Daniel Quare - Red turtleshell and ormolu hour-striking horizontal table clock with alarm and quarter repeat.
Join Dr John C Taylor OBE from the Clocktime digital museum as he discusses the case of Quare’s Red Turtleshell Table Clock, circa 1700.
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The fret here is the most beautiful pierced and engraved fret and it's remarkable that it's survived for over 300 years, that somebody hasn't pushed their fingers through it because it's very delicate and as you can see in the detail beautifully made. These cast feet at the base of the octagonal corners are absolutely beautiful castings and then gilded and here we are looking as fresh as the day that they were made, 300 years later. Similarly, with these lovely corner mounts, very, very detailed, very, very fine castings of the finest quality, which are matched by the frets here, which you can see are pierced and engraved. Incredibly fine, delicate, it's a wonder that they've survived all over these years but it makes a beautiful detail of this fantastic little clock. Here you've got the wonderful fret set off against a woven background of cloth to let the sound from the bell out but the detail and imagine sawing this out with a fret saw, one stroke in the wrong direction and you've ruined the whole thing. It's quite remarkable to think that all that was sawn out by hand and then engraved or it may more likely it was engraved first and then the design sawn out. The fret on the III and the IX side has these wonderful scrolling fronds coming out from the central fan in the centre of the base here, making this beautiful design symmetrical around the fan in the base. The mounts on the octagonal corners here are beautiful floral garlands hanging down in a beautiful design and again the detail of the casting and the finishing is spectacularly beautiful. It's difficult to say very much about these feet at all, they speak for themselves with these wonderful scrolls and the flower ornaments, all blending together to make a holistic design, incorporating all the different features. And yet it looks beautiful and the castings have the detail to show off the leaves here and that the whole thing is just quality. The ornamentation is typical continental who liked the ormolu gold plating and the red tortoiseshell much more to the taste on the continent too than those in England and the British Isles. So, it probably was made to a continental order all those 300 years ago and what a job it was what a beautiful little clock.