Antique American Clocks
Clocks
Who the first person was in the New World that became fed up with the inaccuracy of sand timers and sundials and started to make clocks is entirely unknown.
Clocks were imported from both England and Holland. These were operated by
Hepplewhite style American clock in cherrywood with eight-day movement giving date and moon phases.
a spring mechanism. These were so expensive that only major settlements could afford them. Few people had a clock in their own house.
The first clock-makers were through and through craftsmen. They had to make every part themselves to the precise size. The tools available were often extremely rudimentary. The same person often had to make the clock case too.
Generally they sold too few clocks to make a living so that clock-makers were also locksmiths or gunsmiths.
This combination was particularly popular during the American War of Independence.
After this war there were still far too few people who could afford a grandfather clock and so the makers experimented with smaller clocks. Because a large number of original American clocks were introduced many homes soon had their own clock.
Clockmakers
The names are known of around 7,000 American clock-makers. Most of these made the usual types of clock but there are some of them that were so important in the introduction of major innovations that they have to be mentioned.
Abel Cottey arrived in America in 1682 on board the Welcome with William Penn (the Quaker leader whose name is given to the state of Pennsylvania).
He may well be the first clock-maker to establish a business in the colonies. In his workshop in Philadelphia he mainly made longcase clocks that became known as grandfather clocks.
These grandfather clocks later became very popular and can now be found through America. In common with other clock-makers, Cottey made the mechanism, the dial, the pendulum, and the weights himself but left the case to be made by a joiner. These joiners allowed their creativity to run free and many cases are superbly carved in minute detail. Philadelphia proved to be a good place for clock-makers to set themselves up.
Great names such as Christopher Sower, four generations of the Gogas family, the Chandlee family, and Edward Duffiels ring out from Philadelphia. The last of these was a good friend of Benjamin Franklin.
Duffiels was interrupted so frequently by people asking the time that he made a clock with a face on both sides that he hung outside his workshop. The most convivial clock-makers was David Rittenhouse.
Of Dutch origin, he anglicised his name from Van Ritterhuysen. He started making longcase clocks and scientific instruments at the age of 19 in Norristown, Pennsylvania. His clocks were the most accurate of their time (circa 1756) in the colonies. Rittenhouse was so good a craftsman that he made an orrery (complete miniature planetarium) when he was 23 which he sold to Princeton University.
In addition to being a clock-maker he was also a leading physicist, mathematician, and surveyor. His surveys were the basis for the Mason-Dixon line that formed the border between the emancipated states and those where slavery still endured prior to the American Civil War. Rittenhouse was also chairman of the American Philosophical Society. When older he became director of the United States Mint from 1791 to his death in
1795. In addition to Pennsylvania, there were also famous clock-makers in Connecticut and Massachusetts. The Willard family of Grafton, Massachusetts, were born with a talent for clock-making.
Benjamin Willard (born 1743) learned the trade with Benjamin Cheney in Connecticut and passed his knowledge on to his brothers Simon, Ephraim, and Aaron when he returned to Grafton.
Benjamin started a clock-making business in Grafton and advertised in the Massachusetts Spy that he could supply clocks that played a different tune every day and a psalm on Sunday. His brothers travelled throughout Massachusetts to sell clocks to people. Simon Willard is the most famous clock-maker of the family.
He invented the bank clock. Aaron Willard developed a model of his own, the Massachusetts ’shelf clock’. Aaron’s sons, Aaron Jr. and Henry did not want to be left behind by the rest of the family and developed the ‘lyre clock’.
Eli Terry (born 1772) became known as the ‘Henry Ford of clock-makers’. He built a small factory beside a stream in 1803 so that a water wheel could turn his machines and lathes. Terry also designed a machine to make cogs. This made production so much more efficient that he was able to accept an order in 1806 for 4,000 clocks.
The prices dropped so much through mass production that he was soon able to export them to Britain. The methods of production continually improved and became quicker and clocks were being made on a grand scale by 1860. Some clock-makers made as many as 100,000 clocks per year.
This was at the expense of the quality of the — mainly wooden — clock cases. Some were so poorly made that any right-minded furniture maker would have thrown them in the rubbish bin straight away. Around 1860, the Litchfield Manufacturing Company was even making cases of papier mdch6, into which clock-makers then glued the mechanism.
Popular clocks of the United States
LONGCASE CLOCKS
The grandfather clock was the first clock for the home to be made in America. These stately clocks originally known as either tallcase or longcase clocks can thank their name to the children’s song
My Grandfather’s Clock.
The first longcase clocks were made in England around 1600 and the earliest known American example originated in
1680. The long case was necessary to house the long pendulum. This case was often designed and made by a cabinet maker.
The mechanism of the longcase clock was made of bronze and wood. The clocks were mainly driven by weights but wind-up clocks came onto the market later. The dial was often made of bronze with engraved or etched Roman numerals and decoration.
The hands themselves often had fine tracery in order to catch the light. Grandmother clocks are a smaller version of the longcase clock and they were extremely popular in the early nineteenth century.
They were mainly made by a group of Boston clock-makers including the Willards, Samuel Mulliken, and Levi Hutchins. The grandmother clock was no taller than 1,200mm (48in).
SHELF CLOCKS
Shelf clocks came into fashion in the New World following the America War of Independence (1775-1783).
This was because their mechanism was driven by a spring. Such mechanisms were more complex and hence less accurate and these clocks were often more expensive. Because metal was in short supply during the war mechanisms were generally made of wood. The first American shelf clocks are so similar to comparable English clocks of the time that many collector has been confused.
