AMSTERDAM LONGCASE CLOCK Pieter Klock Amsterdam Circa 1695 The Netherlands
M&R1
AMSTERDAM LONGCASE CLOCK
Signed: Pieter Klock Amsterdam
Circa 1695
The Netherlands
Movement
The weight-driven eight-day brass movement consists of a going, striking and alarm trains. The going train has an anchor escapement and seconds pendulum. The striking mechanism is controlled by a count wheel and sounds the hours and half hours on two bells of different pitch (Dutch striking). The clock has bolt and shutter maintaining power, which means that when the shutters are opened and the clock is wound, it continues to run because the centre wheel is temporarily driven by a spring mechanism via a bolt.
Dial
The 10.5 inch square brass dial plate is covered with velvet and has a silvered chapter ring with engraved and black lacquered Roman hour numerals, fleur-de-lys half hour markers, quarter hour, Arabic five-minute and minute divisions. The time is indicated by a very beautiful pair of pierced and engraved brass hands. Behind the hands is a silvered brass alarm disc with Arabic hour numerals and half-hour divisions. The date is indicated in an aperture above the VI, while a seconds ring is located below the XII. The two winding holes are placed at the level of the III and the IX. The maker has signed the chapter ring between the VII and the V Pieter Klock Amsterdam. The four corners are decorated with elaborate cast brass cherub-head spandrels.
Case
The burl amboyna-veneered oak case is embellished by ebony line inlays. The hood has evolved from a rising hood to a hood with a door. Both sides of the hood have silk-backed pierced sound frets to propagate the bell sound better. The door of the hood is flanked by two ebonised twist columns with bases and capitals. The rectangular trunk door has an ebonised mouldings, line inlays and an oval lenticle with an ebony surround. The case rests on four ebonised ball feet.
Duration: 1 week
Height: 205 cm.
Width: 46.5 cm.
Depth: 23.5 cm.
Literature
– H. Vehmeyer, Antieke uurwerken, een familieverzameling, p. 504.
– E. Morpurgo, Nederlandse klokken- en horlogemakers vanaf 1300, page 71.
– J. Zeeman, De Nederlandse staande klok, p. 469.
The maker:
Pieter Klok (also spelled Klock or Clock) was born in Uithoorn in 1665. He settled in Amsterdam before 1700. Initially he had his workshop on the Singel. On July 27, 1703, he lived in the Kalverstraat and in the same year he married Maria Kramer, also from Uithoorn. In 1704 he assessed a musical movement by Cornelis van den Bergh and confirmed that it met all the requirements. In 1716 the Amsterdam magistrate asked him to draw up a list of prominent clockmakers in the city, the so-called Derde Register van Goede Mannen (‘Third Register of Good Men’). Steven Huygens had compiled such a list in 1704 and 1710 in which Pieter Klock’s name appears. In addition to being a clockmaker, he was also an art dealer. An advertisement dated August 12, 1741, shows that his business (where his son Martinus was also employed at that time) was located in the Kalverstraat between the Osjesweg and the Heiligeweg. In 1742 Pieter Klock lived at his son’s. He died in 1744 in Amsterdam.