Raffety & Walwyn

Dimensions

  50.00cm high   19.00cm deep (  19.69 inches high  7.48 inches deep)

Description

A fine and exceedingly rare mahogany “banjo” or “teardrop” weight driven wall Timepiece.

The case with slide off hood with well-turned wood bezel is strung with boxwood to the edges of the beautifully proportioned trunk. The door is veneered with mahogany of rich colour and superb flame figuring.

The white iron dial, 15 inches in diameter, has Roman hours and Arabic outside 5 minutes. The style of the signature written tightly around the centre arbor is unique in our experience. The hands are of blued steel, the hour and minute pierced and with the rare feature of a centre seconds hand. Timepiece movement of 8 days duration and with what may well be the original winding crank.

Provenance

*In the standard work on the county, ‘Norfolk & Norwich Clocks & Clockmakers’ by Clifford and Yvonne Bird, they note only that Baillie refers to a late 18th century “inn clock” by Campin and that Robert Noel-Hill had recorded a longcase by him. They also illustrate and briefly describe two nearly identical Norwich clocks, one by Henry Brittan, the other by John Nevill, both having been sold by us in 1998 and 1985. The current example is in fact only the third of these remarkable clocks that we have been able to offer in some 40 years, all probably made within some 10 to 15 years at the end of the 18th century. Could one cabinetmaker have been responsible for all three cases?