Clock

The allure of well-priced, market-fresh chattels from a blue-blood country estate can pique the interest of the most world-weary auctioneer or antiques dealer.

This 11in (28cm) high French automaton black marble and gilt bronze ‘quarter deck’ clock has a figure of a sailor and a captain at the stern.

This exhibition-quality skeleton clock, made by Anglo-German clockmaking firm Camerer Kuss & Co to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, sold for £78,000 at Bonhams last week.

John Benjamin reviews the sale of an exceptional collection of desk clocks and Cartier jewels at Bonhams.

This ‘Black Forest’ type clock on the theme of hunting is signed by Swiss master carver Johann Huggler of Brienz (1834-1912).

By the 1980s, Thomas Mercer of St Albans had made almost a third of all chronometers in history – including that used by Ernest Shackleton to navigate his men to Elephant Island and eventual rescue during the Trans-Arctic Expedition of 1914.

Eardley Norton, who is listed at 49 St John’s Street, Clerkenwell between 1762- 94, enjoyed a reputation as a skilled mechanic and the maker of complex timepieces, sometimes with musical and astronomical movements.

A rare regulator bracket clock signed by Thomas Cole was among a fine selection of English 18th and 19th century horology offered by Hutchinson-Scott (20% buyer’s premium) in Skipton, North Yorkshire, on May 23.

During an expedition to the wreck of the Titanic in 1996, a marine chronometer made by JW Ray, Liverpool, was recovered and brought ashore.

The complex precision electromechanical pendulum clocks made by William Hamilton-Shortt, engineer for the London & South Western Railway, and Frank Hope Jones, horologist of the Synchronome Company, were the most accurate pendulum clocks ever commercially produced.

For Paul Nunn, founder of antique clocks and barometers dealership Olde Time, the virtues of fairs and the internet have always been secondary to that of the physical shop.

A forthcoming exhibition of two private collections spotlights both the genius of 17th century clockmaking and the remarkable objects the market has yielded across a generation.

As a showpiece for horology, the 'Masterpiece' fair lives up to its name. For all its welcome focus on the cool of 21st century collecting, at its core the 'Masterpiece' fair is a high-quality antiques show in the tradition of the Grosvenor House fair it replaced.

An eight-day longcase clock is a stand-out item of local interest at the upcoming Arley Hall Antiques and Fine Art Fair.

Can any of your readers help with research into the obscure 17th century clockmaker William Banks?

Classic antiques from furniture and works of art to scientific instruments and a Roman marble torso all feature in Artcurial’s evening sale in its Paris rooms on May 16.