| Height | 3 foot 6½ inches (1080 mm) |
| Case | The restored Italianate Baroque tabernacle architectural case of ebony and ebonised fruitwood veneer onto an oak carcass. The scroll-sided pediment top with a cushion above, with replaced ball finials flanking and a concave cover above with an urn finial. All supported by a gallery with gilt-brass balusters above the frieze, inset with gilt foliate mounts to the front and sides. The break-front outset by two step-based tapering half-columns with gilt-brass multi-piece Corinthian capitals and applied decoration to the bases, the sides each with two further half-columns similarly decorated. The front with a rectangular dial door hinged behind the front columns, all above the conforming breakfront base, the frieze inset with a key drawer, all standing on an ebony-veneered rectangular step base moulding with squat cushion ‘feet’ to each corner. The later oil lamp is mounted on a shelf on the tin-backed rear door, directly under the internal tin chimney. |
| Dial | The restored 11 inch (279 mm) by 12 inch (305 mm) dial with four latched feet and painted with a country scene of detail of a Survey Party working in the country, using their early instruments including plane table, backstaff, armillary sphere and universial equinoctural ring. The upper section painted as a clouded sky with a central arched hour-sector, the static outer with 60 small single-hole minutes, small-star half-quarter holes and large-star pierced quarter markers, the replaced revolving centre disc, now with a clouded sky and winged cherubs, and set alternately with two diametrically opposed apertures, each revealing a pierced Arabic hour number and alternating between even and odd hours, while the hour aperture in view also indicates the minutes past the hour by its position in relation to the fixed outer pierced-sector in the main dial. All indicated at night when lit internally by an oil-burner. In 1899 in Old Clocks and their makers, 1st Edition, Britten pictured this clock, and the dial had a small later central silvered hour chapter with hands, below the sector, and it was front wound, the rotating sector disc had also been replaced, to show signs of the zodiac. |
| Movement | The substantial 8 by 9½ inch rectangular ‘landscape’ movement with five finned baluster pillars, latched to the frontplate. Both trains with fusees and gut lines, rear wound, with external spring-barrel clicks and springs mounted to the backplate. The restored going train with knife-edge verge escapement and short bob pendulum, now with a typical ‘Fromanteel’ single footed backcock. The strike train is governed by an external countwheel, mounted high in the train direct on the backplate, striking the hours on a large replacement bell mounted horizontally above the plates, via a restored external vertical hammer arbor, cocked and mounted on the backplate, which is signed in an unusual, decorated oval Johannes Fromanteel Londini Fecit on the otherwise plain backplate. The movement plates rest directly on the restored seat-board. |
| Duration | 8 days |
| Provenance | By 1889, Webster collection (with Zodiacal signs and added hour and minute hands); By 1922, HA Bleichert collection (after reconversion back to Night Clock by Rowley); Antiquarian Horology, December 1964, Classified Advertisement, p.283; Sotheby’s London 27 October 1969, lot 202, for £2200, to G Daniels; Sotheby’s London, 16 October 1972, lot 19, for £1100, to HG Best; Galbraith offered for sale in 1995, and sold by C Moss (via Bobinet) in 1999; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.30 |
| Literature | Britten, Old Clocks and their makers, 1st Edition, 1899, p.196, fig.201; Britten, Old Clocks and their makers, 3rd Edition, 1911, p.302, fig.440, p.227 & 311; Britten, Old Clocks and their makers, 5th Edition, 1922, p.315, fig.464, p.228 & 327 |
| Escapement | Knife-edge tic-tac (restored) with short bob pendulum |
| Strike Type | Countwheel hour striking (restored) |
| Notes | It seems that in Victorian times the rotating numbers of this clock were replaced by signs of the zodiac to fit Evelyn’s description of the king’s clock (see below). At some stage the clock had also been converted to forward winding affecting much of its under-dial work as well as the dial. Messrs A. & H. Rowley undertook a proportion of the restoration required to the movement and dial in the early 1900s, but final touches to these have also been sympathetically re-done in recent times. Meanwhile, the case too shows signs of Victorian work and enhancement, and the engraved oval around the signature was apparently enhanced in the 1990s, just prior to arriving in this collection. |
Exhibit № 11: John Fromanteel, London. Circa 1667
A large and rare Charles II ebonised English architectural striking night spring clock with alterations and repairs
£125,000
John Fromanteel (1638-d.c.1682) was born in London, the eldest son of Ahasuerus Fromanteel and his wife Maria (nee de Bruijne from Colchester). He was apprenticed to his father in April 1652, and then transferred to his Uncle, Thomas Loomes, Ahasuerus’ Brother in Law, until being made Free in July 1663. In September 1657, John was sent by his father Ahasuerus to assist Salomon Coster in The Hague in making the first domestic spring pendulum clocks for Christiaan Huygens, under the now famous contract, and remaining there for 9 months. On his return to London, John appears to have started work in his own right in his father’s workshop in St Saviour’s, Southwark. He is known for many innovative longcase and spring table clocks and this Night Clock is a very rare, albeit restored, example.
On 1st November 1660, John Evelyn, wrote in his Diary: went with some of my relations to Court to show them his Majty cabinet and closet of rarities… here I saw amongst the clocks one that showed the rising and setting of the sun in Ye Zodig, the sunn represented by a face and raies of gold upon an azure skie, observing Ye diurnal and annual motion rising and setting behind, and landscape of hills, the work of our famous Fromantel.
In 1655, Pope Alexander VII had ordered Cardinal Farnese to provide a clock that would show the hours at night in silence, and thus the first wandering-hour night dial was conceived in Italy.
