A GEORGE III ORMOLU-MOUNTED WHITE MARBLE CLOCK

BY WILLIAM RADFORD, LEEDS

Details
A GEORGE III ORMOLU-MOUNTED WHITE MARBLE CLOCK
By William Radford, Leeds
The glazed circular white enamel dial with Roman numerals and Arabic numbers with gilt beetle-and-poker hands, single chain two-day fusee movement with verge escapement, the backplate signed Wm. Radford, Leeds, surrounded by a beaded and lappetted bezel, in a drum shaped case, above a gadrooned socle, on a white fluted marble plinth decorated with a guilloche and beaded frieze with ribbon-tied fringed swags suspended from beaded flowerheads, the base with a gadrooned edge
10in. (25.5cm.) high

Lot Essay

William Radford 1764-1826.

The ormolu-enriched statuary marble clock, in the manner of a pedestal-supported watch, is designed in the Louis XVI fashion promoted during the 1780's by marchands merciers such as Dominique Daguerre (d. 1796) of London and Paris. While resembling a pedestal-supported watch, its form also evolved from the vase-capped pedestal clocks, such as featured in Robert Osmond's, Livre des desseins, c.1770 (see P.Pröschel, H.Ottomeyer, et.al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol. p.194). Its pearl-and-palm wreathed 'medallion' case, on a stepped and reeded gadrooned plinth, has an elliptic 'altar' pedestal, formed as a truncated Grecian Doric column. The latter, wreathed by a ribbon-guilloche and Etruscan-pearl bands, is festooned with a sacred veil tied to an Apollo-sunflowered pattera.

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