Description:
Pillar and scroll shelf clock with a 30-hour, wooden movement made by William Sherwin (1787-1834). Sherwin was born in Ashfield, Massachsetts, and moved to Buckland where he probably assembled Connecticut-made parts and retailed the finished product under his label. The clock was purchased by Historic Deerfield from Thomas MacDonald, who purchased it at the estate sale of Richard A. and Sara Donaldson Davis, Shelburne Rd., Shelburne, Massachusetts, July 1985. The case has elaborately turned engaged columns (probably maple) at the front and pilasters at the back which flank a two-part door that reveals the square dial with Arabic numerals at the top and a looking glass at the bottom, below a scrolled pediment, all supported by small, turned ball feet. The mirror back, top board and the proper right top of the cornice are basswood. The door frame is cherry. The interior vertical structure is basswood. The strip above the face and below the cornice and the backboard are white pine.

Label Text:
Working first in East Windsor, and later the Naugatuck Valley, Connecticut, clockmaker Eli Terry (1772-1852) refined and improved wooden-movements for use in inexpensive shelf clocks and developed manufacturing techniques for their mass-production. Clockmakers throughout New England followed his example. Some, such as William Sherwin (1787-1834) of Buckland cornered the local market by making their own versions of shelf clocks with wooden movements, housed in cases loosely based on mass-produced Connecticut models. Born in Ashfield, Sherwin moved to Buckland as a young man and established a small-scale clock manufactory along the Clesson River in a part of town that townspeople took to calling “Clock Hollow.” He cut wooden gears on a jig, or “wheel-cutting engine,” (now in the collection of the American Clock and Watch Museum) attached them to painted wooden dials bought in bulk and fitted them in paint-decorated cases possibly made by Buckland cabinetmaker Daniel Warner (1801-1882). Zur Hithcock, keeper of a Buckland general store, stocked Sherwin’s clocks, recording in his account book purchases of a total of 351 clocks for $3.00 each in 1832.

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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+89.057

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