THE BRASS LANTERN CLOCK
The domestic clock--Its use as a bracket or wall
clock--Seventeenth-century types--Continuance of manufacture in
provinces--Their appeal to the collector.
The form of the lantern clock is one that appeals to the artist. We
love the candelabrum with candles, with its finely, fashioned brass
forms, Dutch and English. It adds a grace to the interiors of the old
masters of the Low Countries. Nobody is especially interested in the
gas bracket or the paraffin lamp. There is the picture of _The Doctor_
by Luke Fildes, but here the lamp only adds to the poverty and anguish
of the scene. It is realistic and had to be there, and it makes a great
factor in the lighting. But the chandelier with candles is the most
beloved by the artist who inclines to the primitive, as we all do.
The electric light must come into art and it does. The lift and the
telephone are facts, but they are difficult, naked and unashamed as
they are, to clothe with æsthetic drapery. The cubist and the modern
pseudo-scientific realist revel in incongruities repellent to art.
They seize these as their own, and make them in their presentation more
repellent.
Happily the clock has not received the attention of the modern
sensation-monger. We are left with the heritage of the past
undisturbed. He may gibe at the paint and canvas of old masters, he may
deride the grace of the Greek in sculpture, but the simple mechanism of
the clock symbolizing "the inaudible and noiseless foot of Time" mocks
the charlatan of a little day, with oblivion tracking his scurrying
heels.
The name of lantern clock may puzzle the modern collector, but its
shape followed the lantern of the period, and, like the lantern, it
was made to hang on the wall. We illustrate (p. 47) a silver ship's
lantern of the period of Christian IV of Denmark, of the late sixteenth
century, with the King's monogram. It was doubtless used in the
expedition round the North Cape. It is in the collection at Rosenborg
Castle at Copenhagen. This lantern shape is found in German clocks of
the period, and in English seventeenth-century clocks the same shape is
continued. A fine example by Bartholomew Newsam is illustrated (p. 47),
showing the early type conforming to the lantern design.
Not only the form but the usage determined the name. The lantern had
spikes or metal hooks to hang upon. The clock similarly was affixed to
a wall, and we know it as a bracket clock, because, whether on a wall
or on a bracket, it had chains and weights suspended beneath it, as it
was not in its early form capable of being placed on a table.
[Illustration: SHIP'S LANTERN OF SILVER.
Used by Christian IV of Denmark on his voyage round the North Cape.
(_At Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen._)]
[Illustration: EARLY LANTERN CLOCK.
By Bartholomew Newsam (1570-90).
(_At British Museum. Reproduced by permission._)]
We think lovingly of it as belonging to a past that is something more
than tapestry figures moving in a misty background. To watch the
revolving pinions of a Stuart clock is to hear the echoes of the past
reverberate. It requires no gramophone to reproduce dead voices, nor
a cinema picture to recall bygone incidents and happenings. One can
listen to the same monotone calling forth the departure of the seconds
that awakened George Herbert from a reverie and beat rhythmically
to his carefully wrought verse. The same hand pointed to midnight
that beckoned Lovelace from his revels. We are reminded of Justice
Shallow's "we have heard the chimes at midnight,"--an old man's boast
of rollicking gaiety. The trite engraved words _Tempus fugit_ drew a
thousand sweet sounds from golden-mouthed Herrick, who sang of fading
roses and counselled maids "with Daffodils and Daisies crowned" to
make the most of their charms. _Vanitas vanitatum_, all is vanity; the
sadness of it all, the flying hours that no man can recall, the long
slow shadow that creeps across the grass--this is the message of the
poets; and when they pause for a moment from the dance in the sunlight
to think of time, it is Time the ancient reaper with the scythe, who
cuts down the young flowers ruthlessly with the fateful sweep of his
blade.
=Its Use as a Bracket or Wall Clock.=--Old engravings of clocks and
of clockmakers' workshops show clocks on the wall with the weights
suspended beneath the brass case. Such a clock usually went for thirty
hours. That is, it was usual to wind it by pulling up the chains once a
day, a method retained, in long-case clocks of thirty-hour duration, by
provincial makers a couple of centuries later in England.
