The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Two children in Turkish costume

David Roentgen: Nemours Clock

Abraham and David Roentgen were renowned German cabinetmakers whose workshop was famed throughout Europe for its exquisite marquetry work and complex mechanical devices. Proportioned for a stately public room or library, this musical clock is likely to have been the first Roentgen object to reach the United States, belonging to Gouverneur Morris, one of the nation’s founding fathers. Not only does it tell time, but it also displays the interior works, which are hidden in most clocks.

This clock, from The Nemours Foundation, is featured in the exhibition Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens (on view October 30, 2012–January 27, 2013).

Video/Audio (4)

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Two children in Turkish costume

Höchst Manufactory

Modeler:: Johann Peter Melchior (1742/47–1825, active at Höchst 1767–79)
Date:: ca. 1770
Culture:: German (Höchst)
Medium:: Hard-paste porcelain
Dimensions:: H. 7 in. (17.8 cm.)
Classification:: Ceramics
Credit Line:: Gift of R. Thornton Wilson, in memory of Florence Ellsworth Wilson, 1950
Accession Number:: 50.211.218

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David Roentgen: Nemours Clock

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Two children in Turkish costume

Höchst Manufactory

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