Longcase clock with calendar

Longcase clock with calendar

Thomas Tompion

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This eight-day clock with anchor escapement and 11.4 seconds-beating pendulum is numbered 344. Although the seconds-beating long pendulum (approximately 39 inches in length) became standard for longcase clocks in the late seventeenth century, a few clockmakers experimented with longer pendulums. It proved remarkably difficult, however, to make them reliable, and only the best English clockmakers were successful. This example, measuring about 60 inches in length, produces a slow tick and necessitated a seconds dial with only four divisions of each five-minute interval. Tompion's fine workmanship and ingenious designs contributed greatly to the fame of English clockmaking. For another Tompion clock with an unusual movement, also in the Museum's collection, see 1999.48.2, known as the Graves Tompion.

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.