Incollect Magazine - Issue 2

Issue 2 88 www.incollect.com Fig 3: Detail of the clock movement illustrated in fig. 1. Photo by author. Fig. 4: Detail of the dial illustrated in fig. 1. Photo by author. T he clockmaker John George Hoff (1733-1816) immigrated from Grünstadt, Germany, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1765. He arrived with his young daughter and his wife, Justina Margaretha Schnertzel (1743–1806), whom he had married in May 1761. By the time Hoff was in Philadelphia he was a fully trained clockmaker, presumably having learned the craft from Justina’s father, clockmaker George Schnertzel. 1 The couple was in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, by 1766 when their son Michael was baptized at Trinity Lutheran Church. A thirty-hour clock and case in the collection of Rock Ford Plantation inlaid with the date 1766 has a movement attributed to Hoff. The dial has cast pewter spandrels (the corners of the clock face) and a figure of Father Time in the dial-arch identical to the pewter castings Hoff was to use later on many of his signed clocks. 2 An 8-day clock signed “George Hoff/Lancaster” in the collection of the Dietrich American Foundation is inlaid in pewter with the date 1768. The dial has pewter castings identical to those on the 1766 clock. It is Hoff’s earliest signed clock and is housed in one of the most complex cases produced in Lancaster in the second half of the eighteenth century (Figs. 1, 2). The George Hoff eight-day movement was constructed in the German manner and has features seen in his other early clocks (Fig. 3). 3 The pewter spandrels and dial-arch applique of the face are painted with bronze powder suspended in an oil medium. There are traces of earlier coating materials on the reverse surfaces of the spandrels though it is not known if the first of these coatings was applied as part of the original decorative scheme or was added later (Fig. 4). The metal inlay in the Hoff case was also examined and conserved during the recent survey of the Dietrich American Foundation’s collection of furniture and woodwork. It had long been assumed that