ARCHIBALD KNOX | A Monumental "Tudric" Wall Clock, Model No. 094

Titus Omega, London, 2010
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Liberty Pewter Sketch Book, Westminster City Archives, London, n.d., p. 56, no. 094
Stephen Martin, Archibald Knox, London, 1995, pp. 91, 238-239
Stephen Martin, Archibald Knox, London, 2001, p. 71
Paul Carter Robinson, 20^th Century Pewter: Art Nouveau to Modernism, Suffolk, 2012, p. 117, no. 2.3
Archibald Knox: Beauty and Modernity, a Designer Ahead of His Time, exh. cat., The Archibald Knox Society, London, 2014, p. 15 (for an example with fewer areas of inset abalone)

His only known wall clock, this design illustrates another aspect of Knox’s Celtic Revivalist proclivities.  Abstracted to an essential rounded triangular shape, its inspiration must have been the decorative swelling at the top of some of the most famous Manx standing crosses or, perhaps, the face-like forms of pre-Christian Celtic funerary masks made of beaten silver and gold.  While this clock design may be redolent of the ‘ancient’, Knox has created a startlingly modern object by way of abstraction.  It is defined and powerful, and at the same time very beautiful, decoratively enhanced by its lustrous pewter and the iridescence of its abalone plaques.

DR. STEPHEN A. MARTIN