetle and poker hands.

Duration

30 hour

Movement

The cylinder movement with gilt-brass plates and five baluster pillars signed George Graham London 696. The gilt balance cock pierced and superbly scroll engraved with a mask below the diamond endstone and also numbered 696 under the cock, the similarly engraved top plate with silvered regulation disc, all held by blued steel screws. The going train with fusee and the quarterrepeat mechanism activated by pressing the pendant.

Escapement

Cylinder

Provenance

Chester Beatty Collection, sold Sotheby’s June 1963, lot 194; Antiquorum Geneva, October 1995, lot 38; Bobinet, 13 March 2006, sold for €85,000; John C Taylor collection, inventory no.173

Exhibited

July 00, The Excitement of Time Exhibition, The Royal Society; , Ships, Clocks, and Stars Exhibition, The National Maritime Museum; 2019-20, The Luxury of Time, Nat. Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, cat. no.4:6

Literature

Cumhaill, Investing in Clocks and Watches, 1967, p.75; Brusa, L’Arte dell’Orologeria in Europa, 1978, fig. 477 & 478; Antiquarian Horology, Winter 1993, Philip Whyte advert; Edgcumbe, The Art of the Gold Chaser, 2000, illus. p.133-134; Evans, Thomas Tompion at the Dial and Three Crowns, 2006, listed p.105; Evans, Carter & Wright, Thomas Tompion 300 years, 2013, listed p.631; Garnier & Carter, The Golden Age of English Horology 2015, listed p.196; The Luxury of Time, Clocks from 1550-1750, 2019, p.29

Comparative Vertue notebooks Vol III, 1934, Walpole Society; literature Snowman, Gold Boxes of Europe, 1990, pl.561; №

216

173

British Museum Magazine, Winter 1997, p.20

217

G

raham no.696 is a collaboration between George Graham (1673-1751), one of England’s greatest watchmakers and Ishmael Parbury, one of the finest chasers and repoussé workers of the 18th century.

The central scene to the outer case back illustrates the expansionist ambitions of Great Britain and its desire to master the seas. Hallmarked for the year 1733, it was made four years before the testing of John Harrison’s legendary first sea clock, now known as H1.

Interestingly, the Astronomer Royal, Dr. Halley, advised Harrison to consult with Graham when he first came to London, indeed, Graham was later to sponsor Harrison’s work. The importance of timekeeping to navigation was, of course, well established by this period and it is therefore significant to see Father Time depicted to the central scene of the case back, with Britannia raising him from the ocean, signifying the longitude found at sea by the knowledge of exact time. From his position of subjection it appears that Father Time has been conquered by Britannia’s science, and has finally lifted the veil he held over the world.

Ishmael Parbury (c.1697-1746) was born in London in c.1697.

He was a highly accomplished artist and studied at Christ’s Hospital, perhaps learning by copying the drawings and engravings of Bernard Lens II, and by 1724 he had begun to chase cases for George Graham. In the Vertue notebooks Vol III the engraver and Antiquarian George Vertue (1684-1756) first mentions Parbury in 1732 as among the best chasers in London. At Parbury’s death in September 1746 his estate was sold in a Sale Catalogue of the Entire Collection of that Ingenious Artist Mr Ishmael Parbury.... sold at auction by Mr Cock, 17th and 18th December 1746, and Vertue mentions the sale, emphasising the fact that Parbury was English (the other chasers all being from Germany, Switzerland or France) and describes The Parbury Plaque, dated 1745, now held at the British Museum: Mr Ishmael Parberry. Gold Chaser of watches &c. of Salisbury Court. - deceasd. in Septbr. 1746… he was a man in his art of great excellency in the neatness and finishing correctness of his works, which gaind him great esteem. above any other Englishman and by that means he obtained the highest prices for his works. one peeice or rather master pece, being top of a gold snuff box, he kept till his death with his name to it, was sold at the sale of his collections. (his collections sold for 258 pounds).

Two other chased gold watch cases by Parbury are also in the British Museum (no.s 1958,1201.253 and 1912,1107.1), both undated, and a third can be found in the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford.

219

Exhibit № 42

Larcum Kendall, London Dated 1776

An extremely rare and important George II gilt cased cylinder pocket watch

Diameter

60 mm

Case

The plain gilt-metal case with a D-pendant bow, sloped-shouldered outer hinge to the bezel with convex glass.

Dial

The very fine enamel regulator dial with Arabic numerals every 5 minutes inside the outer minute division ring and large central blued steel ‘poker’ minute hand. The Roman hour ring inset at 60 and Arabic numeral seconds within its division ring at 30 minutes, both with shaped blued steel hands, the seconds hand counter-balanced.

Duration

30 hour

Movement

The gilt full plate movement, with large square baluster pillars, signed Larcum Kendall LONDON and dated 1776 above the signature (in a manner similar to K1 at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, dated 1769). The finely pierced and engraved balance bridge centred by a faceted diamond endstone, with silvered regulation dial inset into the matching engraved top plate, all held with blued steel screws. The dust cover further signed Larcum Kendall, London.

Escapement

Cylinder

Provenance

Bonhams, 23 November 2004, lot 42, sold for £66,372; John C Taylor collection, inventory no.136

Literature

Antiquarian Horology, September 2004, p.308, illus. advert

Comments

The spring barrel with the following scratch marks: Kendall (no date) Guthrie 1778 (possibly William Guthrie, appr. to Thomas Johnson?)