It is obvious that these clocks stand apart from the era of the
spring as a driving force, being weight-driven, and are before the
introduction of the pendulum as a regulator of the mechanism impelled
by the weights.
As timekeepers they never can bear comparison with the later type with
the long pendulum. They stand as examples of early clockmaking, with
fine brass dials, with artistic appearance, simple and unpretentious,
but lacking the real scientific application of further developed
principles of a succeeding period.
A clock that could only be used as a bracket clock or a wall clock with
weights beneath hardly filled the requirements of an age when domestic
furniture demanded luxury and exquisite taste. The personal clock--that
is, the watch--offered more possibilities.
The advent of the pendulum came just at a time when the art of the
clockmaker required the necessary impetus to carry him to newer and
more extended fields. The invention revolutionized the domestic clock.
As to the clocks used by the wealthy classes in England at the year
1685, one recalls the death-bed scene of Charles II as described by
Macaulay:
[Illustration: SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY BRASS CLOCK.
With pendulum in front of dial.
(_At British Museum. Reproduced by permission._)]
[Illustration: SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY BRASS CLOCK.
With pendulum behind back plate of clock.]
"The morning light began to peep through the windows of Whitehall; and
Charles desired the attendants to pull aside the curtains, that he
might have one more look at the day. He remarked that it was time to
wind up a clock that stood near his bed. These little circumstances
were long remembered, because they proved beyond dispute that, when
he declared himself a Roman Catholic, he was in full possession of
his faculties. He apologized to those who had stood round him all
night for the trouble which he caused. He had been, he said, a most
unconscionable time dying; but he hoped that they would excuse it. This
was the last glimpse of that exquisite urbanity so often found potent
to charm away the resentment of a justly incensed nation. Soon after
dawn the speech of the dying man failed."
It was Bacon who wrote, a century before: "If a man be in sickness or
pain, the time will seem longer without a clock or hour-glass than with
it."
The question arises as to what particular kind of clock was at the
bedside of Charles II that he should notice that it required winding.
It may have been usual to wind it at that particular time every
morning, being, as it undoubtedly was, a thirty-hour clock conveniently
wound the same time every day. But it is more probable that the King
saw that it wanted winding by the position of the weights.
=Seventeenth-century Types.=--The idea of the pendulum had been in
men's minds since the days of Leonardo da Vinci, but Christopher
Huygens, the Dutch astronomer and mechanician, applied it to the
clock. At first it was placed in front of the dial and swung from
the top. The illustration we give (p. 51) shows an early clock with
this device. The pendulum was next placed at the back (see adjacent
illustration, p. 51), and later inside the clock.
We illustrate several types of the lantern clock showing its changing
form from a slender and graceful clock, with the dial in correct
proportion, to the later type, when the dial projected beyond the body
of the clock. When the bell was placed at the top and ornamented by
a brass terminal, the name applied to the clock was "birdcage," and
pictures by the old Dutch masters show birdcages of this shape hanging
in ladies' boudoirs.
It will be observed that as a rule the dials are circular, consisting
of the hour plate without the four spandrels. But we illustrate an
example of a square dial by John Bushman, London, about 1680, with
crown and verge escapement, with short pendulum, and alarum with
striking and going trains run by same weight. It will be observed that
these clocks have only one hand--the hour hand. In the example above
mentioned (see Frontispiece), the dial has an inner circle showing
quarters of an hour. The hand, as illustrated, has passed one quarter
and half of the next; it is therefore about twenty-two and a half
minutes past three. There is also an alarum marked with arabic figures
one to twelve. (An enlargement of this dial is illustrated p. 163)
The other specimens we illustrate exhibit slightly varying
characteristics.
[Illustration: BRASS LANTERN CLOCK, WITH SINGLE HAND.
Thirty hours; striking, but no alarum. With chains and weights beneath;
short pendulum at back.
