Keeping Time for a Queen

[@BlackCatMargie]

Thank you! A rabbit hole for me to dive down. What beautiful pieces of art they are!

[@laurenbee6340]

Wow, those are absolutely stunning. I had no idea about the status symbol of clocks so thank you for sharing.

[@theclassicso8094]

His creations look extraordinary. I didn't know of this man. Thank you.⏲🕤

[@cindyrobinson3077]

Those clocks are beautiful ❤️

[@Robin-g7q5d]

I never gave a thought that clocks were not commonplace.

[@eveywrens]

The pocket watch is gorgeous! Just wondering if any of Newsam's sundials can be seen at historic sites. Also, didn't Henry VIII give Anne Boleyn a clock as a wedding gift? (Newsam wasn't born or was a baby.) I recall seeing photos of it. Such a gift has more significance than I originally thought. Another fascinating video!

[@idgriffin56]

Incredible

[@susan9498]

I wonder how many people knew how to read a clock back then?

[@octavianpopescu4776]

People living in towns and cities must have known, since tower clocks existed in England for around 3 centuries at that point (apparently since the 1200s). Some cathedrals had them. Miniaturization was the novelty, but not the technology itself. Hampton Court Palace, Henry VIII's palace, has a large clock, built at the time, in the 1500s, so whoever spent time there likely saw it and knew how to read it.

[@octavianpopescu4776]

I actually did wonder about this. Thank you for the video! 🙂 I remember reading about Jane Grey and Katherine Parr and there were lists of items they had. And clocks stood out to me, because they seemed to have an unusual amount of them. If I recall correctly, some clocks were among the items Jane requested to be brought to her in the short time she was Queen. I thought Jane and Katherine must have had some fascination with the way clocks worked and they seemed to have been quite popular gifts at the time. It's interesting thinking of them being curious about technology and wondering about the future. Did people back then think of us like we think of them? Across time? There were some Sci-Fi-ish writings (e.g. Thomas More's Utopia). There were people like Leonardo da Vinci or Copernicus advancing science and starting what would be known as the Scientific Revolution. So I can't help but wonder if they looked at the inner workings of clocks and envisioned a world where a lot of things would run apparently by themselves, like clocks did? Like cars or computers, i.e. things working without any animal or human providing the needed power. Clocks must have been a technological wonder. Ships with sails or mills were like that, but clocks are the only example of miniaturized technology, reduced from large tower clocks to something you could hold in your hand.

[@eveywrens]

@@octavianpopescu4776 Poetic musings! I enjoyed your comment very much!

[@Pauline-wu4ej]

I think church bells helped people with no time pieces.

[@Odanti]

I agree. Church was the time piece for the people. The church had to tell people to come to mass. I loved hearing Claire's church bells in her past videos! I'm sure Claire always knew what time it was. LOL ❤️🙏❤️

[@octavianpopescu4776]

Yes and people didn't live on the clock as we do today. We're much more obsessed with what time it is and what we need to do at what time than they were back then. This is especially the result of the Industrial Revolution. They would have been more attentive to dawn, dusk or noon as markers of the general time. But they wouldn't have been as careful about the precise minutes. In fact, early clocks didn't even have a minute arm thingy (not sure what it's called in English). In a sense, they were more leisurely about their day.