AN IMPORTANT GLASGOW SCHOOL CLOCK, 1896

This wall-clock evidences the successful collaboration of sisters Margaret and Frances Macdonald, co-signatories of this unique work. With their respective partners Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Herbert McNair they became known as ‘The Glasgow Four’ and garnered considerable acclaim, both in their native land and internationally for the originality of their designs.  The group were particularly appreciated by the avant-garde in Germany and in Vienna. The Studio dubbed them ‘the spooky school’, for the Symbolist nature of their subjects and for the extreme stylisation of their figures and motifs.

In the present timepiece, the infants stretch towards and embrace dandelion heads or clocks – an allusion to the passing of time. Floating infants with cherub wings suggest a spiritual world.  The cyclical nature of life is further referenced by the seeds on the ground, growing and in turn generating further seeds. The ground also resembles an open book, implicit of time and of life as a chapter’s passing. This motif is echoed above the clock face as an open stage curtain with the inevitability of a finale. This symbolism continues in the pendulum design with birds in flight and owls on the weights, one with eyes open, the other with eyes closed, time illustrated as a continuum of wakefulness and sleep, of days melting into nights.