A Queen Anne tortoiseshell and silver mounted bracket clock, by Peter Garon, London

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A Queen Anne tortoiseshell and silver mounted bracket clock, by Peter Garon, London. ( England 1710 )

Dimensions

21.00cm wide 33.00cm high 16.50cm deep (8.27 inches wide  12.99 inches high  6.50 inches deep)

Description / Expertise

Reference: 4470501
An early 18th century silver mounted tortoishell bracket clock, the case veneered in tortoiseshell on a red ground with a moulded cushion dome top surmounted by a heavy double S-scroll silver handle, the dome with superb silver mounts on all sides, depicting hawks’ heads amongst scrolling foliage, acanthus leaves and flowers, the front door with a shell sound fret to the top bar and silver grotesque mask escutcheons, standing on silver ring turned bun feet, the 6P-inch square gilt dial with a strike/silent lever, the chapter ring flanked by four silver crown and sceptre spandrels, with Roman hours with quarter division ring and half-hour markers, the Arabic minute numerals placed outside the minute ring with half-quarter crosses, the matted centre with a scroll engraved mock pendulum aperture signed ‘P. Garon, London’, the twin-fusee movement striking the hours and the pull quarter repeating on three further bells operated by a cord through the base, with a verge and crown wheel escapement with a mock pendulum showing through the dial, the backplate finely engraved with foliage surrounding an oval wheat ear cartouche signed ‘Peter Garon, London’.

English, circa 1710

Peter Garon was born to parents of French Huguenot extraction in circa 1673 and was apprenticed to Richard Baker from April 1687 until 1694, being described as ‘an alien and bound to R. Baker’. Garon was initially refused his freedom of the Clockmakers’ Company because he was deemed to be an illegally trained foreigner, but was compensated by being granted the Freedom of the City of London directly by the Lord Mayor. He was finally made a Freeman of the Clockmakers’ Company in August 1694.

Garon’s career appears to have been colourful at times: in October 1696 he admitted forging the name of Mr. Legrand on a watch of his own making, and in 1697 he was warned about taking unofficial apprentices, a practice which was very common at this time. He appears to have gone bankrupt at least once (as noted in the London Gazette on 31 October 1706) and was supposedly also insolvent in 1723.

In addition to some examples in the British Museum, a small number of silver mounted tortoiseshell table clocks by Garon, including one very similar to this item, are illustrated in Percy G. Dawson, C. B. Drover and D. W. Parkes, Early English Clocks, Woodbridge, 2003, plate 696.