| Height | 6 feet 9¼ inches |
| Case | The case veneered in olivewood oysters with boxwood and olivewood fan paterae onto an oak carcass. The rising hood with Solomonic columns and finely carved contemporary cresting, the parquetry inlaid trunk door with half paterae to the top and bottom and centred by a whole patera with a circular glazed lenticle below, the base with a conforming parquetry patera and similar quarter fans to the corners. The seatboard with blocks and taper pins to guide the movement pillars and a horizontal backboard bracket to secure it. |
| Dial | The 10 inch square gilt-brass dial with four latched dial feet, signed along the lower edge Henry Jones in the Temple between the gilt winged cherub corner spandrels. The hands finely pierced and shaped in blued steel. The matted centre with skeletonised chapter ring with Roman hours, dot half-hour markers and Arabic minutes every 5, within the division ring, the subsidiary seconds ring and chamfered square date aperture, above VI. |
| Movement | The two-train hour striking 8-day movement with 6 latched baluster pillars, the base pillars lowered onto seatboard taper pins with an L-shaped brass bracket screwed to the corresponding case bracket. The going train with bolt-and-shutter maintaining power, anchor escapement and seconds pendulum, the hour strike train governed by an outside countwheel mounted direct onto the greatwheel arbor. |
| Duration | 8 days |
| Provenance | Anthony Woodburn, 2001, sold for £100,000; The John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.67 |
| Literature | Stuart Kelley, ‘Henry Jones – Clockmaker of London, part II of VI’, Antiquarian Horology, September 2003, illus. p.532, fig.27; Huygens’ Legacy, The Golden Age of the Pendulum Clock, 2004, p.148-9; Garnier & Hollis, Innovation & Collaboration, 2018, p.270-4 |
| Escapement | Anchor with one-second pendulum |
| Strike Type | Countwheel hour strike |
| Exhibited | 2004, Huygens’ Legacy, Paleis Het Loo, Holland, exhibit no.54; 2018, London, Innovation & Collaboration, exhibit no.74 |
Exhibit № 15: Henry Jones, London. Circa 1675
A good Charles II olivewood oyster veneered and parquetry inlaid eight-day striking longcase clock with skeletonised chapter ring
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Henry Jones (c.1642-1695) was one of the most pre-eminent early clockmakers, he was born in Boldre, Hampshire and originally apprenticed to Benjamin Hill in 1654, but quickly turned over to the esteemed royal clockmaker, Edward East (1602-1696). He became a Freeman of the Clockmakers Company in 1663, but continued to work for East until c.1672/3, when he started to work independently at the Inner Temple. During his thirty year working life he took on fourteen apprentices and made a number of clocks for Charles II, one costing the then vast sum of £150. Jones was made Assistant of the Clockmakers’ Company in 1676 and became Master in 1691. It is clear that good relations continued with his former master, Edward East, and in 1692, East and Jones together placed £100 in trust with the Clockmakers’ to pay five Freemen, or their widows, twenty shillings per annum.
By the time this longcase was made, Jones was an experienced and capable maker, he had produced a very fine but small series of extraordinary flat-topped table clocks that, by the 1680s, would develop into his own distinctive style of table clock – one of the few makers whose designs are immediately distinguishable as their own (an accolade he shared with Knibb and Tompion). His early wealthy patrons included Heneage Finch (1621-1682), a barrister of the Inner Temple who would become Lord Chancellor and was later created 1st Earl of Nottingham. He ordered a superb walnut architectural longcase (also in this collection, inventory no.119) and his near-London seat was unusually large; it would later be forcibly purchased from his son by William III, and renamed Kensington Palace.
Skeletonised chapter rings and the consequential requirement for close-edged dial matting was both difficult and time consuming, it was usually only tackled by the finest London clockmakers, and even then, it was reserved for their best productions. This very fine and undoubtedly expensive oyster and parquetry case complements the beautiful dial and confirms its original high cost.
Product Description
Henry Jones (c.1642-1695) was one of the most pre-eminent early clockmakers, he was born in Boldre, Hampshire and originally apprenticed to Benjamin Hill in 1654, but quickly turned over to the esteemed royal clockmaker, Edward East (1602-1696). He became a Freeman of the Clockmakers Company in 1663, but continued to work for East until c.1672/3, when he started to work independently at the Inner Temple. During his thirty year working life he took on fourteen apprentices and made a number of clocks for Charles II, one costing the then vast sum of £150. Jones was made Assistant of the Clockmakers’ Company in 1676 and became Master in 1691. It is clear that good relations continued with his former master, Edward East, and in 1692, East and Jones together placed £100 in trust with the Clockmakers’ to pay five Freemen, or their widows, twenty shillings per annum.
By the time this longcase was made, Jones was an experienced and capable maker, he had produced a very fine but small series of extraordinary flat-topped table clocks that, by the 1680s, would develop into his own distinctive style of table clock – one of the few makers whose designs are immediately distinguishable as their own (an accolade he shared with Knibb and Tompion). His early wealthy patrons included Heneage Finch (1621-1682), a barrister of the Inner Temple who would become Lord Chancellor and was later created 1st Earl of Nottingham. He ordered a superb walnut architectural longcase (also in this collection, inventory no.119) and his near-London seat was unusually large; it would later be forcibly purchased from his son by William III, and renamed Kensington Palace.
Skeletonised chapter rings and the consequential requirement for close-edged dial matting was both difficult and time consuming, it was usually only tackled by the finest London clockmakers, and even then, it was reserved for their best productions. This very fine and undoubtedly expensive oyster and parquetry case complements the beautiful dial and confirms its original high cost.
Additional information
| Dimensions | 5827373 cm |
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