Research

Of mahogany with steel and porcelain mounts. The clock surmounted by an urn shaped finial with steel edging and foliate cameo roundels set on a stepped plinth edged with steel beading, the urn set on a pitched four sided top, centred to each side by an oval cameo with classical scene edged with a steel moulding, the top above a frieze set with foliate porcelain roundels centred with steel, the frieze above a steel gadroon undermould, the clock face within a steel border surrounded with cameos featuring classical scenes, the flanking cameos octagonal, the plain sides centred by an octagonal cameo, the face above a steel reeding frieze centred to each side by a circular cameo, the whole set on a plinth above a downswept moulding with steel bead edging, the plinth set with foliate porcelain roundels, the whole raised on four steel feet, each with moulded top above faceted and shaped stem on bun feet. Movement of a later date.

The present clock possibly combines the decorative talents of gifted 18th century artisans, namely Josiah Wedgwood and Mathew Boulton. Collaboration of this type occurred often; jasperware was mounted with cut-steel to make toys (the 18th century term for small, personal items) and furniture and decorative objects were mounted with jasperware. The neoclassic movement of the 18th and 19th centuries bore patrons of the arts with a taste dictated by antiquity, and the mounts of the present clock, its shape and finial, uphold this neoclassical ideal.

Visitors of the Grand Tour returned with sculptures, pictures, and furniture representative of their travels in Italy, and especially Rome. Casts and copies were promulgated, and books on classical design resulted in widespread scholarship. Wedgwood himself built a large library of these works and based his pottery on such masterpieces, and when he “made a design taken from the Farnese Hercules or the Venus de Medici he knew that his customers appreciated and were familiar with the original.”¹

As another consequence of the newborn interest in classical antiquity, Palladianism was established as the apotheosis of architectural design, viewed as being “in correct taste, because it could be seen to go directly back to an Augustan origin.”²  Homes subscribed to the Palladian ideal, and interiors were equally fitted. The great architect Robert Adam was responsible for many of these homes and for championing and classical ideal. Adam spent an extended Tour in Italy and, upon establishing his practice in England in 1758, began working in not only the classical Roman idiom, but that of ancient Greece.

Wedgwood was greatly influenced by Adam and the Etruscan style, going so far as to name his factory “Erturia.” He began interpreting those designs into pottery, at first directly using red figures in relief on black basalt background to simulate Etruscan vases. He later adapted the scheme to fall more in line with the Adam style, using chalky pastel colors on smaller, detailed plaques. “Architects and others used the jasper in every variety, both for internal and external purposes…[and] Wedgwood adapted his productions to the arts of the jeweler and the architect.”³

Though Wedgwood did produce large medallions, he set upon the market with smaller and more ornamental jasperware. His cameos and buttons, as they were called, were supplied for mounting to firms in Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Woodstock, the chief centers of cut-steel production. One Birmingham manufacturer of steel toys was the industrialist Matthew Boulton. Boulton was both friend and business rival of Josiah Wedgwood and he framed Wedgwood cameos in steel for sword-hilts, buckles, and jewelry at his Soho factory. Dr. Anthony North, former Assistant Curator for the Metalwork, Silver and Jewellery Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, has said of the present clock that “the mounts are clearly Wedgwood and Boulton…A compelling factor in attributing the actual clock to Soho is the Neoclassical form and the curious steel feet, which…are obviously Soho work.”⁴

In the late 1700s, Wedgwood’s pottery was adapted for the purpose of creating interesting furnishings; he produced a number of urns and vases with clock faces, as the fashion at the time was for fancy clocks of all forms, and “Wedgwood jasper decorations were used on some clocks in other media during the late eighteenth century.”⁵ Benjamin Vullimay, a Swiss watch and clock maker working in Britain, fitted several of his clocks with Wedgwood cameos. Vuillamy’s clocks did not utilize the same cut-steel frames, but could nevertheless employ up to a dozen craftsmen with different areas of specialization. It is interesting to note that one clock, while it lacks a Wedgwood plaque, maintains a similarly austere shape and is topped with a related urn finial (Figure 1). It is probable that the maker of the present clock moved in the same production circles as Wedgwood, Boulton, and Vulliamy.

Another related clock belongs to the Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery Joseph Collection (Figure 2). This table clock is decorated with cut-steel and blue Wedgwood medallions. The reliefs of the jasper medallions on the front of the Nottingham clock are also “classical in subject and the medallions on the side are of the same design as those at the bottom front corner of [the present] clock.”⁶ Similarities also extend to a strongly comparable clock face, urn-form finals and a plinth base resting on four cut-steel feet.

Footnotes:
1. Kelly, Alison. Decorative Wedgwood in Architecture and Furniture. London: Country Life Ltd., 1965. 17.
2. Ibid.
3. The property of Arthur Sanderson, Esq. Exhibited at the Museum of Science and Art, Edinburgh. A Catalogue of a Collection of Plaques, Medallions, Vases, Figures, &c., in Coloured Jasper and Basalte: Produced by Josiah Wedgwood, F.R.S., at Etruria, in the Country of Stafford 1760-1795. Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable University Press, 1901. 60-61.
4. Dr. Anthony North, former Assistant Curator for the Metalwork, Silver and Jewellery Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Letter to Carlton Hobbs Ltd. 25 March 2002. London.
5. Kelly. 111.
6. Pamela Wood, Keeper of Decorative Art, Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery. Letter of Carlton Hobbs Ltd. 11 December 2002. Nottingham.