Millar 1841 (possibly John F. Millar of Broad Street, Bloomsbury?)

L

№

220

136

arcum ‌ Kendall (1719-90) was born on 21 September 1719 at Charlbury in Oxfordshire, the eldest of two children of Moses Kendall, mercer and linen draper, and his wife Anne Larcum, who were both Quakers. By 1735, Kendall was living with his parents in St Clement Dane’s, Westminster, and was apprenticed for seven years to the watch, clock, and repeating-motion maker John Jefferys (c.1704-c.1754), but he was never made free of the Clockmakers’ Company.

After his apprenticeship ended in 1742, Kendall immediately set up on his own, working almost exclusively for George Graham (d.1751) as an escapement maker, specialising in cylinder escapements, and he seems to have continued in that role for Thomas Mudge and William Dutton after Graham’s death. He was highly respected as a craftsman and, working under Graham with his contemporary Thomas Mudge, he was part of the finest group of watchmakers of the time.

By the late 1740s George Graham had known and supported John Harrison for some twenty years. Introduced by Graham, Harrison had commissioned Kendall’s former master, John Jefferys, to make an experimental watch for him that was finished in 1753. Under testing, the good performance of the Jeffreys watch surprised Harrison and it was this watch that was to ultimately change his view and give him the clue he needed to design a new marine timekeeper, H4. However through the mid 1750s Harrison continued to work on and adjust H3. Jefferys died in 1754 before construction of H4 began, and it seems Kendall may have been employed by Harrison to help in making some parts of H4.

This may be the reason why Kendall was eventually appointed as one of the practical experts to the Board of Longitude in 1765. Also on the Board of

221

Longitude were Rev. William Ludlam, Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, Rev. John Mitchell, F.R.D, Woodwardian Professor of Geology, Thomas Mudge and William Mathews of Fleet Street, watchmakers; and John Bird of the Strand, instrument maker. All six, alongside the Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne, spent two days being shown the construction of H4, and on the 22nd August 1765 signed the certificate stating that all details had been declared by Harrison to their entire satisfaction. During these deliberations the Board decided that a copy of the timekeeper must be made and Harrison recommended Kendall to do it.

The copy, known as K1, is comprehensively described by Jonathan Betts in Marine Chronometers at Greenwich, 2018, p.187-190. It was completed in 1769 and in the following year was inspected by the same group as before, but including Harrison’s son William, who admitted that it was even better made than his father’s original. Kendall was paid the agreed £450, and the Board commissioned Kendall to create a simplified version.

K1 After the trials at Greenwich K1 was assigned to Captain James Cook for his second voyage of discovery to the South Seas in 17721775, where Cook and ships astronomer William Wales had high praise for the watch and for Kendall, and on his return, Cook wrote to the Secretary of the Admiralty, “Mr Kendall’s watch has exceeded the expectations of its most zealous advocate...”

Kendall’s simplified timekeeper, K2, employed many of the features of H4 but Kendall omitted the remontoire mechanism and it never performed as well as K1. K2 was handed over to the board of Longitude In March 1772, at a cost of 200 guineas, this time the dial was signed LARCUM KENDALL LONDON and on the back plate: Larcum Kendall 1771 London It is chiefly famous because it was with William Bligh on the Bounty in 1787 when, as a result of the mutiny, it was taken by Fletcher Christian to Pitcairn Island. It was found by an American on K2 Pitcairn in 1808 and was bought from the last survivor of the mutiny and only returned to England in 1840.

Further simplified designs

by Kendall, including a type of escapement said to be his own invention, resulted in K3, which was completed in 1774 at a cost of £100, it is signed LARCUM KENDALL 222

LONDON and on the back plate: Larcum Kendall 1774 London its style is different from K1 and K2, having three small dials for hours, minutes and seconds and is fitted into a octagonal wooden case. K3 was sent with Cook on his third Pacific voyage in 1776, returning in 1780 after his death. This timekeeper also failed to perform as well as H4 or K1, which Cook also took with him again.

After this, Kendall began following the likes of John Arnold and Thomas Earnshaw in making pocket timekeepers with detent escapements, such as the pocket chronometer in the Clockmakers Company collection at the Science Museum.

This has an almost identical dial to this watch and is signed on the back plate L. Kendall London B+y in a silver pair case hallmarked for 1786. Inside the case are watch papers printed Vulliamy & Sons, 74 Pall Mall, London and it was presented to the Clockmakers Company in 1849 by B.L Vulliamy and was almost certainly purchased by his father, Benjamin Vulliamy, at Kendall’s Workshop sale, Lot 37.

The quality of his work was second to none, as is shown by the few watches signed by him that survive today. He was primarily a watchmaker to the top of the retail trade, producing first-rate examples to their designs, the majority of his work, which also included some clocks and precision regulators, appears to have been sold under other retailers’ names.

The sale of Kendall’s workshop was held at his premises on the 23rd December 1790, many watchmaking tools and parts were sold, but Lots 37 to 39 in the sale may be of particular relevance, as follows: 37. A time keeper, complete in silver cases, by ditto scapement 36 guineas 38. A time keeper, with silver cases, by ditto, complete except the scapement 8 : 8: 0 39. A gold horizontal seconds watch, capp’d and jewel’d, by ditto 30 guineas If Lot 37 was the watch bought by Vulliamy at a cost of 36 guineas, could this watch be lot 39? Its price was certainly high enough to believe it was a high quality watch, and it could even have been Kendall’s own personal watch. One of the attendees at the auction was William Bayly, the Astronomer on Cook’s expeditions, Adventure in 1772-75 and Discovery in 1776-80. The Principal Astronomer on Cook’s second voyage was William Wales.

