Clocks · Clock
Clock by Lancelot
- Maker / attribution
- Lancelot (maker)
- Date
- c. 1690
- Historical period
- Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
- Country of origin
- Unrecorded in source
- Object type
- Clock
- Dimensions
- Overall: 430 x 222 x 143 mm
- Holding institution
- Royal Museums Greenwich
- Accession / object no.
- ZAA0296
- Credit line
- National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Foulkes Collection
- Catalogue title (original)
- Clock (English)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by Royal Museums Greenwich (object number ZAA0296), this is a clock by Lancelot, dated c. 1690. The Atlas places it in the Early Modern Horology period (1600 – 1750) of its Clocks collection. Recorded dimensions: Overall: 430 x 222 x 143 mm. 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
Catalogue description — Royal Museums Greenwich
A short duration French striking tortoiseshell veneered table clock by Lancelot, Paris, circa 1690. The movement is united by four pinned baluster pillars having a single, tandem, spring barrel with two great wheels driving the going and striking trains. The clock sounds the hours and half-hours on single bell mounted within the caddy top using the countwheel system. The going train has a verge escapement with a short brass bobbed pendulum and silk suspension fitted with cycloidal cheeks. The matted gilt brass dial plate has an applied signed enamel cartouche below the ornately cast dial with inset enamel hour plaques and blued steel fleur de lys hands. The removable dome top has a gilt foliate sound fret running around its base and is surmounted by a flaming lamp finial. The main body of the case has ebonised mouldings and brass banding around the plinth which stands on gilt brass toupee feet.
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.
Read next:Anchor (recoil) escapementFoliot
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