| Maker(s): | Cummens, William (possibly)
| | Culture: | American (1768-1834)
| | Title: | wall clock
| | Date Made: | 1815-1825
| | Type: | Timekeeping Device; Furniture
| | Materials: | wood: mahogany, white pine, birch; base metal: brass, iron, steel; glass, paint, gilding
| | Place Made: | United States; Massachusetts; Roxbury
| | Measurements: | overall: 40 in x 10 5/8 in x 4 in; 101.6 cm x 26.9875 cm x 10.16 cm
| | Accession Number: | HD 85.009
| | Credit Line: | Gift of Mrs. J. Philip Walker
| | Museum Collection: | Historic Deerfield
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Description:
Wall clock possibly made by William Cummens (1768-1834) who apprentised with Simon Willard (1753-1848) in Roxbury along with Elnathan Taber (1768-1854) between 1787 and 1793. This banjo-shaped patent timepiece has a gilt acorn over a round head with an white-painted iron dial with roman numerals, distinctive hands (barb-shaped) found on documented Cummens clocks, and a winding hole at 2:00; a tapering throat covered with a reverse-painted or eglomise panel decorated with a bird, floral sprays and a wreathed oval over "PATENT" and an image of Father Time with a sscythe; over the rectangular pendulum box with its reverse-painted glazed door depicting the 1813 Battle of Lake Erie and an eagle holding a banner labeled "LAKE ERIE" over the American Shield; and the base has fluted bracket with a drop pendant. The clock has an eight-day brass movement with a recoil escapement and Willard T-bridge
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+85.009 |