William Wales was born in Yorkshire in 1734 and, by coincidence, the parents of John Harrison, had been married in the same parish of Wragby on the Nostell Priory estate, as his parents. In 1765, Wales was appointed by the Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne, as one of four computers to work on calculations for the first Nautical Almanac, which was published in 1767 and he was also sent by the British government to Hudson Bay to observe the transit of Venus in 1769, apparently with Admiral Howe’s Ellicott portable regulator (also in this collection, inventory no.182). In 1772 he was proposed by Maskelyne to be astronomer on Cook’s Resolution, where he

achieved on the day was lot 5, A Pocket Time-piece by Kendall, which sold for 20 guineas 9 shillings and 6 pence. This perhaps indicates the high esteem William Wales held in Kendal’s work, could this watch have been made especially for Wales?

After all, he returned from Cook’s second voyage in 1775 with glowing reports of K1 having spent 3 long years at sea with the watch, monitoring it on a daily basis.

The top plate of this watch certainly echoes that of K1 with the fine engraving and the full signature Larcum Kendall only seen on K1, 2 and 3, while the other known examples of Kendall’s work are all signed L. Kendall. Meanwhile, the regulator dial is a feature required for more accurate readings, needed when taking mathematical and astronomical observations. Apart from two fixing screws, this dial is almost identical to that of the Clockmakers Company watch.

The date of 1776 is also of interest; the only known examples dated are K1, 2 and 3 whereas the other known Kendall watches have hallmarked cases. One example is stamped with B+u and signed L. Kendall and is pair cased with a tortoise-shell outer case, now in the Science Museum London, and the Clockmakers Company watch is stamped B+y. It is not known what production numbers these codes refer to, but many 18th century instrument makers used serial numbering systems, including Arnold and Vulliamy. The date of 1776 was also the year that William Wales became Master of the Mathematical School at Christ’s Hospital London.

When Larcum Kendall died at the age of 71 at Furnival’s Inn Court on 22 November 1790, the Quakers ‘received his body into the bosom of their church’ and he was buried in the Quaker cemetery at Kingston, Surrey. For a man so involved with the story of longitude and watch making at the highest level, there are very few surviving examples of his work.

was appointed to judge the effectiveness of K1.

On returning from the South Seas in 1775, Wales became Master of the Royal Mathematical School at Christ’s Hospital in London and in 1777, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the signatories included Captain James Cook, Daniel Solander and Nevil Maskelyne.

William Wales died in 1798 at the age of 64, in March the following year his Mathmatical Library, instruments, maps and drawings by Hodges, were auctioned by Leigh and Sotheby, Booksellers of Covent Garden. The auctions first 25 lots included a Copper Medal of Captain Cook lot 3, and instruments, such as a Barometer by Bird lot 14 (John Bird was one of the six chosen alongside Kendall on the Board of Longitude). The most significant lot and the highest price 223

Exhibit № 43

The Mudge Green Dated 1777

An historically important George III early marine timekeeper with constant force escapement, started in 1776 and completed 1779, by Thomas Mudge, London

Dimensions

Case diameter 115 mm, case height 65 mm

Case

The brass case of drum form, the side band covered with green shagreen and finished with gilt-brass turned and stepped top and bottom moulded bezels. The top bezel hinged and inset with a convex dial glass, the bottom bezel inset with a flat lacquer-gilt plain brass base with a shutter for the winding hole.

Dial

The 102 mm gilt dial plate, screwed to the movement top-plate, and applied with finely cast and chased silver spandrels with scrolls, flora and griffins heads. The enamel mean time dial with Arabic hours and minutes and a separate subsidiary enamel seconds dial, both held by screw-fixed gilt stepped bezels. The ringed poker hands in blued steel onto a square setting extension, the seconds hand counterbalanced.

Duration

30 hour

Movement

Gilt full plate movement with four baluster square-based pillars from the top plate, the bottom-plate pinned and signed Tho. Mudge 1777, with a screwed dust exclusion pipe for the winding square, fine pierced and foliate engraved balance bridge, additionally decorated with a griffin and scallop shells, the recessed dial plate screwed to the top-plate, slot-aligned in the outer case and held by two screws.

The reverse 7-turn chain fusee, with Harrison’s maintaining power, the fixed barrel with ratchet set up, over-hung outer piece for chain and rotation, fine polished wheels with 6 arm crossings, great wheel with 100 teeth, centre wheel with 120 teeth and 20 leaves on the pinion, third wheel with 120 teeth and 16 leaves on the pinion, the contrate wheel with 120 teeth and 15 leaves on the pinion, also with a wheel for the seconds of 45 teeth driving a reversing wheel of the same count, escape wheel with a pinion of 12 leaves and 15 escape wheel teeth.

The constant force escapement, 15 tooth escape wheel with no lift, polished steel arbors and pivots, hard stone pallets shaped for lift and locking, both pallets with constant force blued spiral springs, all running in jewels with endstones, held in adjustable potance.

The polished brass flat rim balance with fine three arm crossing and counterpoise weight, cranked balance staff with pins for impulse, two matched blued steel spiral balance springs, the balance pivots run between roller wheels to minimize friction which are held by pillared plates, diamond endstone for the balance bridge and ruby endstone for the balance potance.

