Clocks

A recent sale at Veilinghuis de Jager (35% buyer’s premium) in Goes, Zeeland, the Netherlands, included a musical table clock signed for the London royal clockmaker John Ellicott (1706-72).

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.

Estimated at £150-200, this Georgian dial clock stormed to £4800 at Charterhouse (25% buyer’s premium) in Sherborne. Two collectors made much of the bidding.

The maxim that major names and top quality will always sell was underlined in the biannual specialist clocks sale at Dreweatts (25% buyer’s premium).

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

In his day, Johann Heinrich von Dannecker was one of the most prominent German Neoclassical sculptors. He was born as the son of a stable-hand to the Duke of Württemberg, but went on to become the duke’s court sculptor.

Results from two salerooms including an £18,000 longcase reflect strong demand

For centuries, China was a rewarding market for European clock and watchmakers who created extravagant timepieces for their Oriental clientele.

Estimated at just £1000-1500, this late-17th century walnut eight-day longcase clock sold via thesaleroom.com for £11,000 at Elstob & Elstob (22% buyer’s premium) in Ripon.

This monumental English longcase clock sold in a Massachusetts auction is a remarkable exercise in antiquarianism.

Battered and dust-engrained when found in a basement during a Lake District house clearance, an early unsigned brass lantern clock generated great excitement at Penrith Farmers’ & Kidd’s (18% buyer’s premium).

“A fabulous example of how an auctioneer can sell these collections so successfully outside of London,” said Dreweatts’ (25% buyer’s premium) managing director Jonathan Pratt in the wake of Donnington Priory’s latest auction of European furniture and works of art.

Fancy committing to abstaining from “gaming, drinking, fornication” for a whole seven years?

MADAM – Reading about the unfortunate theft of a Handley & Moore bracket clock from the shop of Patrick Sandberg on Kensington Church Street on February 3 (ATG No 2429) reminded me of the clock (pictured below) that had sadly been stolen from my parents’ home in Burford, Oxfordshire, in 1984.

Falling short of ambitious hopes but leading the day at Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) first sale of 2020 was a fine English Golden Age longcase clock.