Description
This stunning quarter chiming longcase clock boasts the high-quality workmanship associated with this fine period of clockmaking excellence. A truly stunning case would not look out of place amongst the very best, with the beautiful solid mahogany case, elegant dial and comprehensive movement to match. This is a delightful clock that would complement any collection.
Movement: The substantial movement held by six knopped and finned pillars is of 8-day duration, with three brass bound weights driving the clock. The movement runs three trains for the going train; to tell the time and date, the hourly strike train; striking a single bell upon the hour, and the quarter chiming train; striking a nest of 8 bells, where each strike represents each quarter hour passed. Using Graham’s dead-beat escapement, with a considerable iron rod pendulum, with a very heavy lenticular brass bob and silvered engraved rating nut.
Case: A delightful, and majestic mahogany case. The sophisticated deep flamed Mahogany case with pagoda top and three urn finials over elaborate pierced sound frets and free standing brass-mounted stop-fluted columns, above a long shaped moulded door with canted corners and typical London applied panel base upon a double plinth.
Dial: The 12” Break-arch brass dial with smartly matted centre, Date aperture above VI and silvered engraved seconds subsidiary dial below XII featuring Arabic 5 second markers. Surrounded by the silvered engraved chapter ring featuring both roman numerals and Arabic five minute markers. The rococo spandrels have all been cast and chased to improve finishing and definition. There is a strike/silent subsidiary situated in the arch of the dial allowing the silencing of the strike. The dial is completed with original all finely shaped and blued steel hands.
Eardley Norton (1728 – 1792)
Eardley Norton was from yeoman stock, who are believed to have farmed at Rigsby, Lincolnshire. He was apprenticed as a clockmaker on 25 May 1743 to Robert Dawson of Alford. He is listed as working at 49 St. John’s Street, Clerkenwell between 1760 and 1794. He was also a member of the Clockmakers’ Company being freed in 1770 and remained a member until his death in 1792. He applied for a patent for a new type of striking mechanism for clocks and watches on 31 August 1771.
He’s renowned with a reputation as a very skilled clockmaker. He is most well known for making highly complex timepieces, sometimes with musical and astronomical movements for the export markets. These included Turkey and the Far East. The most notable of which may be his four-dial astronomical clock which he made to stand in the library of Buckingham House, now Buckingham Palace. In addition, there are clocks made by him in the Royal Collection, numerous museums worldwide and some of the world’s finest collections including a bracket clock in the Virginia Museum, a very small cartel clock in the National Museum of Stockholm, a marine chronometer in the Ilbert Collection at the British Museum in London and an elaborate automaton clock with organ in the Palace Museum located in Peking. He married Mary Swinnerton of Oswestry, and after retirement lived at Stonegrove House (no longer existing), Little Stanmore, Middlesex, in the parish of Whitchurch. On his death, his business was taken over by the partnership of Gravell and Tolkien. He is buried at St. Lawrence’s church in Little Stanmore.
Serviced and guaranteed for 3 years.
Height: 109″ or 277 cm
CIRCA. 1760
Provenance: Private collection U.K.
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