Fine and Rare Chippendale Walnut Tall Case Clock, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, works by William Huston, case attributed to Edward James or Nathaniel Downey, Circa 1770

Dorothy A. Quigley, Lock Haven, Pennsylvania;

Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York, January 31, 1970, lot 205;

Israel Sack, Inc., New York.

The movement of this clock was made by William Huston (ca. 1730-1791), a clockmaker working in Philadelphia from 1754 to 1791. He was born in circa 1730, the son of James Huston of Philadelphia and the brother of James Huston (b. 1721), a tavern keeper.¹ William advertised in the Middle Ward as a clockmaker between 1754 and 1777.² In 1767, he was identified as a watchmaker in the will of Peter McDowell, yeoman. In 1773, he took on George Dalton as an indentured servant. He and his brother, James, appeared on the 1769 Proprietary Tax for the Middle Ward. William’s tax was £43 12s and his brothers was £30. In 1774, William “c’lk ma’r” in the Middle Ward paid a Provincial Tax of £25 2s.³

In 1791, William predeceased his father, who noted in his will that “my trusty friends John Wood Watchmaker & John David Silversmith” were to rent his house and ground bounded by Second Street and Strawberry Alley and use the proceeds to support the children of his son until they reached maturity, at which time they were to sell the land and divide the proceeds among the children.⁴ William may have learned his trade from John Wood, who later bequeathed a house on Front Street, south of Chestnut, “which had been built by William Huston but sold by the Sheriff, to him.⁵

With its figured wood, arched pediment with carved rosettes, flame finials, pierced tympanum, colonettes, quarter columns and ogee bracket feet, the case is representative of the finest tall case clocks made in Philadelphia during the Colonial period. A tall case clock in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with works by William Huston is similarly housed in a case with the distinctive details of a boldly vertical scrolled pediment and ogee moldings above and below the door. ⁶  That clock also has a carved rather than pierced tympanum and a base panel with circular corners. Another clock with a Huston movement housed in a related case was sold at Sotheby Parke-Bernet, March 24, 1961, sale 2026, lot 127.

Two extant tall case clocks with William Huston movements are in cases labeled by their makers. One in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art is in a case labeled by Edward James (ca. 1730-1798), a Quaker cabinetmaker working on Swanson Street near Swedes Church in Philadelphia.⁷ Another example is in a case labeled by Nathaniel Dowdney (c. 1736-1771), who was working as a cabinetmaker on Third Street in Philadelphia from 1764-1770.⁸

This tall case clock was in the collection of Dorothy (Dorothea) A. Quigley (1887-1969), a prominent civic leader and antiques enthusiast of Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. She was active in the Woman Suffrage Association and elected chair of both the Clinton County Woman Suffrage Association and Congressional Districts 15 and 21 until the passage of women’s suffrage, which was ratified as the 19^th Amendment in Pennsylvania in June of 1919. She later served as director of the newly formed Pennsylvania League of Women Citizens (predecessor to the League of Women Voters). 

¹ Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia: Three Centuries of American Art (Philadelphia, 1976): p. 94.

² Brooks Palmer, The Book of American Clocks (New York: MacMillan Publishing, Co., 1928): p. 218.

³ Philadelphia Museum of Art, p. 94.

⁴ Cited in ibid, City Hall, Register of Wills, Will no. 46, 1791.

⁵ Cited in ibid, taken from George H. Eckhardt, Pennsylvania Clocks and Clockmakers (New York, 1955): p. 180.

⁶ Morrison Heckscher, American Furniture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1985): no. 199, pp. 307-309.

⁷ Philadelphia Museum of Art, no. 74, p. 94. Accession number 30-124-1. See also Alexandra Kirtley, American Furniture, 1650-1840: Highlights from the Philadelphia Museum of Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2020), no. 100, p. 127.

⁸ See Ruth Davidson, “Living with antiques,” The Magazine Antiques (March 1955): p. 236.