GEORGE CLARKE, LEADENHALL STREET, LONDON. SECOND QUARTER 18TH CENTURY

Details

A George II ebony and brass-mounted quarter-chiming table clock with moonphase
George Clarke, Leadenhall Street, London. Second quarter 18th century
The case with brass handle to a brass-lined inverted bell top, above stepped and moulded cornices, with brass-lined breakarch glazed side panels, conforming front and rear doors with quarter frets (lacking), matching brass escutcheons, on stepped base raised on brass feet (one detached), the brass dial with painted and engraved rolling moon to the arch, within an engraved border and with orbs engraved with foliate scrolls, with gilt foliate spandrels to a silvered Roman and Arabic chapter ring engraved with fleur-de-lys half hour markers, the gilt and matted centre with mock pendulum and date apertures, signed on a silvered arched plaque Geo. Clarke Leaden hall Str.t London, with subsidiary rings cut into the top of the chapter ring, for strike/silent and quarters/silent, each silvered and engraved with curlicues and with flowerhead engraved centres, with finely cut blued steel hands, the six ringed pillar twin gut fusee movement with knife-edge verge escapement, quarter chiming on six nested bells via a 2in. pinned cylinder and with hour strike on further bell, trip repeat, the backplate and verge apron elaborately engraved with foliate scrolls, with repeat signature to a plain oval reserve, the movement secured to the case by turnscrews behind the dial and by two bolts through the lower pillars
19½in. (49.5cm.) high to hilt of handle

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

Clarke, George, London. Recorded as working from 1725, and Free of the Clockmakers' Company until 1787. A fine maker; one of his clocks was in the Wetherfield Collection (see Eric Bruton The Wetherfield Collection, NAG Press, London 1981, p.56 Fig.110). Another was seen by Lord Macartney in the Imperial Palace in Peking during his visit to the Emperor Quianlong in 1793 (see Allen H Weaving 'Clocks for the Emperor', Antiquarian Horology, Vol. XIX, No.4, Summer 1991, pp.380-382).
Clocks by Clarke are invariably of the highest quality and the present example is no exception.

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