Arthur Hayden

“ We think lovingly of it as belonging to a past that is something more than tapestry figures moving in a misty background. To watch the revolving pinions of a Stuart clock is to hear the echoes of the past reverberate. It requires no gramophone to reproduce dead voices, nor a cinema picture to recall bygone incidents and happenings. One can listen to the same monotone calling forth the departure of the seconds that awakened George Herbert from a reverie and beat rhythmically to his carefully wrought verse. ”

“ Folly is not the monopoly of any age. It is eternal. To-day the framer, if he is not watched and carefully instructed, glues a fine engraving to a sheet of cardboard and rubs a wet cloth over the surface of the print, destroying its beauty for ever with his clod-like smudge. Fools are ever present to confound the conservation of art treasures.
Painting a surface, however Oriental it may be in design, is not lacquer work. ”

“ The interest lies in the remoteness of the conception of a pocket clock. Possibly there is no one alive who could now set the wheels into motion, as there are no designers who could originate the exquisite tracery and filigree work, the perfect enamelling and the delicacy of metal work these old watches exhibit.
They belong to a world apart. Clocks of old masters still carry on their functions: the hand still revolves in unison with the slow swing of the "royal pendulum." As timekeepers they equal most of the modern, and excel the cheap clock, hardly worth designating as a timekeeper. ”

“ To him who can add personality to a clock—that something which parts put together with mechanical precision lack—there awaits a glorious heritage. The soul of the living clock must echo the soul of its human maker. The old masters have left to posterity living organisms which will not die. It rests with the public to say whether they prefer the gramophone to the singer, the piano-player to the accomplished pianist. If the clock of tomorrow is to be a mere soulless machine, the demand will be met. ”

“ A clock is an ornament to a well appointed home, in the hall, in the smoking-room, or in the dining-room. [Pg 42] They are unconcerned as to whether it is a timekeeper or a monument, "long to be patient and silent to wait like a ghost that is speechless." One longs to call aloud to such an encumbrance with its dead wheels and its atrophied hands: "Watchman! What of the night?" It is a servant that serves no longer. ”

“ But the factory system of the middle nineteenth century began to eat into the vitals of clockmaking in this country as a scientific craft. Makers of wheels, makers of chains, makers of every conceivable part of the movement sprang into being. No one of whom was a clockmaker, and no unit of any such industry could put a clock together. ”

“ But if it is to revert to that higher plane of the old masters of clockmaking, it is for those who love beauty and truth to make their desires imperative. For the moment, therefore, the study of the old and the perfect claims the loving attention of the collector who sees new lamps, like those which the magician in Aladdin's palace proffered for sale, in place of old. ”

“ Perhaps it is a wise dispensation of Providence that the man of wealth can possess the originals and that the poor man and the man of taste must content himself with copies. It was Balzac who chalked up in his garret, "Here is a Velasquez," "Here is an Andrea del Sarto." Lovers of the real can impart to the modern replicas purchased for a few pounds the spirit of the old examples. ”

“ The gnarled figure of the walnut was essentially a proper decoration to apply to the clock-case.
The long-case clock had not only become acclimatized, but it had become thoroughly English. The simplicity of its construction, and its proud record as a perfect timekeeper, gave it the supremacy over all other clocks. English clockmakers, with the fine sense of practical utility which governed their employment of mechanism, had reached a point when further inventions became more of scientific use than popular. The "grandfather" clock has no equal within its limits. ”

“ It is incredible that all of a sudden, following the clock-case and the chair-back, fine red and green and black and gold lac decoration, as exhibited by rich cabinets and gorgeous bureaus scintillating with colour, could have succeeded the stump-work amateurs. Stalker and company must go by the board as caterers for a very amateur taste. Their book possibly never reached the trade, or if it did, it could have had very little influence upon adept refugees practising a subtle art. ”

“ His fertility of invention is remarkable. On the whole it must be admitted that the case is the weakest part of the English clock. The case-maker never quite realized his opportunities. He might have done so much better. There is a stability and solid, almost stolid, soberness that might have been lightened, so one thinks at times. But on the other hand, when the Frenchman is bad in design, his exuberance of ornament and headstrong imagination seem too lurid for a sober clock which only records ordinary time. ”