The separate temperature compensation mechanism is mounted on the back plate comprising two straight bi-metallic springs acting on a lever, which is pivoted and at the other end has two curb pins that act on the outer end of the bottom balance spring, the other end is formed into a long cranked tail protruding from under the balance guard (visible above the signature), fine adjustments are made by the sliding movement of the bi-metallic springs through adjustment screws mounted either side of the balance guard.

Regulation is by curb pins acting on the top balance spring, the adjustment is through a square mounted on the balance bridge with a sliding brass assembly held in tension by a swan neck spring and indexed on a semicircular plate and indicated by a blued steel pointer.

Escapement

№

224

132

Constant force (developed by Mudge from the drawings by Johan Jakob Huber, 1733-1798)

225

Provenance

Thought to have been lost at sea, but by 1950, the horologist Charles Allix had discovered that it had survived and was with a European collector; Christie’s Geneva, 8 November 1976, lot 240; The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, USA, inventory no.1303; Sotheby’s, Masterpieces from the Time Museum, 13 October 2004, lot 672, sold for $1,240,000; John C Taylor collection, inventory no.132

Exhibited

1976, An Exhibition of English Pocket Chronometers from the 18th to the 20th Century, Bobinet, London; 1977-1999, The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, USA; 2006, The National Maritime Museum; 2014, Ships, Clocks, and Stars Exhibition, The National Maritime Museum; 2015-2016, Ships, Clocks and Stars Exhibition, The Seaport Museum, Mystic, USA

Literature

Mudge & von Brühl, A reply to the answer of the Rev. Dr. Maskelyne, astronomer royal, to a narrative of facts, relating to some time-keepers constructed by Mr. Thomas Mudge, for the discovery of the longitude at sea, 1791; Thomas Mudge Jr, A Description with Plates of the Timekeeper Invented by the Late Thomas Mudge, London, 1799 (reprinted London 1977); Gould, The Marine Chronometer, Its History and Devlopment. London, 1923, reprinted 1989, p.107-125; Pioneers of Precision Timekeeping, 1965, Good, ‘The Mudge Marine Timekeeper,’ (Monograph No.3), p.75-91; Rees, Clocks, Watches and Chronometers, Extracts. London, reprinted 1970; Antiquarian Horology, Spring 1978, Hutchinson, ‘Some Observations on the Timekeepers of Thomas Mudge’, p.715-719; Chamberlain, It’s About Time, 1978, p.337-339; Antiquarian Horology, 1981, Daniels, ‘Thomas Mudge: The Complete Horologist,’ p.150-173; Britten, Old Clocks, Watches and Their Makers, Ninth Edition, 1982, p.128a-b, 192-193; Randall & Good, Catalogue of Watches in the British Museum, VI Pocket Chronometers, Marine Chronometers, and other Portable Precision Timekeepers, 1990, p.181-185; Randall, The Time Museum Catalogue of Chronometers, 1992, front cover illus. & exhibit no.118; The Time Museum Brochure, reprinted from Invention & Technology, 1992, Garver, ‘Keeping Time’, p.11; Quest for Longitude, edited by Andrewes, 1993, Penney, ‘Thomas Mudge and the Longitude: A Reason to Excel’, p.294-308, pl.18; Horological Journal, January 2006, Randall, ‘Thomas Mudge and the Swiss contribution to his inventions’, Lecture synopsis, p.16-17; Dunn & Higgit, Ships, Clocks, and Stars, the Quest for Longitude, 2014, p.162 illus. p.164-166; Betts, Marine Chronometers at Greenwich, 2018, p.48 & 228

226

227

T

homas Mudge (1717-1794) started his apprenticeship with George Graham in May 1730, just a couple of months before John Harrison’s now famous visit. On completing his apprenticeship, Mudge continued to work for Graham until the latter died in 1751.

In c.1754 Mudge made a remarkable timepiece now in the British Museum (no.1958,1006.2118), and in similarity with H3, it has a large vertical balance supported by Harrison’s anti-friction sectors and using Harrison’s maintaining power.

It has the first example of a detached lever, a train remontoire and thermal compensation, although the clock did not perform well, Mudge undoubtedly learned a great deal from it. About this time he received a visit from a remarkable Astronomer from Basel, Johann Jacob Huber (1733-1798), with detailed plans for a precision marine timekeeper, and he commissioned Mudge to make it. His papers are held in Basel University library, while the clock that Mudge made for him is now in the Historiches Museen in Basel. Mudge clearly had many of Huber’s ideas in mind when he wrote Thoughts on the Means of Improving Watches in 1765 but gave no credit to Huber, who by then had taken up the lucrative post as Astronomer to Frederick the Great in Berlin.

It was not until 1771, partly due to failing health but also to concentrate on marine timekeeper design, that Mudge retired from his London business to Plymouth and he was able to give his undivided attention to producing a marine timekeeper.

The resulting instrument was Mudge no.1, now in the British Museum, which was completed 3 years later in 1774. Unlike his c.1754 timepiece, H3 and his Huber timekeeper, Mudge no.1 has a horizontal balance to avoid poise problems. It has twin spiral balance springs and Huber’s pallets are driven via spiral springs providing the constant force, the geometry of no.1’s escapement is much improved but the construction is extremely complex. Deciding to modify the running time from 8 to 2 days, Mudge made some late changes to the drive system and when it was sent to Maskelyne for testing, the resulting drive springs proved prone to failure.