The Massachusetts shelf clock (also known as box on box or half clocks) is no taller than 600mm (24in). The clock is set on a shelf instead of on the ground as is the case with longcase clocks.
Because they were intended to be portable, lighthouse clocks had handles attached.
These clocks were fitted with an eight-day mechanism and also incorporated an alarm. The clock could be wound without removing the glass. This type of clock was not very popular and therefore few were made. This makes them now quite rare and therefore highly sought after.
The extremely eagerly sought OG clock first appeared around 1840. The simple rectangular case was completed with ogee moulding.
The wooden mechanism was replaced with bronze ones that were either weight or spring driven. The OG clock remained popular for almost a century. Chauncy Jerome developed a kind of conveyor belt (from an ideas of Joseph Ives) to mass produce bronze mechanisms for these clocks. His advertisements stated that these clocks were suitable for all manner of public places such as churches, banks, shops, ships, trains, saloons, corridors, and kitchens.
Jerome quickly dominated the American market and soon started to export his clocks to Britain. Because they were so cheap the British Customs thought he was trying to avoid paying duty and they seized his first consignment. The Customs paid him his declared value plus ten per cent. Jerome was delighted and sent a second shipment to England. This too was ‘purchased’ by the British government but he sent a third consignment and by now the British finally accepted Jerome’s valuation and allowed his clocks to be imported normally.
The style of his clocks follow furniture styles. The influence of Rococo is clearly apparent in the form of the clocks and their ornamentation in the Jerome & Co catalogue of 1852.
Clocks with pointed columns known as Gothic clocks first appeared around 1845 and originated from the imagination of Elias Ingraham (1805-1885). In common with the furniture style of the time these clocks had pointed columns on either side.
The mechanism incorporated innovations by Joseph Ives — the bronze eight-day movement was driven by an Ives spring. A closely related clock to the Gothic clock was the Beehive which mainly had cases made from mahogany and/or rosewood.
WALL CLOCKS
The ‘wag-on-the-wall’ clock is also derived from the longcase clock. This type of clock was mainly based on the ideas of Isaac Blaisdell for a clock for people for whom the longcase clock was too big. The pendulum is allowed to swing freely outside the case rather like a dog’s tail wagging to and fro.
The banjo clock was originally named by its designer Simon Willard as an `Improved Patent Timepiece’.
Despite the patent he was granted on this type of clock it was widely copied. There are some 4,000 genuine Willard banjo clocks. Willard introduced a number of improvements that enable his clock to run for eight days in spite of using lighter weights. The banjo clock was also more accurate than other clocks because the pendulum was suspended in front of the weights. The case was largely made of glass which was decorated with paintings of landscapes, flowers, and noteworthy buildings. This typical American clock is still very popular with the general public. The ‘girandole’ was designed in 1816 by Lemuel Curtis of Concord, Massachusetts.
This clock is a variant of the banjo clock with a rounded case. The upper and lower parts of the case are decorated with small gilt spheres that are reminiscent of a mirror girandole mirror.
The rounded glass of the bottom section often has paintings of mythological or historical tableaux. Some described the girandole clock as the most beautiful American design of clock. The ‘lyre’ clock was designed by two nephews of Simon Willard: Aaron and Henry Willard.
The clock is clearly related to banjo and girandole clocks. With lyre clocks the dial is positioned on an elegant double scroll that is reminiscent of a lyre. The sides of lyre clocks are often decorated with leaf motifs.
clocks have movements that have to be wound once in eight days. The pillar or scroll clock was the first type of clock to be made by Eli Terry in large numbers. The most unusual aspect of this clock was that the pendulum was mounted slightly to the right rather than centrally.
This type of clock was very popular in the 1830s.
Around 1875 the Americans hit on the idea of using a clock mechanism to make figures move. The ‘blinking eye clock’ was often used as an alarm clock. The clock contained a miniature male figure that blinked its eyes when the alarm went off.
Watches
Watchmakers emigrated to America from Britain, Holland, France, Germany, and Switzerland quite early. They attempted to set up their own businesses but quickly discovered that so many watches were imported that they could not earn a
living. Few watches were therefore produced in America before the mid 1800s. The first to try making watches in quantity as probably Luther Goddard (1762-1842) of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.
He started to make watches in 1809 during a period that imports of watches were restricted by import regulations. He employed a number of other watchmakers but once the ‘Jefferson Embargo’ was lifted in 1815 the American market was once more flooded with foreign watches.
These were much cheaper than the American watches and so Goddard was forced to shut down in 1817. He then decided to become a clergyman instead glass.
A second attempt to make watches in America was made in 1837 by Henry and J.F. Pitkin of East Hartford, Connecticut. They developed machines that made between 800 and 1,000 watches but this business also failed due to foreign competition. After the factory moved to New York in 1841 the Pitkins decided to abandon watchmaking. Finally Edward Howard and Aaron L. Dennison were the first to successfully mass produce watches.
In 1850, forty years after Terry started to mass produce clocks, affordable American watches finally came onto the market. The Waltham Watch Company, as their business was named, survived for a century.
The Elgin National Watch Company was set-up in Elgin, Illinois in 1864. Their first watch was not sold until 1867. At first their watches had to be wound up with a separate key but these keys were easily lost so that they are much prized by collectors.
The company began to make ’stem’ watches in 1873 which had a small wheel on the side with which the watch could be wound. Although watches could now be made in greater quantities they remained expensive. The development of an accurate but cheap watch was a challenge to inventors.