Description
Hexagonal tabernacle clock; tower with twelve various dials; metal-gilt background engraved with flower sprays and scrolling foliage; scroll and dolphin pillars to angles; hexagonal domed base repoussé with fruits and foliage in relief; tower surmounted by two-tiered cupola with pierced panels and silver foliage plaques; vase-shaped finials; scroll supports; whole surmounted by model of armillary sphere; later eight-day movement driving some of the dials; half-hour strike on two bells; gilt-metal key with circular handle, pierced and engraved with foliage and bird's head.
The following text is the entry for this object from the unpublished catalogue of pre-pendulum clocks by John Leopold, former Assistant Keeper of Horology at the Museum. This information is unedited and should be used accordingly.
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LARGE HEXAGONAL TABERNACLE CLOCK, Augsburg…View moreabout curator's comments
Text from 'Clocks', by David Thompson, London, 2004, pp. 42-45.
Anonymous.
Masterpiece clock
Augsburg, c.1650
Height 70.5 cm, width 41 cm
A clock which shows the time both in the great and small clock i.e., the 12-hour and 24-hour system. It should show the times of sunrise and sunset and also show the position of the sun and moon in the zodiac throughout the year. It should strike the quarter hours and the full hours in both 1-12 and 1-24 hour systems.
These were the basic requirements for a 'masterpiece' clock in Augsburg when this clock was made. In order to qualify as a master clockmaker, a craftsman had first to serve his apprenticeship and then follow it with a period serving different masters as a journeyman. The total period of servitude varied but usually amounted to about seven or eight years. When this was completed, he would be able to apply for permission to submit a masterpiece, which had to be of suitable quality to satisfy the masters of the guild who judged it. For the completion of this work the aspiring clockmaker would be given six months, during which time he would not be expected to do any other work.
This spectacular piece has all the characteristics of such a masterpiece clock but suffers from the fact that, although done in a most sympathetic way, the whole of the movement was removed and replaced by a much simpler mechanism in France in the nineteenth century. Many of the dials no longer function. In spite of this rather draconian alteration, the clock is still a superb example of the clockmaker's, or perhaps more specifically, the case-maker's art of mid-seventeenth century Augsburg.
The hexagonal structure is made from gilded-brass, silvered brass and, in part, solid silver components and is designed to impress with such an array of indications that there can be little that is left to the imagination. The original concave base is decorated with flowers and foliage but the proportion is now distorted by the addition of a wide 'skirt' to increase its depth to provide clearance for the nineteenth-century pendulum. Sitting horizontally at the top of the base is a revolving calendar ring, which is engraved with the date, the Dominical Letters, the saints' days and the months with the number of days in each. The dates at which the zodiacs change are also marked.
Above this, the clock is hexagonal and each facet has a dial or dials as follows:
• The main front facet has two dials. The upper dial is in the form of an astrolabe with a pierced rete or spider engraved with the ecliptic, showing the signs and degrees of the zodiac and with pointers showing the position of nineteen stars with their magnitudes. The time is shown by a centrally-mounted arm with a sun effigy at its end, registering against a silver chapter ring engraved I-XII-I-XII. At the centre, the lunar hand has a disc engraved with an aspectarium and pierced with a round aperture to show the phase of the moon. The moon's age is shown by a pointer on the lunar hand which indicates against a scale of 1-29 1/2 on the solar disc below it. Underneath the rete is a plate engraved with celestial coordinates for use at about 50° north, the latitude of Krakow. On this disc there are also curved lines to show unequal or seasonal hours. The lower silver dial is engraved I-XII for the 'small' hours on a chapter ring which surrounds a revolving disc numbered 1-12. This disc is turned to set the required alarm time against the tail of the blued steel hand which indi¬cates the time.
• The facet at the rear of the clock has two dials, the upper one with a sunrise-sunset/ daylight-darkness indicator consisting of two overlapping discs, one of silver and one of blued-steel which automatically change their relative positions through the year. Around this a gilt-brass ring is engraved 1-24 and the gilt hand which indicates against it shows Nuremberg or Bohemian hours where the day began at sunset or sunrise respectively. The hand would have been manually adjusted periodically as the times of sunrise and sunset changed during the year. On the outside, the silver chapter ring and the outer gilt chapter ring allow the concentric blued-steel hands to show mean time in the 12- and 24-hour systems. The lower dial is engraved with the signs of the zodiac and a dial which shows the length of daylight from eleven hours to twenty hours, according to the time of year and the latitude.
• Two dials show the positions of the 12- and 24-hour count-wheels to help when synchronizing the striking with the time shown on the dials.
• Two dials, the upper one for switching the striking between the 12- and 24-hour systems and the lower one to show the day of the week.
• A dial to show the position of the quarter-strike count-wheel, also provided to aid synchronization. There is a small hole in this dial which allows a pin to be inserted to release the striking.
• Two dials, the upper one numbered 1-8 and probably originally connected to a hog's bristle regulator acting on the balance, and a lower dial engraved with a 28-year cycle of Dominical Letters with double letters for the leap years.
All the facets of this level are lavishly engraved with realistic flowers in the areas around the various dials. Two of the panels are punched with a pine-cone, the town mark of Augsburg, perhaps confirming the status of the clock as a masterpiece. Above the dial level the clock takes the form of two hexagonal boxes with profusely pierced and engraved gilt-brass and silver panels which originally housed the bells. The corners of the clock are in the form of highly ornate buttresses, which begin at the top of the base and rise up through the levels to converge at the top where they support an armillary sphere. These buttresses are in the form of dolphins at the bottom and eagle heads at the top of the dial level. From here, spires rise up to create an elaborate and highly decorative effect.