Unfortunately, in the same year that Mudge presented no.1 for testing, 1774, the old Act of Parliament relating to the Longitude awards was repealed and replaced by far tougher conditions, rewarding only methods or instruments that proved their worth. One of the conditions stipulated that for any timekeeper to be truly considered, it required production to be replicated, there now had to be two instruments that should be tested together. Eventually in 1777, Maskelyne was able to report to the board that no.1 had gained just 1 minute 19 seconds in a run of 109 days and to observe… that it is greatly superior to any timekeeper which has come under my inspection… despite the new conditions, Mudge was awarded £500.

Thus challenged and frustrated, in 1776 Mudge determined to concentrate on the remaining part of the Longitude prize and started production of his famous Green and Blue marine 228

Harrison H3

Mudge 1754

Huber Mudge

Mudge no.1

timekeepers, differentiated by the colour of their shagreen cases.

Reduced now to one-day going, these still had Mudge’s complex constant-force escapement. Green and Blue were also tested at Greenwich but had contentiously mixed results.

Mudge continued to adjust them for the remaining 17 years of his life, but they proved too complex to provide a practical solution to finding longitude.

A year before Thomas Mudge’s death in 1794, after much petitioning and canvassing for support, his son Thomas junior, a lawyer, managed to get Parliament to grant his father £3,000 as reward for his work. Then, with the intention of proving his father’s design, Thomas jnr. established a manufactory in Kennington to make copies of his father’s timekeepers in the hope of selling them to the Navy and recouping his costs. Initially, he employed two highly respected watchmakers, William Howells and Robert Pennington, with a number of other craftsmen under them, but without his father’s extraordinary making skills, these never performed sufficiently well, proving too complex for repair and adjustment by other makers. Howells and Mudge jnr. fell out, with Howells setting up in competition, however neither workshops really succeeded in making the project work and by 1799 both ventures ceased, simply because the timekeepers were too complicated. Of the twenty-seven copies made by Mudge’s manufactory, the existence of eighteen Mudge Copy instruments is known.

Betts describes Thomas Mudge as follows… if there was a single quality associated with Mudge, it was his perfectionism, seen clearly in the quality of construction and finish of all the objects he made: few of his contemporaries in the eighteenth century came near his standard of craftsmanship, and no one exceeded it (Marine Chronometers at Greenwich, 2018). With the need for a workable longitude solution requiring practicality and simplification, it was the very complexity and high standard of his workmanship, which made Mudge’s timekeepers so difficult to replicate.

For over a century both timepieces disappeared. Mudge Blue eventually turned up in Russia in 1920 and having been offered to, and refused by, the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, it was sold to the Mathematisch-Physikalisher Museum in Dresden. Mudge Green first resurfaced in the 1950s in a private European collection having lain unrecognised and appreciated simply for its aesthetics.

Mudge Blue, in a later purpose made display case

Mudge Green, John C Taylor collection, inventory no.132

229

Exhibit № 44

Thomas Earnshaw for Josias Jessop, London

Circa 1783

An historically interesting and important George III pocket chronometer with Wright’s patent punchmark, retailed by Josias Jessop, in a later silver pair case

Diameter

56 mm

Case

The later plain silver inner and outer cases, inner case hallmarked for London 1805 and stamped with the maker’s mark D.W, for Daniel Walker of Clerkenwell Close.

Dial

The fine original enamel dial has Roman hours inside the division ring with gold ‘arrow’ hour hand and a ‘poker’ minute hand. Signed for Jessop, Southampton Street Strand, London above the centre. The subsidiary Arabic seconds ring set at VI with a fine blued steel counterbalanced seconds hand.

The dial reverse, signed by the enameller Weston, probably William Weston of Smithfield.

Duration

30 hour

Movement

The finely engraved gilt full plate movement with turned pillars, punchmarked for Wright’s Patent (only in use in 1783/4), and signed for Jessop, Southampton Street, London. Earnshaw’s spring detent escapement with pierced foliate and mask engraved balance cock, large diamond endstone, gilt-brass three-armed balance, the conforming engraved top plate inset with a silvered regulation dial and gold hand. The gilt-metal dust cover further signed for Jessop, London.

Escapement

Earnshaw’s spring detent

Provenance

The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, USA, inventory no.4127; Sotheby’s, Masterpieces from the Time Museum, 13 October 2004, lot 624, sold for $54,000; John C Taylor collection, inventory no.130

Exhibited

1990s, The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, USA 200, The Excitement of Time Exhibition, Westminster Abbey and The Royal Society; October 200, Science day, Buckingham Palace

Literature

№

230

130

Anthony Randall, The Time Museum Catalogue of Marine Chronometers, exhibit no.52

T

homas Earnshaw (1749-1829) was one of England’s most famous chronometer makers. He was born in 1749 in Lancashire and is said to have been apprenticed to William Hughes of High Holborn at the age of fourteen.

He was the inventor of the spring detent escapement, as well as the compensation balance. He submitted seven chronometers to the Board of Longitude from 1791 to 1798 and in 1805 received a portion of the Longitude Prize. His prize amounted to £3,000 and was part of the remaining £10,000 available, divided between John Arnold and Thomas Mudge. Earnshaw was not pleased with the division and lodged a protest with the Board in 1808 called Longitude, An Appeal to the Public stating Mr. Thomas Earnshaw’s Claim to the Original Invention of the Improvements in his Timekeepers describing the development of his escapement, but the Board did not change their finding. For more on Thomas Earnshaw, see the following exhibit no.52.

This watch is the earliest Earnshaw chronometer known in existence, and was made during the race and heated contest between Thomas Earnshaw and John Arnold for recognition of the invention of the spring detent escapement.

