Clocks · Longcase clock
Four train musical longcase clock by Gravell & Tolkien
- Maker / attribution
- Gravell & Tolkien (maker)
- Date
- c. 1800
- Historical period
- Precision & Scientific Horology (1750 – 1850)
- Country of origin
- Unrecorded in source
- Object type
- Longcase clock
- Dimensions
- Height 256.5 cm
- Stock no.
- Product 409
- Credit line
- Dealer listing, The Antique Clock Company (product 409)
- Catalogue title (original)
- EXTREMELY RARE FOUR TRAIN MUSICAL LONGCASE CLOCK BY GRAVELL & TOLKIEN (English)
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Record summary
Catalogued by The Antique Clock Company (dealer), Dorset (stock number Product 409), this is a longcase clock by Gravell & Tolkien, dated c. 1800. The Atlas places it in the Precision & Scientific Horology period (1750 – 1850) of its Clocks collection. Recorded dimensions: Height 256.5 cm. 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
Dealer description — The Antique Clock Company
Extremely Rare Four Train Musical Longcase Clock by Gravell & Tolkien. A fine George III period musical longcase clock of 8-day duration, numbered 3705 on both the plates and dial, features a dead-beat escapement, maintaining power, four trains; going, strike, quarter-chime and musical with 12 different choices on a total on 17 bells, including options of strike/silent and piano/forte (soft/loud). This is rather a complicated clock, however, extremely well made, very high quality and hands down the heaviest longcase I have ever handled! The dial measures 12.5” by 17.5”, break arch base dial with the 12 tune selection in the break-arch above the two silvered subsidiary dials for strike/silent and Piano/Forte (soft/loud). The slim silvered chapter ring features both Roman and Arabic numerals with exceptionally finely cut blued steel hands with musical bagpipe spandrels to the corners and seconds below XII the centre is signed Gravell & Tolkein, London 3705 between scrolling foliage and sweep centre calendar. A fiddle-back mahogany break arch case with three finials and fine fretwork between, the brass framed hood door aperture with satinwood and ebony branding flanked by carved acanthus volute columns. Fretted access doors to the hood sides. The correspondingly stepped base moulding with a matching raised panel and double skirted foot. Stepped throat mouldings with acanthus leaf capitals to fluted columns below centre by the flat top break arch fiddle back trunk door with matching banding. Height: 101″ or 256.5cm
Provenance
Private collection U.S.A.
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
Longcase (tall-case or grandfather) clocks
The longcase clock was born from two seventeenth-century innovations: Christiaan Huygens's pendulum (1656–57) and the anchor escapement (c. 1670). A long seconds pendulum, nearly a metre long, swings with a small arc, and enclosing it together with the driving weights in a tall wooden case protected the mechanism and created a new piece of furniture. London makers such as Ahasuerus Fromanteel, Thomas Tompion and Joseph Knibb set the pattern.
By the eighteenth century longcase clocks were made throughout Britain, the Netherlands, Scandinavia (the Swedish Mora clock), France (the Comtoise from the Franche-Comté), Germany and colonial America. Eight-day movements with two weights became standard in better clocks; thirty-hour clocks with one weight and a rope or chain were cheaper alternatives.
What to look for
- Winding holes in the dial: two (eight-day, going and striking) or none (thirty-hour, pulled up by a chain).
- Brass dials with applied chapter rings (earlier) versus painted iron 'white' dials (after c. 1770 in Britain).
- Moon-phase arches, date apertures, seconds dials and maker's name on the dial.
- Case woods and style: ebonised, walnut marquetry, lacquer, oak or mahogany; regional styles from London, Lancashire, Scotland or America.
- Whether the movement and dial match the case — 'marriages' are common.
Dating clues
- Square brass dials suggest c. 1670–1720; arched brass dials c. 1715–1790.
- Painted (white) dials were made by Birmingham dial-makers from about 1772.
- Comtoise clocks with repoussé pendulums 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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