AFA Summer 2021

2021 Antiques & Fine Art 77 Figs. 11 and 12: Tall case clock. Movement: attributed to Thomas Brentnall, Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham, England, ca. 1810. Case: attributed to William King, Georgetown, D.C., ca. 1810. Mahogany, tulip poplar, yellow pine, glass, brass, steel, and iron. OH. 94, OW. 20⅜, OD. 10 in. Museum Purchase, 2015-269. Photos courtesy of The Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg. domed or sarcophagus-shaped hood and the rectangular trunk door, with its round lenticle or window. But the elegant small- scale foliate or arabesque marquetry, known by some in the period as filagree, ornamenting the entire case, was found only on high-end furniture at that time. Often attributed to the workshop of London cabinetmaker Gerrit Jenson, this version of foliate scrollwork created by using veneers of different colored wood was popular in England at the end of the seventeenth and very early eighteenth centuries. 1 By the middle of the eighteenth centur y, numerous advancements had been made in clock movement and case design. Square dials had for the most part been replaced with arched dials, which allowed the clockmaker to incorporate additional features. In a circa-1740 example by Newport, Rhode Island, clockmaker William Claggett, the arch contains a silvered chapter ring, with the lunar calendar in Arabic numerals and the time of high tide in Roman numerals (Figs. 3, 4). Inside the ring is a round aperture through which a moon face peers, rotating slowly through the phases of the moon. Knowledge of the tides was especially important in a port city like Newport, and the inclusion of that feature suggests the clock’s original owner may have been involved in the shipping industry. Clock case forms changed over time, especially with the introduction of the arched dial in the early eighteenth century. This Newport case hood conforms to the arch of the dial and displays the “costly as well as ornamental” carved convex shell on the mahogany trunk door that was fashionable in Rhode Island during the mid- to late eighteenth century. 2