James Stratton
Director
Lot 104
A FINE AND RARE EBONY MINIATURE LONGCASE CLOCK WITH SKELETONISED DIAL, MAINTAINING POWER AND QUARTER REPEAT FACILITY John Wise, London, circa 1675
19 June 2019, 15:30 BST
London, New Bond Street£120,000 - £180,000
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A FINE AND RARE EBONY MINIATURE LONGCASE CLOCK WITH SKELETONISED DIAL, MAINTAINING POWER AND QUARTER REPEAT FACILITY
John Wise, London, circa 1675
The case
Ebony veneered on an oak carcass, the rising hood with shallow caddy top and five brass ball finials over four brass-mounted Doric columns, the long trunk door just 7.5ins wide, with spoon lock, and applied with three rectangular panels within a D-moulded edge, on a plain base raised on squat brass ball feet, the backboard set with sprung catch to secure the hood in the raised position for winding, together with a trunk door key with British Museum nametag.
The dial
The 7 inch square brass dial with unusual flowerhead and foliate scroll spandrels framing the skeletonised chapter ring with Arabic minute band and proud Roman numerals, interspersed by shallow dotted half hour marks, with applied silvered subsidiary seconds dial and chamfered date aperture, with shuttered winding square, with pierced blued steel hands,
The movement
The eight day, weight driven movement with plates united by five knopped and finned pillars, the single going train with bolt-and-shutter maintaining power to the anchor escapement with long pendulum suspended from an adjustable rating nut set on an open brass box secured to the backcock. The movement further set with a quarter repeating train activated via one of two cords hanging from each side of the trunk, the quarters struck on two bells and hammers, the hour struck on a separate bell mounted above
1.75m (5ft 9ins) high
The case
Ebony veneered on an oak carcass, the rising hood with shallow caddy top and five brass ball finials over four brass-mounted Doric columns, the long trunk door just 7.5ins wide, with spoon lock, and applied with three rectangular panels within a D-moulded edge, on a plain base raised on squat brass ball feet, the backboard set with sprung catch to secure the hood in the raised position for winding, together with a trunk door key with British Museum nametag.
The dial
The 7 inch square brass dial with unusual flowerhead and foliate scroll spandrels framing the skeletonised chapter ring with Arabic minute band and proud Roman numerals, interspersed by shallow dotted half hour marks, with applied silvered subsidiary seconds dial and chamfered date aperture, with shuttered winding square, with pierced blued steel hands,
The movement
The eight day, weight driven movement with plates united by five knopped and finned pillars, the single going train with bolt-and-shutter maintaining power to the anchor escapement with long pendulum suspended from an adjustable rating nut set on an open brass box secured to the backcock. The movement further set with a quarter repeating train activated via one of two cords hanging from each side of the trunk, the quarters struck on two bells and hammers, the hour struck on a separate bell mounted above
1.75m (5ft 9ins) high
Footnotes
Provenance:
Sothebys New Bond Street, 13th December 1988, lot no. 201
John Wise was born in 1624 and baptised at Banbury, Oxfordshire. He was appointed to Peter Closon, the renowned lantern clock maker, in 1638, but not made a freeman of the Clockmaker's company till 1670. During the intervening thirty-two years he may have been working in Warwick, where he certainly maintained the two church clocks of St Nicholas and St Mary. To date there are no known clocks made by John Wise during this period, when his seven recorded sons were baptised at St Mary. From 1670 he appears to have worked in London, where over the years he took all his seven sons as apprentices. His eldest son, John, was apprenticed in 1675 and probably succeeded to the family business until at least till 1720.