Well before the first mechanical clock appeared in Europe, the Chinese were constructing water clocks.[1] None of the early Chinese clocks survive, but a description of a remarkably sophisticated example, known as the Xin Yi Xiang Fa Yao (New Design for a [Mechanized] Armillary [Sphere] and [Celestial] Globe, 1089), was discovered in the twentieth century and translated by Wang Ling, Joseph Needham, and Derek J. de Solla Price.[2] The clock was constructed under the direction of the diplomat and astronomer Su Song (1020–1101) during the reign of Emperor Zhezong (or Zhou Xuz) (1042–1100) from the Northern Song dynasty. The description is so detailed that a half-sized working model could be built in 1970 for the Time Museum in Rockford, Illinois.[3] There are other reconstructions, including one in Beijing.[4] The purpose of the clock was primarily astronomical. Finished in about 1090, it is estimated to have been between thirty and forty feet high, supporting an armillary sphere for the observation of heavenly bodies and a revolving celestial globe.[5] Below was a pagoda-like structure in which appropriate figures representing the Chinese hours appeared in sequence, accompanied by the sound of bells and drums. The most surprising feature, however, was a device that, although waterdriven, performed a function analogous to the escapement of a European mechanical clock.[6] Like other early Chinese timekeeping and astronomical instruments, the clock vanished as the result of the vicissitudes of war.[7] No known connection has been made between these vanished timekeepers and the mechanical clocks introduced into the Chinese imperial court by the seventeenth-century missionaries of the Society of Jesus. Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), working at the court in 1601–10, is often cited as the earliest of the missionaries who presented European clocks to the Chinese emperor [8] and is believed to have brought two clocks to China in 1601.[9] These clocks needed maintenance and repair, a need that probably added to the welcome reception of Ricci and the Jesuit mechanicians and clockmakers who journeyed to China in the course of the seventeenth century. Scholar Catherine Pagani states that there were four foreigners, and that even in the reigns of the eighteenth- century emperors there were only eleven.[10]



But the relatively few number of foreign specialists is misleading, because the imperial household had a tradition of setting up its own workshops within the precincts of the Forbidden City to make luxury goods for the imperial court. Pagani states that although there is more to be learned about these workshops, as their number and activities changed periodically, we do know that they were formally established in 1693, during the reign of Emperor Kangxi (1654–1722). By 1758, one of the fourteen workshops thought to have then been in existence was devoted to clockmaking.[11] In addition, timepiece manufacturing had begun in Guangzhou (Canton), the coastal city where European clocks were shipped for further distribution to Chinese patrons. Guangzhou became an important source of Chinese clockwork during the Qianlong period (1736–1795), as did clockmaking factories in Suzhou and Macao, the latter said to have employed one hundred craftsmen.[12]



The real impetus driving the success of these workshops, however, was the enthusiasm of two Chinese emperors, Kangxi and Qianlong. Eighteenth-century reports describe the imperial palace as filled with horology.[13] The two emperors set the taste for their courtiers, as well as for officials and mandarins, creating demand for decorative clocks with moving figures and self-sounding bells.[14]



Into this rarefied market came British clock- and watchmakers. They delivered their wares to the port of Guangzhou via the ships of the East India Company,[15] as well as in other, less officially sanctioned vessels. The best known of these English entrepreneurs is James Cox (ca. 1723–1800),[16] but others who catered to the Chinese trade were Paul Barbot (1720–after 1766), Timothy Williamson (active 1769, died before 1799), and two Francis Perigals,[17] all of whom are still represented by clocks in Chinese palace collections. John Champion (1730–1779) seems to have contributed far fewer timekeepers to this trade, but there is a belief that the Metropolitan Museum’s watch once belonged to Emperor Qianlong.[18]



Champion’s pair-case watch in the Museum’s collection has a repeating movement, meaning that when a plunger in the stem of the watch was pushed, it would strike the last hour and last quarter on a bell nested inside the box, or inner case, of the watch. The movement consists of two gilded circular brass plates held apart by four cylindrical pillars. The going train is spring driven and regulated by a verge escapement. The back plate has a balance cock with an asymmetrical openwork, leafy-scroll design on its table, and an openwork foot screwed to the back plate. A silver figure plate for adjusting the balance spring completes the “furniture” of the back plate, as the worm-andwheel regulation of the setup of the mainspring lies between the two plates instead of on the exterior side of the back plate. Below the balance cock the plate is engraved “Jno Champion / London” and numbered 1995. The movement is provided with a dust cover that bears the same signature and serial number as the back plate.



The dial marks the watch as one intended for export, as Chinese characters in place of the usual roman or Arabic numerals encircle the white enamel disk. These characters have been identified as correct for the twice-twelve division of the day customary in the West and painted by someone who was not entirely comfortable with Chinese calligraphy. [19] They are not related, however, to traditional Chinese methods of dividing the day, [20] which would not have been suitable for representation on a simple watch dial. The outer case further supports the identification of the watch as one made for the China trade. It consists of glass made to resemble the figured agates framed by openwork rococo scrolled designs that were popular among London jewelers and “toy” makers. A similar combination in the Museum’s collection, but employing genuine pink agate in a framework of gold rococo scrolls and floral swags, can be found on a James Cox “toy,” a miniature secretary incorporating a watch.[21] It is uncertain whether the glass in the watchcase was meant as an alternative to the more desirable agate or whether the glass was regarded as an ingenious substitute. The gold on the outer case that frames the glass panels is set with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and pearls, and it has a large pearl thumb-piece, suggesting that the second possibility is the correct one. (By contrast, the butterflies and flowers that adorn the miniature secretary consist of colored paste.) While the Museum’s miniature secretary is known to have come from the collection of Princess Z. M. Youssoupof in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and a second version survives in the State Hermitage, also in Saint Petersburg, a third version is still in the collection of the imperial palace in Beijing.[22] In all likelihood, the combined gold-and-pink glass of the Champion watchcase was intended for export and probably made about 1770 or 1772. (The latter date appears on the key for the Hermitage Museum’s example.[23])



