A FEDERAL INLAID MAHOGANY WALL CLOCK

DIAL SIGNED BY SIMON WILLARD (1753-1848), GRAFTON OR ROXBURY, MASSACHUSETTS, 1775-1800

細節

A FEDERAL INLAID MAHOGANY WALL CLOCK
Dial signed by Simon Willard (1753-1848), Grafton or Roxbury, Massachusetts, 1775-1800
Dial signed Simon Willard. Missing fret and finials, inlaid section of door frame replaced, inlay on lower case possibly later.
20 in. high, 8¾ in. wide, 3¼ in. deep

來源

Purchased from Francis H. Bigelow, Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 1925

出版

Lockwood Barr, "Willard's Experimental Banjo Models," National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors Bulletin, no. 39 (June 1951), p. 373, fig. 5.
Lockwood Barr, "The forerunner of the Willard banjo," The Magazine Antiques (March 1959), p. 284.
R.W. Husher and W. W. Welch, A Study of Simon Willard Clocks (1980), p. 18, fig. 1.17.

拍品專文

As the only known example of a "Grafton wall clock" with inlaid decoration, this wall clock is an anomaly among the group. Representing one of Simon Willard's earliest inventions, this rare form was first made in Grafton in the 1770s and according to recent scholarship, continued to be made by both Simon and his brother Aaron during the 1780s after their removal to Roxbury. It is also possible that such clocks were made even later. One example, now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is dated to circa 1790 and thirty hour clocks, possibly a reference to these forms, are among the products listed on Simon Willard's labels from as late as 1800 (Herschel B. Burt, Eighteenth Century Thirty-Hour Willard Clocks 1770-1790 (Grafton, MA, 1997), pl. 13, p. 26; R.W. Husher and W. W. Welch, A Study of Simon Willard Clocks (1980), p. 12).

While the inlay on the door frame is crude and clearly later, the paterae and quarter fan ornament on the base is well executed and may very well be original. If so, the clock was probably made in the 1790s and stands as a unique survival of the form with neoclassical decoration. Alternatively, the clock may have been made earlier and the inlay on the base an early addition, perhaps done in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century to make the older case more fashionable. At the time of its purchase in 1925, the clock had a broken swan's neck pediment, a later addition removed by Mrs. Blair.