The movement of this watch bears the punchmark for Wright’s patent. When Thomas Earnshaw invented his famed form of spring detent escapement, he could not afford the application fee to the patent’s office and, on 1st February 1783, the patent (no.1354) was taken out by Thomas Wright, watchmaker to the King, who agreed to be patron to Earnshaw, paying the 100 guineas in return for a percentage of the profits (1 guinea) from the selling of Earnshaw’s patent watches to retailers. In his appeal, Earnshaw states that he made watches under this agreement stamped Wright’s Patent for Mr Vulliamy, Mr Barraud, Mr Frodsham, Mr George Margetts and others, but only this watch and another movement in the British Museum (no.1958,1201.1752) signed for Tomlin appear to survive.

The specific punchmark and configuration of signatures on this watch remains unique and by 1784, it seems that Earnshaw had repaid the 100 guineas debt, as afterwards all the watches made with his escapement no longer bear Wright’s punchmark on the movement. Furthermore, it appears only Earnshaw’s early spring detent escapement watches were additionally signed on the dials for the various retailers (or makers as Earnshaw referred to them). This explains the appearance of the signature for Jessop on this enamel dial, as well as on the movement and dust cover.

231

Exhibit № 45

The Calcutta Earnshaw Circa 1792

Height

6 feet 2 inches (1880 mm)

Case

The very substantial flat top solid mahogany case with bombe-shaped trunk and conventional base. The hood with concave main top moulding above the canted and fluted hood sides, the sides with blind aperture mouldings, and the whole hood extended top and sides to seal with the massive 2 inch thick backboard, also extended to match the hood, which is sealed with longer hood sealing screws, each knurled and number stamped 2, to correspond with the inlaid brass numbered hood holes. The hinged and glazed hood door, similarly screw sealed, the glass with a sealed gilt-brass winding shutter or ‘valve’. The trunk with concave throat moulding, and further conforming sealing screws up into the hood, above the trunk with sides shaped to take pendulum swing and rectangular screw sealed trunk door, the conforming concave lower moulding leading to the base with panelled front and double skirted hood, the underside with a thick wooden floor to keep it airtight, while each screwtightened surface is fitted with strips of cloth to ensure a perfect seal.

Dial

10 inch (254 mm) square silvered brass regulator dial with Arabic minutes, marked 5 to 60, outside the division ring, the subsidiary Arabic hour ring below centre reverse numbered 1-24, and signed within Earnshaw London. The upper subsidiary Arabic seconds ring supplemented with bold observatory marks every 5 seconds, the lower subsidiary Arabic hour ring reverse numbered 24 to 1. Both subsidiary dials have counter balanced hands, the hour hand rotating contraclockwise.

Duration

One month

Movement

The very substantial five pillar (Betts ref. Type 1) movement is of the very highest quality, with an extension to the right side of the plates taking the stop work, jewelled to the escape and pallet arbors with Harrison’s maintaining power, exceedingly fine train wheels and high-count pinions. The top with dust plate and knurled fixing screws, similar to the case screws but smaller, the movement located onto the massive 2 inch seatboard with two brass edge strips, stepped at either end to guide the plates, and conventionally screw-fixed to the base pillars. Massive cast-brass pendulum support with suspension for the 5-rod zinc/steel gridiron compensated pendulum with massive bob, engraved regulation nut, and secondary fine rating ball below.

Escapement

Jewelled deadbeat

Provenance

First reported in Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1999, sold by Bobinet in 2006 for £100,000;

A highly important George III month-going mahogany regulator with Maskelyne’s proposed hermetically sealed case and jewelled deadbeat escapement by Thomas Earnshaw, London

Thomas Earnshaw (1749-1829)

by Martin Archer Shee

The John C Taylor collection, inventory no.79 Literature

I

№

232

79

Derek Roberts, English Precision Pendulum Clocks, 2003, Chapter 4, Thomas Earnshaw by Jonathan Betts, p.55-67, illus. fig. 14-4

n his Marine Chronometers at Greenwich, 2018, Jonathan Betts states that Earnshaw’s famous 8-day Armagh Transit Regulator (No.1) is one of the finest regulators in horological history, amazing the astronomers at Armagh with its good going. It still keeps excellent time today, over 200 years later, still in its original home at that observatory.

The regulator presented here is the only surviving example of essentially the same format, suggesting perhaps a near concurrent manufacture, however it is not jewelled below the escapement, and the extra jewelling in the Transit clock No.1 gives it the edge, but the Calcutta regulator must come in a very close second and its additional month duration, with no interference to the pendulum for 30 days, must also be considered in its favour.

233

T

homas Earnshaw was one of England’s most important and famous chronometer makers. He was born on 4 February 1749 at Ashton-underLyne, Lancashire and appears to have been apprenticed at the age of fourteen, to William Hughes of High Holborn, from 1763 to 1770. In 1769 Earnshaw married Lydia Theakston at St James’s church, Piccadilly and was still only 20 years old.

The Earnshaw family grew quickly and within five years he had three sons, keeping his family on a journeyman’s wages proved impossible and finances became critical. In 1774, he fled to Dublin, returning later that year to surrender himself to debtor’s prison; from here he was able to come to terms with his creditors and was soon back in business. He taught himself the highly specialised trades of watch jewelling and ruby-cylinder making and, by 1780, he turned his attention to making chronometers with detached, pivoted-detent escapements.