The Metropolitan Museum has yet another reminder of Chinese enthusiasm for European horology, this one a watch that at first glance seems to be of European origin and that George C. Williamson, the author of the catalogue of J. Pierpont Morgan’s watch collection, published as the work of an unknown Englishman (fig. 49).[24] The case is brass, partly gilded and partly covered with fish skin, and leather studded with gilded brass. The gilded-brass dial has qualities that are not conventionally European: it is cast, and the foliate ornament in its center shows no trace, however faint, of the antique Roman heritage to be expected in a European design. The movement, also, is not exactly European, although it demonstrates a sporting attempt at a repeating watch. The suspicion that the watch might be one of those made in China, perhaps in Guangzhou or Suzhou, or less likely in the imperial palace workshop in Beijing, is confirmed by the Chinese characters inscribed on the dial and translated as “Made in the Qianlong years.” The back plate of the movement is laid out in European fashion, but in place of a traditional European motif on the neck of the balance cock, the engraver has substituted the age-old Chinese decorative animal mask, the Taotie. A European-style mask derived from the Roman grotesque tradition would probably have puzzled a Chinese patron in a way that the Taotie would not.



The movement of the Champion watch shows signs both of normal wear and signs of past neglect. The watch was purchased by the donor from Carl H. Marfels of Frankfurt am Main and Berlin. The traditional belief that it was looted from the imperial palace in Beijing may be correct but cannot now be substantiated.[25]



Notes (For key to shortened references see bibliography in Vincent and Leopold, European Clocks and Watches in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015)



[1] See Needham, Wang Ling, and Price 1960, pp. 70–131; Pagani 2001, pp. 10–11; Clocks and Watches of the Qing Dynasty 2002, unpag. (foreword).

[2] Needham, Wang Ling, and Price 1960, pp. 28–47.

[3] Turner 1984b, pp. 59–65.

[4] Pagani 2001, p. 8, fig. 1, and p. 9, fig. 2.

[5] Needham, Wang Ling, and Price 1960, pp. 24, 44–45.

[6] Ibid., pp. 34–41, 48–51; Turner 1984b, pp. 62–63, figs. 32a–d.

[7] Needham, Wang Ling, and Price 1960, pp. 131–33; Landes 1983, pp. 17–19; Pagani 2001, p. 10.

[8] See, for example, Landes 1983, pp. 38–40; Zheng Xin Miao in Moments of Eternity 2004, p. 30.

[9] Pagani 2001, pp. 2, 31–32, based on Ricci 1953, pp. 371–72. For an English translation of excerpts from Ricci’s account, see Cipolla 1967, pp. 83–85.

[10] Pagani 2001, pp. 2, 35.

[11] Ibid., pp. 36–37, 181, 182–83. Some of Pagani’s information is based on studies of ivory carvers and cloisonne enamelers (p. 246, nn. 13, 14). There is a short account of the work of the clockmakers in the Qing Dynasty period in Clocks and Watches of the Qing Dynasty 2002, unpag. (foreword). See also Chapuis 1919, pp. 42–44.

[12] Guan Xue Ling 2004, p. 241. Products of both Macao and Guangzhou (Canton) are illustrated.

[13] See White 2012, pp. 33–35. See also entry 40 in this volume.

[14] For examples, see entry 40 in this volume. See also ibid., pp. 158–260.

[15] For a great deal more about the China trade, see Harcourt-Smith 1933. See also Pagani 2001, pp. 58–124; R. Smith 2008; White 2012, pp. 29–45, 75–157, 208–60. For Swiss participation in eighteenth-century trade with China, see Chapuis 1919, pp. 45–79.

[16] See entry 40 in this volume. See also R. Smith 2008; White 2012, pp. 158–207. For Cox’s clocks and watches in the Metropolitan Museum’s collection, see Vincent and Leopold 2008.

[17] See entry 45 in this volume. See also White 2012, p. 347.

[18] Williamson 1912, p. 190, no. 207.

[19] The author is indebted to Pengliang Lu, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, 2012–13, in the Department of Asian Art, Metropolitan Museum, for this evaluation.

[20] For an explanation of the traditional Chinese methods, see Needham, Wang Ling, and Price 1960, app., “Chinese Horary Systems,” pp. 199–205.

[21] Acc. no. 46.184a–c.

[22] White 2012, p. 167, fig. 7.3, and p. 173, fig. 7.12.

[23] The key is illustrated in White 2012, p. 167, fig. 7.3.

[24] Acc. no. 17.190.1447a, b. See Williamson 1912, pp. 195–96, no. 216, and pl. lxxxvi.

[25] Ibid., p. 190, no. 207.