An important English ormolu musical and quarter chiming table clock, Thomas Wright and, Matthew Boulton, London and Birmingham, circa 1772

7-inch enamel dial with pierced steel hands, three train six-pillar fusee movement signed Thos.Wright London in a cartouche on the leaf engraved backplate, verge escapement, bell striking, chiming the quarters on six bells and playing one of four tunes at the hour, the 4¼-inch cylinder, pinned for the chime and the music, mounted across the backplate and driving sixteen hammers playing on eight bells, the rectangular Neo-Classical case surmounted by an ormolu urn with incomplete blue john socle, ewer finials above ram's mask corners and laurel garlands, the base with stylised leaf and fluted mouldings raised on a tortoiseshell veneered wood base, pierced and flower engraved back door 

 

Matthew Boulton, the greatest English metalworker of the 18^th century, was born in 1728. His father was in business making buttons, buckles and toys working from premises in the Snow Hill area of Birmingham. At the age of fourteen the young Matthew left school to begin working with his father. He married in 1749 and by 1750 had been taken into partnership by his father. The year 1759 was tumultuous for Mathew Boulton as it brought the death of both his father and his wife.

By 1760, however, he was expanding the business and had made a second marriage to his late wife’s younger sister, a union that proved to  be financially beneficial as the second Mrs Boulton became heiress to a considerable fortune. Needing larger premises and seeking a water mill as the driving force for his machinery he leased land at Handsworth, about two miles from Birmingham, which included with it Soho House and Soho Mill. While building a warehouse and workshops at Soho the business was still carried on at the old Snow Hill premises. Matthew Boulton  needed a partner who could help him with marketing the new products that he was intending to produce at the Soho factory. He was approached by John Fothergill in 1762 with proposals for a partnership and despite at first being  wary of committing himself, he entered into an agreement on Midsummers Day of that year.  The partnership lasted twenty years. It was not an easy relationship, but Fothergill brought mercantile experience and useful overseas contacts to the business.

Among the many products made in the new factory were gilded fittings for furniture, candlesticks, vases and other ornaments. At first clock cases were not part of the output, but  early in 1770 Boulton agreed to make a clock case for King George III. He may have discussed the design with Sir William Chambers, George III’s architect and tutor, at a breakfast meeting in February 1770. Boulton had written to his partner John Fothergill the previous evening that he would receive from Chambers `the King’s design which I will send down’. This may refer to the clock case or perhaps to a vase foot which had also been under discussion with the architect. It is certain that the clock case that was eventually made for the king was to a design by Sir William Chambers who may have been influenced by a sketch provided by the king. The clock case was to incorporate an urn and panels of blue john, an ornamental fluorspar unique to the Derby area, which Boulton had used to great effect on vases and urns produced at Soho.

The clock maker who was engaged to make the musical and quarter chiming movement was Thomas Wright, who held the title Clockmaker to the King. On the 5^th March 1770 Matthew Boulton had dinner with Thomas Wright possibly to discuss the clock.

After much delay and necessary adjustment to the case, the royal clock was completed and presented to the King and Queen Charlotte in April 1771.

Matthew Boulton, quick to seize a commercial opportunity, produced a second example of the `King’s clock’, which he planned to auction at James Christie’s sale room in Pall Mall, London, in 1771. He was, however, advised by his agent in London that this might bring the displeasure of the King down upon him and was persuaded to abandon the idea. He did produce at least one more similar case fitted with a clock movement by Eardley Norton, which today can be seen in the Courtauld Institute of Art, in Chambers’s architectural  masterpiece, Somerset House. This may be the clock that he had intended to include in the 1771 auction.

Shortly after completing the `King’s clock’ Matthew Boulton, encouraged by the success of this clock, set about making two complicated clocks. One of these clocks, known as the Geographical clock has a case which used the same moulds for several of the gilt mounts, including the urn finials with dolphin handles and ram’s mask corners with pendant garlands. The lower section of the Geographical Clock’s case is more substantial and rests on a tortoiseshell veneered plinth. The Geographical clock was completed in 1772 and offered for sale in April at Christie’s saleroom. It failed to sell.

The case of the present clock closely mirrors the Geographical clock case. There is no doubt that it was made at the same time. Unlike the Geographical clock the side panels are plain and the back door is beautifully pierced to allow the chiming mechanism to be heard. In place of the terrestrial globe and its supporting figures, the case of the present clock is surmounted by an ormolu urn raised on a blue john pedestal as on the `King’s clock’. The musical movement fitted to the royal clock was much altered by B.L.Vulliamy and others so that it no longer plays the quarters or the music. The present clock retains its original musical and quarter chiming movement with verge escapement  by Thomas Wright. The case is probably unique being a combination of the `King’s clock’ and the Geographical Clock. Soon after making the four clocks to the design of Sir William Chambers, Boulton moved on to other more Classical designs for his clocks cases and these later clocks, incorporating allegorical figures, are entirely different in conception.

Mathew Boulton, in an attempt to clear some of his unsold stock, engaged James Christie to sell a number of goods at a later auction in May 1778. Lot 74 was described in the catalogue as `An elegant eight day clock with chimes and quarters, the case of which is executed in ormolu and tortoiseshell from a design of Sir William Chambers’ . This is, in all probability, the present clock, since no other clock answering so closely to the catalogue description is known. The clock was unsold in the 1778 sale and may be identified with an entry in the inventory taken of Boulton and Fothergill’s stock in 1782. After that it slipped into obscurity until it reappeared recently when it was consigned for sale, having lain abandoned in the attics of a country house in Wiltshire.

Despite the dirt of centuries and some losses, the high quality of the castings and the rich gilding of the case can still be admired. The mechanism is complete and awaits only a clean before it will once again musically announce the quarter hours and play a  tune before striking the hour.

Matthew Boulton went on to even greater fame as a result of entering into partnership with James Watt in 1775 and providing the financial means whereby the latter’s newly invented steam engine could be made a commercial success. In 1788 Boulton erected a coining plant at Soho from which in 1797 he produced a new copper coinage. He died at Birmingham August 18^th 1809.

This note is based on the descriptions of Boulton’s businesses and of the clock cases produced at Soho in Nicholas Goodison’s Matthew Boulton:Ormolu (Christie’s Books Ltd 2002) in which the King’s clock, the second version of it now in the Courtauld Institute and the Geographical clock are all illustrated (see pp. 79-81, 201-215 and Plates 39,40, 155-164).

 

Thomas Wright, watch maker to the King, was Free of the Clockmakers' Company from1770 and is recorded as working at 6 The Poultry, although a surviving watch paper gives his address as No.13 The Poultry; he died in 1792 while on a visit to Birmingham, probably while visiting Matthew Boulton.

 

Our thanks are due to Sir Nicholas Goodison for his help and guidance in the preparation of this note.