Earnshaw claimed that it was he who first improved the detent escapement by introducing a blade spring in 1780. Although the claim is unlikely to be conclusively proved, modern academics support the view that Earnshaw was indeed the inventor of this very significant improvement, and that John Arnold stole the idea, as Earnshaw always claimed. Earnshaw went on to submit seven chronometers to the Board of Longitude from 1791 to 1798 and in 1805 received a portion of the Longitude Prize. His prize amounted to £3,000 and was part of the remaining £10,000 available, divided between John Arnold and Thomas Mudge. Earnshaw was not pleased with the division and lodged a protest with the Board in 1808 called Longitude, An Appeal to the Public stating Mr. Thomas Earnshaw’s Claim to the Original Invention of the Improvements in his Timekeepers describing the development of his escapement, but the Board did not change their finding.

Thomas Earnshaw died in 1829.

Jonathan Betts further states of Earnshaw’s chronometers that The design he had developed and improved by 1800 was that eventually adopted universally and there is no doubt that he, alongside Harrison, Le Roy, and Arnold, should share the laurels as one of the major contributors to the modern chronometer.

234

Earnshaw’s Regulators During the 1780s, the Earnshaw family had continued to grow, adding to his financial burdens, and it was not until Earnshaw’s introduction in 1789 to the Astronomer Royal, the Rev. Nevil Maskelyne, that his fortunes really improved. In that year he was commissioned by Maskelyne to make a state-of-the-art regulator for the Rev. James Archibald Hamilton, Astronomer at the new observatory at Armagh, in the north of Ireland. The year before, John Arnold (his spring-detent ‘stealing’ rival) had received the contract for two new Regulators for the Dunsink Observatory, Dublin, and it has been suggested that Maskelyne sought to redress the balance by offering the Armagh contract to Earnshaw, who famously remonstrated that he was a watchmaker not a clockmaker, remarking that I had never made a clock, and did not know how many wheels were in one. Maskelyne also recommended that the case should be as close fitting as possible and Earnshaw promised that his would be almost airtight! He finally completed the Armagh Transit Regulator (No.1) in February 1792 and the clock went to the Royal Observatory on one year’s trial and it proved an exceptionally precise timekeeper. A second clock was ordered at the same time, of somewhat lower specification, for use with Armagh’s main transit circle instrument, and also tested at Greenwich.

The surviving Earnshaw regulators are listed and described by Jonathan Betts in Roberts, English Precision Pendulum Clocks, 2003, and Betts classified the movement Types, 1 to 3, as follows: 1. The Armagh Transit Regulator, No.1 (sealed bombe case, Type 1, 8-day movement) 2. The Armagh Circle Regulator, No.2 (standard bombe case, Type 2, 8-day movement) 3. The Calcutta Regulator (sealed bombe case, Type 1, month movement) 4. The Board of Longitude Regulator (standard bombe case, Type 2, 8-day movement) 5. The Foulkes Regulator, later signed Redfearn, (sealed straight case, Type 3 month Holmden? movement) 6. The Storr Regulator (sealed straight case, Type 2, 8-day movement) 7. The Larkins Regulator (unique dial, Fleet Street case, now signed Catherwood) 8. The Coimbra Regulator, No.12 (sealed bombe case, month movement Type unknown) 9. Christie’s 1988 Regulator (standard case, Type 3, 8-day Holmden movement) 10. Phillip’s 1996 Regulator (standard case, Type 2, 8-day movement) 11. Christie’s 1981 Regulator (standard case, ogee dial, Type 2, 8-day movement) Further regulators by reference only: 12. Garrard’s Union Observatory Regulator (whereabouts unknown, last reference in 1790s, highest specification?)

13. Earnshaw’s Shop Regulator (whereabouts unknown, last reference in 1854, month movement) 14. Sidcup 1964 Regulator (reference only, standard case, movement Type unknown but unlikely to be the auction clocks above) 235

The two Armagh clocks, referred to at the time as Earnshaw No.1 and Earnshaw No.2 were finally delivered to Hamilton in Ireland and set up by Earnshaw in August 1794. Hamilton went on to send a series of letters to Earnshaw regarding the excellent performance of the clock and, in December 1807, he estimated that over the years it had been running, its error …in ninety nine instances in an hundred… did not exceed a quarter of a second. Earnshaw remarked Observe that this transit clock has been going 14 years without ever being opened, cleaned or oil applied to it; this arises from the manner in which I cased it, a mode not before made use of. I have one of the same in Holborn, which has likewise been going 14 years, and which has enabled me to find time from its rates for two or three months together to two or three seconds; the truth of this is well known to Dr Maskelyne. Another regulator, like No.1, is also recorded as being made for Mr Garrard, Maskelyne’s former assistant astronomer, who was running the subscription, Union Observatory, on Denmark Hill.

This begs the question of the whereabouts of two more high specification regulators; one at at Earnshaw’s Holborn shop; the other being for Mr Garrard’s Observatory at Denmark Hill, both completed by the time the Transit Regulator (No.1) had been delivered to Armagh in 1794.

Earnshaw had taken over the premises of his former master, William Hughes, at 119 High Holborn in 1792 and we also know that when the business ceased in 1854, the contents was sold at auction including An upright REGULATOR of the very best description, with gridiron pendulum, in mahogany case, by THOMAS EARNSHAW, goes 30 days.

There are in fact only three surviving month-going Earnshaw regulators that appear to fit the basic description of Earnshaw’s own sealed clock; the near identical bombesided Calcutta regulator (listed as 3), the straight-sided Foulkes Regulator (listed as 5) and the bombe-sided Coimbra regulator, numbered 12 (listed as 8).

