Longcase clock with calendar

Longcase clock with calendar

Daniel Delander

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Delander, a former journeyman in the workshop of Thomas Tompion, was another innovative clockmaker who contributed to the superb reputation of English horology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The eightday movement of this example has rack-and-snail striking and bolt-and shutter maintaining power. It has an unusual duplex escapement that was apparently invented by the clockmaker and used in a small number of his clocks. The maker of Delander’s distinctive case is unknown. One of several variants of the same model, this case has a number of features that are rare for the period: the chamfered corners of the base and hood, the hexagonal panel in the base, and the shape of the low broken-arch dial, which is repeated in the outline of the top of the door to the trunk. The dome at the top of the hood is a later addition, as are the finials.

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.