Clocks · Pillar clock
Japanese pillar clock with single foliot balance and iron movement (weight missing), Unsigned, 1800-1890
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 1800-1890
- Historical period
- Precision & Scientific Horology (1750 – 1850)
- Country of origin
- Japan
- Place
- Japan, Japan
- Object type
- Pillar clock
- Dimensions
- overall: 535 mm x 78 mm x 50 mm,
- Holding institution
- Science Museum Group, London
- Accession / object no.
- 1957-62
- Credit line
- Sotheby & Co.
- Catalogue title (original)
- A Japanese Pillar Clock, Unsigned, 1800-1890
Record summary
Held and catalogued by Science Museum Group, London (object number 1957-62), this is a pillar clock, made in Japan, Japan, dated 1800-1890. The Atlas places it in the Precision & Scientific Horology period (1750 – 1850) of its Clocks collection. Recorded dimensions: overall: 535 mm x 78 mm x 50 mm. 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
Science Museum Group description
Japanese pillar clock with single foliot balance and iron movement (weight missing)
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
Japanese clocks (wadokei)
Mechanical clocks reached Japan with European missionaries in the sixteenth century. During the Edo period (1603–1868) Japanese makers adapted them to the native system of unequal temporal hours: daylight and night were each divided into six hours whose length changed with the seasons. Clockmakers solved this with movable hour numerals, double foliots (one for day, one for night) or, on pillar clocks, sliding hour plaques along a vertical scale.
Common forms include the lantern-style yagura-dokei on a pyramidal stand, the bracket-like makura-dokei, and the narrow shaku-dokei (pillar clock) whose weight-driven pointer descends a scale. The temporal system was abolished in 1873 when Japan adopted Western time reckoning, and wadokei production ceased soon after.
What to look for
- Hour numerals in the twelve zodiac animal signs or numbers nine to four.
- Movable hour plaques or a dial with adjustable hour markers.
- Double foliot balances at the top of the movement.
- Brass movements with fine engraving and lacquered wooden cases.
Dating clues
- Double foliots appear from the late seventeenth century.
- Pillar clocks are typical of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
- Production ended after the 1873 calendar reform.
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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