Clock

Stations, signal boxes and offices all depended on accurate timekeepers and just about every Victorian railway company commissioned clocks.

A fine late 17th century ebony veneered quarter repeating table timepiece by the father of English clockmaking, Thomas Tompion, leads Bonhams’ Fine Clocks sale in London on June 22.

This Victorian gilt-brass month-going tripod clock by Thomas Cole is engraved with a dedication dated July 6, 1861, from the Marchioness of Anglesey as a birthday present to her husband, the 2nd Marquess of Anglesey.

Among the works of art on sale at Hampel in Munich on March 25-26 is a so-called Pendule au Manège from the early 19th century.

Salerooms seize the chance as traditional dedicated auctions fade away in London

The latest Clocks & Watches sale at Gardiner Houlgate (20% buyer’s premium) in Corsham, near Bath, was topped at £16,000 by this large iron two-train turret clock movement by Thomas Cooke (1807-68) of York. The estimate was £1000-2000.

A 16th century German weight-driven turret wall clock is offered as a prime example of Renaissance horology at New Orleans gallery MS Rau’s exhibition 'Time Across Time: Clocks and the Art of Timekeeping'.

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

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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