Date, about 1660. Maker, Daniel Quare (London).]
[Illustration: BRASS LANTERN CLOCK, WITH TWO HANDS.
Thirty hours; striking and alarum. Anchor pendulum with wings each side
and chains and weight below clock. Short pendulum at back.
Date, about 1670.]
[Illustration: BRASS LANTERN CLOCK.
Showing chains with weights and long pendulum.
Date, about 1700.
(_At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York._)]
The brass lantern clock illustrated (p. 55) has chains and weights. It
is a thirty-hour clock, with striking but no alarum movement. It has a
short pendulum behind the back plate.
The use of an anchor-shaped pendulum brought a winged screen into
fashion to conceal its movement. The example illustrated (p. 55) shows
this style. This also is a bracket clock with chains supporting the
weights.
But the bracket clock did not stop at this stage. On the introduction
of the long or seconds pendulum this new mechanism was embodied in
brass clocks, and the illustration (p. 57) of an example about 1700
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, shows this type. A fine
brass lantern clock by Thomas Tompion is at the British Museum, an
illustration of which is given (p. 61).
=Continuance of Manufacture in the Provinces.=--Long after the
long-case clock was in general use in London, the brass clock with
weights and pendulum was extensively made in the provinces. Examples
are found by local makers up to the early years of the nineteenth
century. In a measure this continuance of an obsolete form is parallel
with the village cabinet-maker's furniture. Generation after generation
produced oak chairs and settles in Stuart form, and when Chippendale
seized the world of fashion, it was not till long afterwards that
village craftsmen made chairs in the Chippendale manner--but in yew, in
beech, and in sycamore, never in mahogany. Even Sheraton's satinwood
elegance in delicate tapered legs found an echo in elm and beech. It
is such naïveté which is delightful to the collector, and in provincial
clocks he will find a study equally rewarded by extraordinary
anachronisms and singular adaptations within the compass of the local
maker.
For instance, the marquetry of the village carpenter is always a
hundred years behind the time. His engraving on dials is of the same
character as that on his local coffin-plates or his tombstones. His
painted dials often exhibit native touches difficult to equal.
=Their Appeal to Collectors.=--Anything that appeals to collectors,
whether it be Morland's colour prints or Wheatley's _Cries of London_,
old Sheffield plate, Stuart cane-back chairs or Sheraton tea-caddies,
pays the usual tribute which the antique pays to posterity. As
imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, a thousand replicas
start up to supply a demand. The man of taste says that such and such
a thing is unique in its art-appeal to him. The man of money seeks
to prove that it is not unique and buys as many uniques and antiques
as his distended banking account will allow. We find this applies to
lantern clocks. Birmingham has turned out thousands of these brass
clocks in replica of seventeenth-century styles. Sometimes as much as
ten pounds is asked for them, and sometimes it is found that an old
maker's name has been added to the dial. There is no particular harm
in any man having replicas of fine old objects of art in his house if
he likes the styles and cannot afford originals. But it is a pity that
any one should ever pay more than replica price for a copy. That is
foolishness, and outside the realm of collecting.
[Illustration: BRASS LANTERN CLOCK.
Maker, Thomas Tompion (1671-1713). Height 8-3/4 inches.
(_At British Museum. Reproduced by permission._)]
Perhaps it is a wise dispensation of Providence that the man of wealth
can possess the originals and that the poor man and the man of taste
must content himself with copies. It was Balzac who chalked up in his
garret, "Here is a Velasquez," "Here is an Andrea del Sarto." Lovers of
the real can impart to the modern replicas purchased for a few pounds
the spirit of the old examples. It is the same artistic impulse which
accepts the translation in lieu of the original. Through FitzGerald we
read Omar. Horatius Flaccus, who appeals to the esoteric with his _odi
profanum vulgus_, is filtered through a Western tongue. One is grateful
to see plaster casts in the British Museum of the Three Fates from the
Parthenon at Athens. Echoes suggest so much to those who have the inner
spirit to conjure up the original.