“ The Bow china factory termed itself "New Canton," Worcester copied Chinese models, Bristol carried on the story. Staffordshire with her earthenware brought out the "willow-pattern," and a hundred other designs were acclimatized as reflections of the blue and white Canton porcelain.
"Taste is at present the darling idol of the polite world and the world of letters, and, indeed, seems to be considered as the quintessence of almost all the arts and sciences. The fine ladies and gentlemen dress with taste, the architects, whether Gothic or Chinese, build with taste." ”

“ From China to Japan, from India to Armenia, from Bagdad to Cairo, from Alexandria to Venice, from Canton to Goa and thence to Lisbon, backwards and forwards across the world's trade routes art impulses have throbbed to the tune of the monsoons. ”

“ Every year fine examples of old work are ruined for ever by ignorant repairers and restorers. In their little day they have destroyed movements and parts which can never be replaced. Of all arts, the art of the clockmaker has suffered most at the hands of the modern destroyer of work he does not understand. ”

“ The Dutch East India Company, till it was supplanted, was the conduit-pipe through which the arts of the East were allowed to pass into Europe.
In another portion of this volume we show how apparently obscure ornament has a long lineage, and that craftsmen in minor details were producing something of which possibly they knew not the origin nor the significance; but it behoves the intelligent collector, who, after all, is in possession of more facts, spread over a wider area, to arrive at sane conclusions in regard to workers who wrought better than they thought. ”

“ Their Appeal to Collectors.—Anything that appeals to collectors, whether it be Morland's colour prints or Wheatley's Cries of London, old Sheffield plate, Stuart cane-back chairs or Sheraton tea-caddies, pays the usual tribute which the antique pays to posterity. As imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, a thousand replicas start up to supply a demand. The man of taste says that such and such a thing is unique in its art-appeal to him. The man of money seeks to prove that it is not unique and buys as many uniques and antiques as his distended banking account will allow. ”

“ It is another way of expressing the view that the proportion is radically wrong. A glance at a poor panel of a clock-case, or a faked panel, or a stupidly wrought panel, is enough. To the collector of old books nothing is more annoying than to find that the binder with all his fine tooling has trimmed off the margins of the printed matter and the illustrations. It is an edition with the space expurgated. It is the binder versus the printer, and similarly in the clock-case it is too often the cabinet-maker versus the designer of the marquetry panel. ”

“ As timekeepers they never can bear comparison with the later type with the long pendulum. They stand as examples of early clockmaking, with fine brass dials, with artistic appearance, simple and unpretentious, but lacking the real scientific application of further developed principles of a succeeding period.
A clock that could only be used as a bracket clock or a wall clock with weights beneath hardly filled the requirements of an age when domestic furniture demanded luxury and exquisite taste. ”

“ The Great Series of English Table or Mantel Clocks.—To the beginner the appearance of an old table clock has not the same enticement as a brass lantern clock with its obvious claim to pre-modern form. It may even be said that the tyro clings reverently to his worship of the "grandfather" clock as something sacred. With their steady, uninterrupted progress from the middle seventeenth century for two hundred years, it is remarkable how conservative these table clocks have been to a comparatively fixed form. ”

“ It is simply decorative, but much in the manner that, in textile art, tapestry is pleasing, not challenging a critical examination of form, but suggesting a somnolent restfulness.
Touches of incongruity appear in later examples [Pg 114] of the lacquered clock-case when the arched hood came into fashion and the panel followed suit. It is a shape unsuited to an Oriental design. Such a Western architectural style used in combination with so Eastern a technique as lacquered work is like putting a Corinthian pillar on a Japanese bronze. ”

“ He was a maker whose work promised much. There is a specimen of his work signed "Chamberlain Chelmisford" at the British Museum, but in the specimen illustrated the name is chased "Thomas Chamberlaine de Chelmisforde."
The study of watches of the various periods is a fascinating one. When the collector leaves the path of clocks, with their more Gargantuan proportions, to become a student of the intricacies of the art of the watchmaker as exemplified in some of his greatest triumphs, he has been enticed on a quest which is unending. ”

“ It's true your carelessness in laying up while the sun shone for the tempests of a stormy day, hath given occasion to some inferior spirited people not to value you for what you are by nature and in yourself, for such look not to a man longer than he is in prosperity, esteeming none but for their wealth, not wisdom, power, nor virtue. ”

