Time to treasure traditional craft

Press, 10 August 1982, Page 18

Time to treasure traditional craft

Collecting with

Myrtle Duff

In the foyer of a public building recently I overheard a schoolboy asking the time. A busy receptionist, coping with telephone switchboard and other enquiries, pointed to the clock on the wall above her. “Oh," said the boy. "I don’t understand that. We only have digital at our house.” I am sure the boy’s reply was prompted by pride in the modernity of his home and was not due. to. his inability to tell the time in the traditional way, but I felt a sudden chilling of the spine as I realised that yet another craft, centuries old and requiring precise skills acquired only through long years of diligent' practice, was about to be swept away by this electronic age. Accurate measurement of time, so much taken for granted today, is usually considered to have been born at the moment when Galileo watched a lamp swinging in the Cathedral of Pisa and was inspired to design a pendulum clock. This was in 1582, but his ever-active mind so filled his days with new ideas and attempts to record or practise them that when he died in 1642 only the design for the clock existed. He had never been able to spare the time to make one. Before this there had been clocks of various kinds, the most successful being the weight-driven ones which were extremely advanced mechanical devices. One of these was recorded in use at Westminster Palace as early as 1288 and at Canterbury in 1292. The oldest surviving example in England was in constant use at Salisbury Cathedral from

1386 until 1884. These were not so accurate as the later pendulum clocks and required frequent adjustment. If is quite impossible to

say with any certainty just who did make the first clock operated by the swinging pendulum, but most historians accord this honour to a Dutchman. Christian Huygens, who succeeded in making sucha clock in 1656. Following his success. Huygens made three visits to London where he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He persuaded a number of craftsmen of Dutch descent then resident in England to return with

him to Holland to study the new clocks. Two of these men. Ahaseurus Fromteel and his son John,. later returned to London, and in 1658 were able to advertise for sale “the new kind of clocks that go exact and keep equaller time than any- now made.” At about the same time as the British settlement of New Zealand, the clockmakers of England were being recognised as among the best in the world; their products

surpassed in quality even those of the great continental craftsmen. The first immigrant ships and the many which followed brought some settlers who could afford such luxuries as gilded carriage clocks, mantel clocks of oak, ebony, brass or marble, and even some grandfather clocks. Fine examples of all these may be found by any keen collector. Some of the gentlemen settlers also brought with

them treasured hand-crafted watches and their ladies often had similar but smaller watches suspended from long gold chains and tucked in to a waistband or pocket. For the ordinary working immigrant family it was perhaps fortunate that the century which produced the very finest British handmade time-pieces also saw the beginning in the United States of the age of massproduced articles of all kinds.

Along with innumerable other objects pouring from the factories of the time came clocks and watches, efficient, pleasing to the eye and within the reach of people at all income levels. As the years passed and the immigrants became the first generation of European New Zealanders it was usually an American clock which graced the parlour or, perhaps more frequently, the kitchen mantelpiece above the wood or coal fired range. As the family prospered it was also likely to be an American watch which hung from a chain across father's chest on dress-up occasions. The earliest import clocks for sale to the colonists were often the lovely wooden cased Connecticut clocks. There were various shapes — Gothic, Round Gothic and Acorn being among the most popular. I think the kitchen clock most commmonly available today in second-hand shops and sales is the widely-used New York Ansonia, which must have been reasonably inexpensive. They have rather tall carved wood (usually walnut) frames with ornamented glass fronts and were in common use well into the twentieth century. There is therefore, quite an interest-

ing variety of clocks available in New Zealand for those who prefer a connection with local history.

Examples of the rare and beautiful from other places and earlier ages are also offered from time to time in antique shops and auction sales.

Today we seldom ask to know by what particular method our watch keeps us informed Of the passing hours, but there was a time when prospective watch buyers gave much consideration to this matter. A catalogue issued by one Chicago firm in 1883 illustrated several gold watch cases each of unusual design, which could be fitted with “movements of the buyer’s choice.” Just one day without one's wrist watch brings home forcibly its near indispensability today. .

It is interesting to note that long before the days of battery driven or mechanically operated watches, people had felt the need for

portable time recorders. In 1938 when the tomb of Archbishop Alphege was opened at Garth Monastery in Canterbury, a little silver sundial on a golden chain was found. He must have been wearing it when he was murdered bv the Danes in 1012. , '

Just a few days ago I was shown another small, portable sundial in the possession of a Christchurch collector. This one. a pocket equatorial dial is illustrated for you.

They were used from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Not much bigger than a pocket watch, it has an g 232 equatorial ring, a pin gnomon and includes a compass. I understand that boyscouts in the United States have a portable sundial especially manufactured for them. So all may not be lost. If the sundial can survive in the United States in the age of the computer there is still hope for the survival of the watchmaker’s craft.