Stock No.

Exhibit No.11

Height

6 foot 3½ inches (1917 mm)

Case

The slender ebony veneered architectural case, to a design attributed to John Webb (1611-1672), with rising hood and fine ebony mouldings, the tympanum mounted with a gilt-brass cartouche surmounted by a winged cupid’s head. The plain frieze supported by gilt-brass multi-piece Corinthian capitals on three-quarter tapered ebony columns to the front and matching quarter columns to the rear, against back-fillets extending up to the base of the entablature. The hood resting on a convex throat moulding above a fullwidth rectangular triple panelled and moulded-frame trunk door, mounted straight to the trunk sides, also with matching moulded panels. The plain ebony veneered plinth raised on four turned bun feet.

Dial

The 8 inch (208 mm) mercury fire-gilded square brass dial with gilt cherub’s head spandrels to each corner, signed Gulielmus Clement Londini Fecit along the lower edge, and held to the frontplate by four latched dial feet. The slender silvered chapter ring with trident half-hours and Arabic minutes, numbered every 5 within the divisions. The finely matted centre with shuttered winding holes and a square chamfered date aperture above VI, with a large and slender silvered subsidiary seconds ring below XII with 4 divisions for each 5 seconds, and very fine early, well-pierced and sculpted, blued steel hands.

Movement

The substantial movement with ten finned baluster pillars, latched to the frontplate that is split for each wheel train; the going train with bolt-and-shutter maintaining power, originally marked out for a verge and then drilled for a long-pendulum crossbeat but contemporaneously fitted with a very early anchor escapement with a 61 inch, 1¼ seconds, pendulum oscillating in the base for the extra amplitude; the strike train governed by a large outside countwheel, driven by a pinion-of-report and mounted high in the train, striking the quarters on three vertically mounted bells and then, through a pump piece, the hours on the larger horizontal bell above. The outer base pillars guided into place by taper pins and resting on typical seatboard blocks, held by a bracket to the backboard.

Single large outside countwheel, high on the train, quarter and hour striking

Duration

8 days

Provenance

Circa 1850, property of the Duchess of Kent’s Theatre, Woolwich (name changed several times and eventually demolished). Prior to the theatre’s conversion to a cinema in the 1920s, apparently traded to a ‘rag-and-bone’ merchant for 22 shillings and by 1922, sold to;
Henry T Brice, from whom acquired by;
FH Green Esq. and sold 1930 for £1,250 to;
AS Vernay, shipped to his partner in New York, S. Jussel, and sold 1936;
Henry Graves Jnr. (1863-1953), bequeathed to his daughter and given as a wedding gift to her son, sold by Jussel in 1969 to;
RT (Peter) Gwynn (1905-1999);
John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.46

Escapement

Very early anchor with with seconds indication and 1¼ seconds pendulum