Ive done a peice on this before so I wont go on. Its just that I finished the case and head restoration. I left most of its damage intact as it wasnt that bad. The case (not original – c1780) got a tidy up and a good coat of wax. The movement was fine so all it needed was a new pendulum spring and a service. I gave up on getting an original contemporary blued minute hand and left the broken one in place – I rather like it like that and its not as though I refer to it for the time although it keeps it nearly perfectly.
Grandfather clocks are just magnificent looking things and I like this clock because it shows us just how technically and artistically advanced we were 300 years ago. Its tempting to think we didnt really become decent engineers or merchants until the Victorian era but nothing could be further from the truth. When you look closely at a clock like this what you really see is the skills of the people who produced it from mathematics to material sciences – some of the laquer work and decoration on early clocks is breathtaking. Bear in mind these things were being produced for an export market pretty much from the time they were invented. If you want to know more about clocks from this period have a look at the Burpett article in this blog.
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