Catalogue - Antique Clocks and Barometers

A
JOHN GERRARD, LONDON
fine Queen Anne period ebony veneered table clock by this excellent
maker. The eight-day movement, which strikes the hours on a single
bell, has a verge escapement, short bob pendulum and pull quarter repeatwork
on three bells. There are two subsidiary dials at the top of the elaborately
engraved rectangular dial for strike/not strike and rise and fall, a design much
favoured by Thomas Tompion and Daniel Quare. The maker’s signature is
centred between the two subsidiary dials.
The dial has two winged cherub head corner spandrels and a chapter ring
with unusual flower half-hour markers. The date indicator is inset above VI
and there is a crescent shaped aperture for the false pendulum within the
finely matted dial centre.
The elaborate back plate is engraved with beautiful flower and foliate
scrolls and a well-executed wheatear border. The heart-shaped maker’s name
is set within a cartouche just below the centre and there is an elaborate
heart-shaped apron to cover the backcock.
The elegant case is constructed primarily in oak and veneered with ebony.
It has a shallow domed top with a knopped brass carrying handle. The ebony
case has a very distinctive bolection moulded front door which we had on
another clock by Charles Goode. (See Plate 40, Wetherfield Collection.)
Date: circa 1705–1715
Height: 15 in (38 cm)
* John Gerrard was active in London in the first quarter of the 18th century and
is listed on page 298 of Brian Loomes’s ‘Clockmakers of the World’. For an almost
identical clock by the same maker, see Plate 715 on page 483 of ‘Early English Clocks’
shown in the company of three Tompion table clocks.
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