Table or bracket clock

Table or bracket clock

Edward East

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Trained as a goldsmith, Edward East was a founding member of the London Clockmakers’ Company (1631). A rival of the Fromanteels both in business and politics, East, a royalist, was appointed clockmaker in 1660 to the newly restored Charles II. Like the Fromanteels he quickly recognized the importance to timekeeping of the Huygens pendulum, but East was not a part of their Anglo-Dutch Protestant circle. The relatively plain wooden case of this clock owes much to the design of the first Dutch pendulum clocks and marks it as an early product of the new technology of clockmaking in England. The movement, with its characteristically heavy brass plates, was greatly modified by later owners; at some unknown time it was reconverted from an anchor escapement to a historically correct verge. It is spring driven, with a duration of a single day, and strikes the hours on a single bell. The case has been newly returned to something approaching its original simplicity.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Table or bracket clockTable or bracket clockTable or bracket clockTable or bracket clockTable or bracket clock

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.