Traveling clock watch with alarm

Traveling clock watch with alarm

Thomas Tompion

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This movement represents an early, short-lived experiment: the newly invented balance spring. Tompion omitted a fusee—a cone-shaped device used to even out the force in the timekeeping mechanism as the spring unwinds. His fine workmanship, the ingeniousness of his designs, and the greatly improved accuracy of his timepieces contributed vastly to the fame of English clockmaking in his lifetime. Nathaniel Delander was one of Tompion’s favored casemakers.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.