Striking Beauties: American Shelf Clocks and Timepieces

This exhibition features 16 examples of American bracket, shelf and table clocks designed for use in the home and made between 1775 and 1850. Satisfying —and stimulating —consumers’ demand for inexpensive, accurate timekeeping devices, clockmakers experimented with scaled-down, weight-driven movements housed in decorative cases. Clock-making tools from the Dominy family workshop of East Hampton, New York, including a mechanical wheel-cutting engine, illustrate historic hand skills and equipment. Innovative patented clocks and timepieces produced by members of the Simon Willard family and Eli Terry family as well as a this unusual diamond shaped wall clock by Jabez Baldwin showcase the range and refinement of forms produced during the young nation’s early decades. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.