Clocks · Calendar clock
Bracket clock
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 19thC(early)
- Historical period
- Precision & Scientific Horology (1750 – 1850)
- Country of origin
- Japan
- Place
- Japan
- Object type
- Calendar clock
- Materials / technique
- brass, wood
- Dimensions
- Height: 28 centimetres
- Holding institution
- British Museum
- Accession / object no.
- 1958,1006.2037
- Credit line
- British Museum, London
- Catalogue title (original)
- Bracket clock (English)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by British Museum (object number 1958,1006.2037), this is a calendar clock, made in Japan, dated 19thC(early). The Atlas places it in the Precision & Scientific Horology period (1750 – 1850) of its Clocks collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: brass, wood. Recorded dimensions: Height: 28 centimetres. The record is illustrated with 4 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
Bracket clock; spring-driven brass movement; rack strike; balance; revolving dial; adjustable hour-plates with touch pieces; single calendar; plates pierced and engraved with flowering stems with turned and baluster columns to the angles; musical box in rectangular base; Shitan wood case with glazed sliding panel.
Provenance
Previous owner/ex-collection:, Courtenay Adrian Ilbert, Previous owner/ex-collection:, J Drummond Robertson; Donated by:, Gilbert Edgar
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.
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