Clocks · Clock
Clock, 1600–1625
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 1600–1625
- Historical period
- Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
- Country of origin
- Unrecorded in source
- Object type
- Clock
- Materials / technique
- Gillding
- Dimensions
- Height: 340 mm; Width: 227 mm; Length: 280 mm; Weight: 4433.3 g
- Holding institution
- Victoria and Albert Museum, London
- Accession / object no.
- 35-1866
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by Victoria and Albert Museum, London (object number 35-1866), this is a clock, dated 1600–1625. The Atlas places it in the Early Modern Horology period (1600 – 1750) of its Clocks collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: Gillding. Recorded dimensions: Height: 340 mm; Width: 227 mm; Length: 280 mm; Weight: 4433.3 g. The record is illustrated with 2 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
Summary — Victoria and Albert Museum
In the sixteenth-century, mechanical clocks represented the highest point of Western European technological ingenuity. They were owned by the wealthy and displayed as examples of scientific novelty. Despite this, they were not dependable time-keepers and people still relied on the movement of the sun and stars to determine the passage of time accurately. The clock on this example is a later replacement, but the construction of the piece, in which a mythical monster supports the dial, is common to other clocks of the period. It is also typical of sixteenth-century workmanship that the clock mechanism is concealed in the base and not in the figure itself. The monster, a griffin, would have opened its beak and flapped its wings as the hours struck. Only the development of the steam engine in the late eighteenth century ended the dominance of the mechanical clock in the world of Western technology.
Physical description — Victoria and Albert Museum
Clock supported by an automated winged monster of gilded copper with traces of paint, on a base of gilded copper engraved with plants, snails and reptiles, set with three silvered copper dials. The base rests on four cast feet in the shape of pomegranates. The clock dial supported by the monster is a later replacement, and the mechanism for this clock may be as well.
Brief description — Victoria and Albert Museum
Gilded copper with traces of paint, Southern Germany, 1600 - 1625.
Provenance
The Museum purchased the clock in 1866 from a Mr Myers.
Historical context
Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
Huygens' pendulum and balance spring transform accuracy; English makers develop the anchor and deadbeat escapements.
Huygens's pendulum (1656–57) improved clock accuracy from about a quarter of an hour to under a minute a day. The anchor escapement (c. 1670) and the long seconds pendulum created the longcase clock; London makers such as Fromanteel, Knibb, Tompion and Quare led European clockmaking, and French makers created the Boulle pendule.
Read the period in the timelineMore clocks from this periodEarlier: Renaissance Horology
Atlas type guide
Domestic clocks
A clock combines four systems: a source of power (falling weight, coiled spring, or later electricity), a gear train that divides time, an escapement and oscillator that regulate it (foliot, pendulum or balance), and an indicating system of dial and hands or a bell. Its history runs from the large iron weight-driven clocks of the late thirteenth century to Renaissance spring-driven table clocks, the pendulum revolution of 1656, the factory clocks of the nineteenth century and electric and quartz clocks of the twentieth.
Domestic clocks also reflect regional furniture and decorative traditions — English longcase and bracket clocks, French pendules, Viennese regulators, Black Forest and American shelf clocks — and therefore record changing tastes as much as technical progress.
What to look for
- How the clock is powered: weights, spring barrel, fusee, electric coil.
- The oscillator: foliot, short pendulum, long seconds pendulum or balance.
- Whether it strikes: hour only (count wheel) or hours and quarters (rack striking).
- The maker or retailer's name on dial and movement, and any factory trademarks.
- Signs of alteration — replaced dials, converted escapements, 'married' cases.
Dating clues
- Before 1656 clocks used foliots or balances; after, most domestic clocks have pendulums.
- Anchor escapements spread after c. 1670; minute hands became common at the same time.
- Factory production in America and Germany transformed prices after c. 1840.
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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