Clocks · Automaton clock
Automaton Clock - Lady with Fan, Brass, Germany, 1920s
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 1920s
- Historical period
- Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking (1900 – 1945)
- Country of origin
- Germany
- Object type
- Automaton clock
- Holding institution
- Museums Victoria, Melbourne
- Accession / object no.
- ST 19640
- Catalogue title (original)
- Automaton Clock - Lady with Fan, Brass, Germany, 1920s (English)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by Museums Victoria, Melbourne (object number ST 19640), this is an automaton clock, made in Germany, dated 1920s. The Atlas places it in the Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking period (1900 – 1945) of its Clocks collection. The record is illustrated with 1 photograph.
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
Summary — Museums Victoria
Automaton clock with lady fanning herself in a brass drum case. Made in Germany, 1920s.
Physical description — Museums Victoria
Spring wound; lever escapement. Brass drum case and paper dial. The fan is operated by a pallet arbor which consists of a spring in a drum which is the full diameter of the case and is attached to the back of the case.
Provenance
Loan & Subsequent Bequest from Mr John Askew, 30 Apr 1928
Historical context
Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking (1900 – 1945)
The wristwatch displaces the pocket watch; waterproof cases, self-winding and grand complications.
Between 1900 and 1945 clocks were electrified: master-clock systems ran factories and offices, synchronous mains clocks entered homes, and the Shortt free-pendulum clock set new standards of accuracy before the first quartz clocks (1927). Art Deco design reshaped mantel and table clocks.
Read the period in the timelineMore clocks from this periodEarlier: Industrial Revolution
Atlas type guide
Astronomical, musical and automaton clocks
Astronomical clocks display more than the hour: the positions of the sun and moon in the zodiac, the phase of the moon, the calendar, sometimes the planets and eclipses. From Richard of Wallingford's and Giovanni de' Dondi's fourteenth-century clocks to the Prague Orloj and the Strasbourg cathedral clocks, they demonstrated the order of the cosmos. Renaissance makers in Augsburg and Nuremberg built celestial globe clocks and monstrance clocks as princely treasures.
Automaton and musical clocks entertained as well as informed: figures move, birds sing, organs and carillons play tunes from pinned cylinders. The eighteenth-century trade with China ('sing-songs') and Ottoman Turkey created a market for elaborate English, Swiss and French automata.
What to look for
- Subsidiary dials for moon phase, calendar, zodiac and planetary positions.
- Celestial globes or armillary spheres turned by the movement.
- Pinned cylinders, bellows and pipes or bells for music.
- Figures on cams and levers; separate trains for automaton work.
Dating clues
- Renaissance astronomical table and globe clocks: c. 1550–1650.
- English and Swiss automaton clocks for the Chinese market: c. 1760–1820.
- Picture clocks (clockwork pictures) are mostly nineteenth century.
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.
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