“ But to all lovers of fine furniture the English clock appeals sympathetically. It has a twofold claim to recognition. It is, if it be a fine old English clock by an English maker, a reliable piece of mechanism as a timekeeper. It is in [Pg 40] certain periods representative, in its marquetry or lacquered case, of styles of decoration and design now only equalled by copyists. If it is by one of the leading English clockmakers its movements are unequalled. It stands as a monument to a great scientific craftsmanship now almost extinct. ”

“ These dry facts may serve to whet the curiosity of the student in regard to the measurement of time and its origin. They add a piquancy to the clock dial as we now know it. Scientific it is, as one of man's most exact recorders of natural phenomena. That an exact timekeeper should be found in the pocket of every schoolboy would seem an astounding miracle to our ancestors two hundred years ago, or even less than a hundred years ago:
'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own,
writes Pope in his Essay on Criticism in 1725. ”

“ It is only a fancy, but, as no design comes by accident, it is very probable that such was the idea of the old dial engraver.
The study of hands is exceptionally interesting; they run through a regular series of styles, as varied as the ornamentation of the cases. Some of the designs are of exquisite balance as specimens of delicate metal-work, in which the English have always been proficient. Their character can be gauged by the expert clockmaker or connoisseur to such a nicety that it can be seen at once if the clock has its original hands or not. ”

“ In furniture the pendulum has swung to and fro. Colour follows form in the process of evolution. In England there is the oak period and the walnut period, where the beauty is solely dependent upon form. The conception of the cabinet-maker has usually been confined to form, eschewing colour, or to colour more or less ignoring the beauty of form, or as a compromise, [Pg 111] when form has been subservient to colour. When form and colour are in exact harmony the highest ideals are reached in furniture. The Chinese have reached these ideals. ”

“ The sudden outburst of colour in the now rarely prized English lacquered cabinets and bureaus must be attributed to the foreign workmen in our midst at the close of the seventeenth century. It is English perforce, because it was made in England. The followers of Huygens the Dutchman and the disciples of Martin the Frenchman were capable of producing something new and something surprising in English cabinet work. The foreign quarters of London have always been the centre of art industry. Armenians sit on the roofs of fashionable West End emporiums and restore carpets and rugs. ”

“ Specialization may be said to have undone clockmaking. We realize that the clockmaker could not cast the brass spandrel ornaments and chase them, or engrave the dial. We do not expect him to, nor did he, lay the marquetry, or become a lacquer varnisher in the cases. We cannot call upon him to cast the bell in the chiming movement, or to make the catgut which is wound around the drum carrying the weights. Nor was he an expert in metal design to pierce the hands and employ delicate ornament in so doing. ”

“ A cabinet-maker in Devonshire or a would-be marquetry-worker in Cumberland may, between his intervals of making the coffins for his deceased neighbours or turning their wagon shafts, essay to try his hand at imitating the squire's clock-case of fifty years' previous date. He usually puts a label to his handiwork which renders it easily recognizable. There is no style réfugié about his craftsmanship. His design is crudely "chopped in," that is, the solid wood has been cut out to receive the pieces of the design, usually, as found now, very badly glued, and severely handled by time. ”

“ Chippendale, great craftsman that he was, would have been better advised to prune his Chinese taste and discard his worthless Gothic style. An artistic brain behind him would have saved him from such atrocities. Sheraton, more the artist than the craftsman, made no such blunders.
Evidently the making of clock-cases became an industry. Personally we incline to the belief that seventy-five per cent. of them were of foreign manufacture, either in Holland and imported here, or made by Dutch immigrants or French refugees in this country. The derivative nature of their design tells its own story. ”

“ We must commence with the known data that the earth revolves on its axis in twenty-four hours, or, to be more exact, in 23 hours 56 minutes 4 seconds. Astronomical clocks recording with scientific exactitude this phenomenon are on a plane apart, as are chronometers used by mariners. The astronomer uses a clock with numbers on its dial plate up to twenty-four; the common clock has only twelve hour numerals.
To come straight to modernity, it must be recognized that the measurement of time scientifically and the measurement of time according to civil law are two different things. ”