Table or bracket clock

Edward East (1602–1697) lived such a long life that it was once thought that there were two clockmakers by the same name who worked in seventeenth-century London.[1] A large portion of his early timepieces were watches, and the Metropolitan Museum has two: one of which is a silver-cased Puritan watch from about 1640 (17.190.1468a, b), so called because its plain, almost egg-shaped case is commonly thought to have been developed in England in reaction to the elaborately decorated cases of the earlier seventeenth century.[2] Watches of the same variety, however, are known to have been made in the Dutch cities of Haarlem and The Hague from about 1625.



Born in Southill, Bedfordshire, East was a royalist and a watchmaker during the reign of King Charles I, and in 1631, he was a founding member of the Clockmakers’ Company. After the Restoration in 1660 he was immediately appointed clockmaker to the new king, Charles II (1630–1685).[3] Like the Fromanteels, he quickly recognized the importance of the Huygens pendulum to timekeeping. East’s pendulum clocks from the 1660s were sometimes housed in plain wooden cases similar to the example in the Metropolitan Museum and owe much to the design of the first Dutch pendulum clocks. East’s clocks, however, more often share the design of the architectural models favored by the Fromanteels.[4]



The spring-driven movement of the Metropolitan’s table clock consists of two unusually thick rectangular brass plates held apart by seven baluster-shaped pillars that are pinned to the back plate. The movement contains two trains. The going train consists of three wheels with a verge and crown-wheel escapement, and it is regulated by a short pendulum. The striking train consists of four wheels and a fly, and strikes the hours on a bell (now missing but originally mounted on the front plate). The count wheel, engraved with a characteristic East rosette, is mounted on the upper right side of the exterior of the back plate. East’s latinized signature engraved in script, “Edwardus East Londini,” curves across the otherwise unadorned back plate. The two spring barrels are unusually wide in diameter, and the fusees are cut for gut. There is no center arbor; instead, the motion of the minute hand is driven indirectly from the second wheel of the going train, giving the hands of the clock a characteristic loose feel.



The gilded-brass dial has a matte surface with a thin polished border and a rosette engraved in the center. The narrow chapter ring is made of silver with black wax-filled numerals (I–XII) for the hours. Minutes are indicated by lines and numbered at five-minute intervals (five– sixty). Two-and-one-half-minute intervals are marked by trident-shaped symbols. The sculptured steel hands, with traces of bluing, are friction fitted. The case now consists of a rectangular, boxlike structure with a wooden-framed glass door that locks in the front, glass panels in the sides, and a wooden door in the back. It rests on a simple molded plinth, and is surmounted by an architrave and cornice.



This clock had undergone at least two serious modifications before it entered the Museum’s collection. At some point, probably early in its history, it was likely given a more up-to-date anchor escapement. At a later time, a simple verge with crown-wheel escapement was reinstated in keeping with what was known to have been the type used by East in these clocks. All the wheels of the going train were replaced, as were the fusee and spring barrel with its spring. A new bell and bell stand were added, but traces remained of the position of the older stand for a horizontally mounted bell. The original hammer remained, but it was severely bent to accommodate a vertically mounted bell, now missing.



The case, too, underwent considerable change at least once. It was given an inverted bell top and bail handle that would have been fashionable about fifty years after the clock was made. Probably from this period the ubiquitous winged cherubs’ heads (later removed) were added to the dial. Traces of their former application can still be seen on the dial plate. Gilded-brass ornaments on the top and the keyhole escutcheon, probably products of the rococo revival in the nineteenth century, were added, together with a gilded-metal frieze in Neoclassical style on the architrave and pinecone finials at the corners of the cornice. The quality of the frieze, finial, and front feet, even poorer than that of the rococo-style ornaments, would argue that these were still later additions, probably products of the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. The above modifications to the case can be seen in the illustration of the clock in the catalogue of the Metropolitan Museum’s Irwin Untermyer Collection.5 All of them were made before Untermyer acquired the clock from the New York sale of Frank Garrett’s collection in 1926.[6]



Using a table clock from the same period with a movement by the same clockmaker in the British Museum, London, as a guide,[7 ]the case has been newly returned to something approaching its original simplicity in order to restore the look of a now rather rare variety of East clock. The metal ornament was removed; the feet were replaced by wooden blocks; and the inverted bell top was replaced by a simple flat wooden top. The movement, like that of the Fromanteel wall clock (1974.28.93), had already been reconverted to a historically correct verge escapement. No attempt was made to mount a new bell. The movement was cleaned, given new gut for the fusees, and otherwise left as it had been when it entered the Museum’s collection.



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] Britten 1911, p. 267.

[2] Acc. no. 17.190.1468a, b. See Williamson 1912, p. 132, no. 136. The accession number for the other watch in the Metropolitan Museums collection is 17.190.1483a, b. See Williamson 1912, p. 133, no. 137, and pl. lxii.

[3] Jagger 1983, pp. 23–26.

[4] See 1974.28.93 in this volume.

[5] Hackenbroch 1958, pl. 2.

[6] Anderson Galleries 1926, pp. 50–51, no. xxvi, ill.

[7] Inv. no. CAI-2115. See Thompson 2004, pp. 68–69. Our thanks to the staff of the Horological Students’ Room at the British Museum for their gracious cooperation.