Beschreibung:

An extremely rare Charles II diamond-shaped wall clock dial Ahasuerus Fromanteel London, circa 1660-5 The 6 inch square plate engraved with a five-petal rose over signature Aha. Fromanteel within an intense field of asymmetric flowering foliage incorporating tulips and other blooms to centre, within applied narrow Roman numeral chapter ring with stylised wheatear half hour markers and inner quarter track, the upper and lower spandrel areas applied with silver coloured metal mounts cast in relief with further foliate sprays, now with a vestigial scroll-pierced steel hand an mounted in a moulded ebony frame, overall width corner-to-corner 26.5cm (10.5ins). Ahasuerus Fromanteel was born in Norwich in 1607 and was apprenticed there to Jacques van Barton before moving to London in 1631 where he became a freeman of the Blacksmiths' Company. The following year he was admitted as a Free Brother to the newly formed Clockmakers' Company. Fromanteel initially worked from East Smithfield but by 1640 he had moved to the Parish of St. Mary's Whitechapel and then finally to St. Saviour's, Southwark by 1650. Fromanteel took many apprentices including three of his sons; John in 1654, Abraham in 1662 and Daniel in 1663 (not freed). As part of his apprenticeship John Fromanteel was sent to The Hague to work with Saloman Coster from whom he acquired the knowledge of the first pendulum clocks. Subsequently, in September 1658, Ahasuerus Fromanteel posted his now famous advert in Mercurius Politicus announcing the introduction of the pendulum clock to England. The first of these timepieces appear to have been spring-driven however the longcase clock was subsequently developed/introduced within a year. This sequence of rapid technological advancements can almost entirely be attributed to the Fromanteel workshop leading many to describe Ahasuerus Fromanteel as the 'father of English clockmaking'. Ahasuerus Fromanteel is believed to have left London in fear of the plague in around 1665, first travelling to Colchester, then onto Amsterdam where he set up in business in 1668. By 1676 Fromanteel was back in England (pesumably leaving the Amsterdam business in the hands of his sons John and Ahasuerus II) where he died in 1692/3 and was buried at St. Mary's Whitechapel on 31st January 1693. The current lot appears to belonged to one of a very rare group of domestic wall clocks with diamond-shaped dials as discussed by Bill Linnard in his three articles entitled Diamonds are Forever?, More Diamond Dials and Diamonds Galore published in the May 2005, April 2006 and April 2007 issues of the Horological Journal respectively. Linnard surveys thirteen other examples which he dates between circa 1670 and 1740. The earliest example he describes is a thirty-hour single-handed spring driven timepiece by John Wise of London which he dates to around 1670, with the next being the circa 1680 weight-driven alarm timepiece by Joseph Knibb illustrated in Dawson, Percy G., Drover, C.B. and Parkes, D.W. Early English Clocks on page 530 (plates 781-3). Other examples by Leading London makers such as Tompion (now cased as a table clock) and Samuel Watson are also discussed. The reason why these diamond shaped timepieces were made is not clear, they may have simply been following the tradition of lozenge-shaped dials for church clocks or perhaps they reflect a Continental influence as many German Renaissance monstrance clocks were made with lozenge-shaped dial surrounds (see Maurice, Klaus and Mayr, Otto THE CLOCKWORK UNIVERSE, German Clocks and Automata 1550-1650 page 206 for an example by Paulus Braun, Augsburg, circa 1600). The engraving to the centre of the current dial can be broadly compared to that seen on a hooded wall clock by Joseph Knibb of Oxford illustrated in Lee, Ronald A. The Knibb Family * Clockmakers on page 63 (plate 58). The provision of a winding hole (now filled/moved) would suggest that the original movement was most likely spring-driven and probably regu