In his diary on 24th June 1664, Samuel Pepys noted: After dinner to White Hall and there met with Mr. Pierce and he showed me the Queen’s bed-chamber with a clock by her bed-side wherein a lamp burns that tells her the time of the night at any time. This is the first contemporary evidence of a night clock in England and Pepys’s particular inclusion suggests that it was a novel innovation, indeed Catherine of Breganza’s clock may have been an imported example, which provided the impetus for English clockmakers to follow suit. In any event, the widespread introduction of repeat work from the late 1670s soon made night clocks redundant.
Whilst popular on the continent, especially in Italy, English wandering-hour night clocks are extremely rare. All known English examples date from soon after the Great Fire and with an inherent danger of catching alight, the demand appears to have been relatively small and perhaps many were destroyed; certainly orphan night clock movements survive in larger numbers than the original wooden cases. Having said that, only twelve English spring night clocks are known, while there are four longcase examples currently recorded, but only three of these retain their original cases. In 2018, another spring night clock by John Fromanteel, commissioned by Archbishop Ignacio Spínola y Guzmán and also in an Italianate Baroque tabernacle architectural case, was exhibited at Innovation & Collaboration in London (exhibit no.58).
English night clocks utilise two divergent systems that reflect the differing innovative approach emanating from the two main early schools of English pendulum clockmaking; the Fromanteel school favouring the ‘twin-disc’ system while the East school generally used the ‘flag-on-chain’ system. Makers known to have supplied night clocks include the most illustrious: Fromanteel and his associates, Knibb and Tompion; and East and his associates, Hilderson, Jones, Seignior and Stanton.
The mechanism of this night clock unsurprisingly uses the twin-disc system, favoured by the Fromanteel school, and it operates with a three-layered assembly giving a succession of hours in the sky disc passing across the track of the hour sector, the minutes in this instance indicated by holes rather than numerals. The sky disc has diametrically opposite circular apertures, with a pair of twin-discs for the hours, the numbers split sequentially between the two. These numeral discs, having tracked across the hour sector displaying a particular hour, are then moved on as they pass a point behind the solid lower part of the dial plate, so that the next sequential number arrives at the start of the sector as the prior one leaves it.
Product Description
John Fromanteel (1638-d.c.1682) was born in London, the eldest son of Ahasuerus Fromanteel and his wife Maria (nee de Bruijne from Colchester). He was apprenticed to his father in April 1652, and then transferred to his Uncle, Thomas Loomes, Ahasuerus’ Brother in Law, until being made Free in July 1663. In September 1657, John was sent by his father Ahasuerus to assist Salomon Coster in The Hague in making the first domestic spring pendulum clocks for Christiaan Huygens, under the now famous contract, and remaining there for 9 months. On his return to London, John appears to have started work in his own right in his father’s workshop in St Saviour’s, Southwark. He is known for many innovative longcase and spring table clocks and this Night Clock is a very rare, albeit restored, example.
On 1st November 1660, John Evelyn, wrote in his Diary: went with some of my relations to Court to show them his Majty cabinet and closet of rarities… here I saw amongst the clocks one that showed the rising and setting of the sun in Ye Zodig, the sunn represented by a face and raies of gold upon an azure skie, observing Ye diurnal and annual motion rising and setting behind, and landscape of hills, the work of our famous Fromantel.
In 1655, Pope Alexander VII had ordered Cardinal Farnese to provide a clock that would show the hours at night in silence, and thus the first wandering-hour night dial was conceived in Italy.
In his diary on 24th June 1664, Samuel Pepys noted: After dinner to White Hall and there met with Mr. Pierce and he showed me the Queen’s bed-chamber with a clock by her bed-side wherein a lamp burns that tells her the time of the night at any time. This is the first contemporary evidence of a night clock in England and Pepys’s particular inclusion suggests that it was a novel innovation, indeed Catherine of Breganza’s clock may have been an imported example, which provided the impetus for English clockmakers to follow suit. In any event, the widespread introduction of repeat work from the late 1670s soon made night clocks redundant.
Whilst popular on the continent, especially in Italy, English wandering-hour night clocks are extremely rare. All known English examples date from soon after the Great Fire and with an inherent danger of catching alight, the demand appears to have been relatively small and perhaps many were destroyed; certainly orphan night clock movements survive in larger numbers than the original wooden cases. Having said that, only twelve English spring night clocks are known, while there are four longcase examples currently recorded, but only three of these retain their original cases. In 2018, another spring night clock by John Fromanteel, commissioned by Archbishop Ignacio Spínola y Guzmán and also in an Italianate Baroque tabernacle architectural case, was exhibited at Innovation & Collaboration in London (exhibit no.58).
English night clocks utilise two divergent systems that reflect the differing innovative approach emanating from the two main early schools of English pendulum clockmaking; the Fromanteel school favouring the ‘twin-disc’ system while the East school generally used the ‘flag-on-chain’ system. Makers known to have supplied night clocks include the most illustrious: Fromanteel and his associates, Knibb and Tompion; and East and his associates, Hilderson, Jones, Seignior and Stanton.
The mechanism of this night clock unsurprisingly uses the twin-disc system, favoured by the Fromanteel school, and it operates with a three-layered assembly giving a succession of hours in the sky disc passing across the track of the hour sector, the minutes in this instance indicated by holes rather than numerals. The sky disc has diametrically opposite circular apertures, with a pair of twin-discs for the hours, the numbers split sequentially between the two. These numeral discs, having tracked across the hour sector displaying a particular hour, are then moved on as they pass a point behind the solid lower part of the dial plate, so that the next sequential number arrives at the start of the sector as the prior one leaves it.
Additional information
| Dimensions | 5827373 cm |
|---|
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