Clocks · Clock
An eight day quarter striking table clock with calendar and strike silent. The quarter striking controlled on a single snail
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 1790–1800
- Historical period
- Precision & Scientific Horology (1750 – 1850)
- Country of origin
- England
- Place
- England
- Object type
- Clock
- Materials / technique
- steel, brass, oak
- Dimensions
- Height: 57 centimetres Weight: 10.60 kilograms Width: 37 centimetres Depth: 23 centimetres
- Holding institution
- British Museum
- Accession / object no.
- 2017,8032.1
- Credit line
- British Museum, London
- Catalogue title (original)
- An eight day quarter striking table clock with calendar and strike silent. The quarter striking controlled on a single snail (English)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by British Museum (object number 2017,8032.1), this is a clock, made in England, dated 1790–1800. The Atlas places it in the Precision & Scientific Horology period (1750 – 1850) of its Clocks collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: steel, brass, oak. Recorded dimensions: Height: 57 centimetres Weight: 10.60 kilograms Width: 37 centimetres Depth: 23 centimetres. The record is illustrated with 6 photographs.
Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.
Catalogue description
Description — British Museum
An eight day quarter striking table clock with calendar and strike silent. The quarter striking controlled on a single snail. Case Black painted break-arch with pagoda top case. Five gold-painted brass finials. Two movement retaining brackets with decorative engraving matching the movment back-plate. Dial Cream painted break-arch dial with iron dial plate. Gilded brass hour and minute hands, blued steel seconds and strike-silent hand. Movement Brass plates, back plate engraved with foliate scrollwork surrounding lidded bowl surmounted with crescent moon. Five pinned knopped pillars. Two trains, spring-driven with fusees. Going train with anchor escapement, eight day duration. Striking train for hours and quarters using a Neuchatel clock style snail, with no provision for a repeat cord.
Curator's comments — British Museum
Certain elements of the dial have been repainted, including the hour & date numerals, the chapter circles, the words "STRIKE" and "SILENT" and the foliate decoration within the strike-silent circles.
Inscriptions & marks
retailer's mark; Inside case; English; Alphabetic; THIS CLOCK HAS BEEN PROVED AND TIMED AND SHOULD PERFORM CORRECTLY.; IF ANY ALTERATION BE REQUIRED IT WILL BE DONE FREE OF CHARGE.; UPPER HOLLOWAY WATCH & CLOCK WORKS,; ESTABLISHED 1868.; EDWARD W. LANGTON,; WATCH AND CLOCK MAKER, 677, HOLLOWAY ROAD.; TEN DOORS FROM JUNCTION ROAD.; Retailer's or repairer's lable, early 20th century.
Provenance
Donated by:, Leppard, Bernard
Historical context
Precision & Scientific Horology (1750 – 1850)
Harrison solves longitude; Mudge invents the lever; Breguet's Paris workshop defines the modern watch.
The age of the deadbeat escapement, compensated pendulums and observatory regulators. Domestic clocks spread through the middle classes: English longcase and bracket clocks, French gilt-bronze mantel clocks, Viennese Biedermeier wall clocks, Black Forest painted-shield clocks, and the first American shelf clocks.
Read the period in the timelineMore clocks from this periodEarlier: Early Modern Horology
Atlas type guide
Bracket, table and spring-driven clocks
Spring-driven clocks freed timekeeping from the hanging weight. The coiled mainspring, documented from the fifteenth century, made portable table clocks possible; to even out its declining force, makers used the fusee, a conical pulley connected to the barrel by a gut line or chain. Renaissance table clocks from Augsburg and Nuremberg — drum-shaped, square or tower-shaped in gilt brass — were luxury scientific objects, often with astronomical dials and alarms.
After the pendulum, English makers developed the bracket clock: a wooden case with a carrying handle, a short pendulum with a verge escapement, and often repeating work to sound the hours on demand at night. Later examples use the anchor escapement. In the nineteenth century, 'table clock' became a broad term for spring clocks of every nationality.
What to look for
- A fusee in the movement (cone-shaped pulley) and the type of line — gut or chain.
- Verge escapement with a short bob pendulum, often with a decoratively engraved backplate.
- Repeat cords or buttons that make the clock strike again on demand.
- Gilt-brass engraved cases and horizontal dials on Renaissance pieces.
- Case shapes: inverted bell, bell top, break-arch, lancet or balloon.
Dating clues
- Drum and tower table clocks: c. 1520–1650.
- Ebony veneered English bracket clocks with verge escapements: c. 1670–1800.
- Engraved backplates were usual on English clocks until c. 1800, then generally plain.
General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.
Read next:Verge escapement
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