Clocks · Clock
Rosewood striking and repeating ‘English five glass’ library clock
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- c. 1875
- Historical period
- Industrial Revolution (1850 – 1900)
- Country of origin
- England
- Object type
- Clock
- Dimensions
- Height 24 cm
- Stock no.
- Product 2792
- Credit line
- Dealer listing, The Antique Clock Company (product 2792)
- Catalogue title (original)
- A FINE ROSEWOOD STRIKING AND REPEATING ‘ENGLISH FIVE GLASS’ LIBRARY CLOCK (English)
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Record summary
Catalogued by The Antique Clock Company (dealer), Dorset (stock number Product 2792), this is a clock, made in England, dated c. 1875. The Atlas places it in the Industrial Revolution period (1850 – 1900) of its Clocks collection. Recorded dimensions: Height 24 cm. The record is illustrated with 3 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
A rosewood five-glass library mantel clock by Aldred & Son, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. The five pillar twin chain fusee movement with anchor escapement regulated by lenticular bob pendulum and striking the hours on a coiled gong mounted along with the pendulum holdfast bracket on the backplate signed Aldred & Son, Yarmouth. The 3 ½” square fine foliate scroll engraved gilt brass dial further signed Aldred & Son, Yarmouth below the Roman numeral chapter ring and with blued steel Breguet style hands, the case with generous bevelled top glass to the tablet upstand over stylised leaf decorated cavetto cornice, the front with silvered canted insert to the interior of the glazed dial aperture, the sides with bevelled glasses and the rear. The base with generous ogee outline waist over moulded skirt with brass squat bun feet. P. A. Oxley, 2004. Aldred & Son were clockmakers and goldsmiths working in Great Yarmouth from 1873 to 1900. Height: 9 ½” or 24 cm
Historical context
Industrial Revolution (1850 – 1900)
American interchangeable-parts manufacture; railroad time standards; Swiss and German factory systems.
Factory production transformed the clock into an everyday object. American makers (Seth Thomas, Ansonia, Waterbury) and German factories (Junghans, Gustav Becker, Lenzkirch) sold millions of shelf, wall and alarm clocks worldwide; France produced standardised Paris movements and carriage clocks; electric time distribution began.
Read the period in the timelineMore clocks from this periodEarlier: Precision & Scientific 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:Verge escapementFoliot
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