Description:
Wall clock or regulator clock made by Simon Willard (1753-1848). If a clock was desired to keep accurate time and sent the message of status, the reputation of the Willard family for fine, eight-day timepieces drew patrons from throughout northeastern United States. The eldest brother, Benjamin Willard (1743-1803), was the first of three generations of Willard clock and watch makers who started working in Grafton, Massachusetts, in 1766; when the clockmaker Nathaniel Mulliken Sr. of Lexington, Massachusetts, died in 1767, Benjamin moved there and took over his business, while his younger brothers, Aaron (1757-1844) and Simon, stayed behind in Grafton continuing to make clocks and watch repairs. Simon also experimented with new forms that reduced the size of clock movements, and in 1801, introduced a wall clock with a patented design (patented 1802) with its Patent Timepiece movement, later known as a "banjo" clock. Benjamin Willard set up shop in Roxbury in 1771, followed by Simon and Aaron whose names first appear on the tax roles in 1783, each working in a separate location. Their sons and a grandson continued the profession: Simon's sons, Simon Jr. (1795-1881) opened his own business in Boston in 1828 specializing in manufacturing chronometers and Benjamin (1803-1847) worked with his brother, and Simon Jr.'s son, Zabdiel Adams (1826-after 1911) continued making pocket chronometers; Aaron's sons, Aaron Jr. took over the business in 1823, which Aaron Sr. had moved to Boston about 1792, and Henry (1802-1887) specialized in making clock cases. Since this wall clock was a new clock form, the Willards had to turn to local sources for parts and decorative elments. Suppliers included John Doggett (1780-1857) of Roxbury who produced such items as gilded eagles, brackets or pedestals, balls, swags, and painted tablets for patent pieces, and William Hunneman who provided castings of "side pieces," bezels for the round glass, and wheel blanks. Decorative painters of dials and glass tablets such as Charles Bullard (1794-1871), Spenser Nolan, and John Ritto Penniman (1782–1841) had to understand pigments, varnish, and how to conceive their works "backwards," the earliest style of ornamental painting on patent timepieces was delicate, geometric, and non-pictorial; floral motifs were featured later, followed by romantic imagery framed by linear borders; and then biblical, mythological and military themes. This banjo-shaped clock has a gilded acorn finial; round white-painted dial with black roman numerals and barb-shaped hands; triangular-shaped throat outlined in gilded rope molding with a reverse-painted or eglomise glass panel (restored) decorated with acorn and oak leaves on a pink background, which conceals the pendulum rod and weight; rectangular pendulum box outlined with gilded rope molding and a reverse-painted glass panel (restored) outlined with a gilded foliate design around a rising sun over the inscribed: "S. WILLARD'S PATENT" on white; and a gilt, fluted base pendant. The clock has an eight-day brass movement with a weight-driven recoil escapement, and winds at the 2:00 position. According to Philip Zea's notes: "gilding looks good; glasses look good, original key; bracket believable, five piece backboard, usually veneer covered, but supports four bottom of throat repainted, minute hand replaced, this was a bride clock (usually painted inside throat), dial and glass are that way, have slightly curvex dial which doesn't, This has thick head relieved to receive dial a la bride's clock. Mahogany case may have painted; 8 day brass recoil exep. Willard T-bridge step train and diagonal through-bolts holding movement in place."
Label Text:
George Alfred Cluett (1873-1955), of Troy, New York, and Williamstown, Massachusetts, collected American furniture from around 1901, shortly after he and Edith Tucker were married, through the mid-1920s. Cluett was prominent among early collectors. For the first museum exhibition of American furniture, The Hudson-Fulton Exhibition, opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1909, Cluett loaned 22 objects. Cluett, whose family business became Arrow Shirts, finished collecting before Henry Francis DuPont began to amass objects for what became the core of the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. The Cluett family donated most of its collection to Historic Deerfield beginning in 1960, with its last gifts given in 2003. Cluett’s keen connoisseurship, focused on Classical objects (contemporary to his grandparents’ lives) is notable as he collected before the publication of the first seminal reference books on American antiques. Moreover, the early twentieth-century collectors focused on the so-called Pilgrim Century, which predates the Classical era by over one hundred years. Cluett was particularly intrigued by the work of craftsmen including Seymour, McIntire, Phyfe, and Lannuier. Cluett’s desire for privacy, and reverence for times past has long obscured his creative connoisseurship and legacy as one of the earliest and influential collectors of American furniture.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2003.21.22 |
