Clocktime: Denton Hall Fromanteel Table Clock c1657, 02 Design

Ahasuerus Fromanteel - The Denton Hall Fromanteel square pillared, earliest pendulum-with-fusee and maintaining-power architectural table clock.
Join Dr John C Taylor OBE from the Clocktime digital museum as he discusses the design of the Denton Hall Fromanteel, circa 1657.
Discover more about early and antique clocks and watches...
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The first pendulum clocks tended to be just in simple boxes but this one has been put into a most beautiful case as you can see. It's got all the classical features, which were so popular about this period in the Restoration time. It's likely that this case was designed by Christopher Wren and it has all the details of a classical building. You've got the columns, which even have the entasis, the tapering of a classical building, the bases the Corinthian capitals, the finials, the swags. Capitals and the spandrels are beautifully made. They're cast brass, the capital here, the Corinthian capital, made by lost wax, so you can get all the interstices and the detail, whereas the spandrel here is probably a split mould. And then the hole is gilded by mercury gilding, where they dissolve the gold into the mercury, press it into the surface of the brass and then it's heated red hot to boil off the mercury. Hopefully, the clock maker not breathing it in, killing himself. So, part of the classical building is a finial and the most beautiful finials, the four on the corners and the one on the top but the little corner ones are flaming urn, classical finials, cast in brass and gilded in gold mercury, gilded and absolutely beautiful. And to show that this really was a pendulum clock, they have fitted a mock pendulum. It's not a true pendulum but it's an extension off the pendulum, so you can see the pendulum swinging backwards and forwards from the front to show it's a true pendulum clock. So, the result is a holistic whole. It's not the sum of its parts, which can be put together. It's been designed initially as a beautiful building and here it is with all the detail as I've described.