The Calcutta clock is the only surviving Earnshaw regulator with the same format of case, movement (Type 1, as specified by Betts) and pendulum support as the Armagh Regulator (No.1), the differences being an extension to one side of the plates, a jewelled escapement only, an unglazed door and its extra specification of month duration. In Roberts, English Precision Pendulum Clocks, Betts suggests that the Calcutta clock is most unlikely to be Earnshaw’s own shop regulator, preferring instead the

236

Foulkes regulator now at Greenwich, with a lower pinion/ wheel count and lighter, movement-mounted pendulum suspension, because of its commercially glazed door and contemporary scratch mark, Weatherston 1792 Nov. The latter apparently suggesting John George Holmden of Clerkenwell supplied the Foulkes movement, as another sold at Christie’s in 1988, which is stamped Holmden.

The last clock to be considered is the Coimbra Regulator, No.12, which has further added features to the sealed bombe case, but these additional features and its number most probably suggest a later date of manufacture.

As we know nothing of the precise format of Garrard’s Union Observatory clock, it is difficult to speculate on whether it is one of the substantiated Earnshaw regulators already listed, however Betts suggests that the Calcutta regulator is the only surviving clock that currently fills the high specification criteria. It is interesting to note that Garrard left the Union Observatory in 1794 and, if the Calcutta clock is one and the same, perhaps it was resold within a few years of its manufacture and then sent to India?

The first official observatory in India was initiated by the East India Company in Madras, as early as 1787 but not completed until 1792, which would coincide datewise with the Calcutta regulator, however records show no indication of a regulator by Earnshaw, only ones by Arnold and Shelton. At this time Earnshaw’s regulators were in any case largely untested and, if the Calcutta clock did indeed spend time in an Indian observatory in the 18th or 19th Centuries, it seems likely it was sent out at a later date.

The next observatory opened in India was by William Taylor Money (1769-1834) at the Marine Yard in Bombay.

In 1806, the Government of Bombay informed the Court of Directors of the East India Company that they had requested a pendulum chronometer, Achromatic Telescope and Transit instrument and they were to be sent out on the first ships of the upcoming season but, sadly, the makers of these items are not currently known.

A number of other observatories were built in India over the next 40 years, including one in Calcutta in 1825, and the Court were notoriously reluctant to spend money, so perhaps some of the instruments purchased were second hand, could the Calcutta clock have been a resale to one of these? Without any further evidence, we may never know whether this regulator left England in the 19th century, or even as late as the 20th century.

Exhibit № 46

John Russell, Falkirk

Circa 1812

A very fine George III gilt-brass mounted mahogany ‘royal’ pattern wheel barometer with triple scaled thermometer

Height

47 inches (1194 mm)

Case

The ‘royal’ pattern mahogany veneered case with a gilt ‘Prince of Wales feather’ finial and rope-twist border mounts. The top section inset with a black and gilt verre églomisé glass panel depicting trailing leaves and scrolls framing the thermometer, with a further matching verre églomisé panel of thistles below the circular dial bezel.

Dials

The large circular gilt-highlighted and white painted dial, framed by a concave gilded bezel, with two subsidiary indexes and signed across the centre J. Russell, Falkirk INV.T ET FECIT, WATCHMAKER to his R:H the PRINCE REGENT, with finely pierced and counter-balanced blued steel hands. The silvered mercury thermometer register with three scales for Reaumer, Fahrenheit and Royal Society, signed vertically at the bottom right Jno. Russell Falkirk.

Provenance

Anthony Woodburn, 2000, sold for £105,000; John C Taylor collection, inventory no.4004

Comparative Goodison, English Barometers 1680-1860: A History of Domestic Barometers Literature and Their Makers, 1977, p.233-235, plates 160-162; Jagger, Royal Clocks, The British Monarchy and its Timekeepers, 1983, p.217, plate 285; Goodison and Kern, Hotspur, Eighty Years of Antique Dealing, 2004, no.10, p.255-256

J

ohn Russell (circa 1745-1817) was originally appointed Watchmaker to the Prince of Wales (later George IV), the title changing to Watchmaker to his Royal Highness the Prince Regent on the establishment of the Regency, this Prince of Wales barometer can therefore be dated to after the prince’s title changed in 1811.

Russell was born at Dennyloanhead in 1745, originally apprenticed as a turner, by 1765 he had settled in Falkirk and established himself as a watch and clockmaker, it is not known from whom he learnt his trade but he was soon considered by his peers as someone with a ‘remarkable aptitude for mechanics and an inventive turn of mind’. As his reputation grew, he came to the notice of the Prince Regent who, so impressed with Russell’s work, appointed him his Watchmaker for Scotland.

In 1817, he completed a commission to make a ‘royal’ barometer for His Imperial Majesty, Alexander I of Russia, and it was presented to the Tsar by Sir James Wylie.

Within a few weeks John Russell had died, and his obituary read: “Died in Falkirk, on September 25th 1817, Mr. John Russell, watchmaker to His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent. From a different line of trade to which he was originally bred, by his ingenuity and industry he raised himself to an eminent and prominent situation in his profession.”

There are only 14 barometers of this pattern recorded, some without Prince of Wales feather finials; this example with a finial is in particularly good original and unrestored condition. He made at least three of these barometers for the royal family and two are still in the royal collection at Buckingham Palace.

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