CIRCA 1775

Details

A GEORGE III TORTOISESHELL-JAPANNED AUTOMATON MUSICAL TABLE CLOCK
CIRCA 1775
The domed top with bail handle and four flaming finials above fretwork panels and an arched glazed door flanked by stop-fluted canted angles and pierced-fret sides on a plinth base, the circular enamelled dial with Roman and Arabic chapters centered by the maker's signature Eardley Norton/London and blued steel scrolled hands, floral enamel decoration in the spandrels, the arch with subsidary white enamel discs for chime/not chime and for tune selection inscribed Ferdinand, Minuet, Lovely, Nancy and Minuet and painted automaton scene of a bird catcher with moving arm and bird above, the three-train movement with knife edge escaptement, six ringed pillars, a nest of seven bells on thirteen hammers for the tune, and single bell on the engraved backplate, lacking pendulum
12./14 in. (31 cm.) high, 9 in. (23 cm.) wide, 6½ in. (16.5 cm.) deep

Lot Essay

Eardley Norton, who worked at 45 St. John Street, Clerkenwell, London, is particularly famous for his musical and astronomical clocks. First recorded in 1762 he was registered in the Clockmakers' Company from 1770-1794. A tortoiseshell-veneered and ormolu musical clock by this maker is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Its twin is illustrated in A. W.J.G. Ord-Hume, The Musical Clock, Derbyshire, 1995, p. 75, pl. IV/25-27. A superb four-dial astronomical clock by him is in the British Royal Collection (see C. Jagger, Royal Clocks, Hale, 1983, figs.151-152). Britten records him also as having made a fine musical clock for Empress Catherine of Russia (Old Clocks and Watches and Their Makers, Spon, Seventh Edition, 1956, p.446).

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