Calendar with clock, gilt copper, German, dated 1667

Rectangular, of gilded copper, a small circular clock face (and its movement) at the top now missing and replaced with a circle of paper. In the centre a ring engraved with the months and times of the rising and setting of the sun. Around this, a ring engraved with saints' days and, in the upper section of this, days of the week.
Around this and concentric with it, a ring engraved with twelve roundels each containing a figure or figures emblematic of the activities associated with the month. That emblematic of December (a woman warming her hands over a candle) is dated 1667. In the upper part of this ring, the plate is pierced with an aperture showing a ring engraved with days of the month and phases of the moon.
In each of the four spandrels a figure emblematic of the elements: fire (Jupiter), water (Neptune), earth (Demeter), air (a god or goddess to be identified).
Within a cartouche cut in the lower part of the plate, a plaque of silvered copper, engraved with the date 1667 against a hatched ground.
Along the upper and lower border of the plate, the signs of the zodiac.
The rings engraved with the phases of the moon and the days of the month were originally geared to the mechanism that operated the clock and were turned by it.

Allegorical figure of a woman representing December

Given by Dr W.L. Hildburgh FSA

This is one of five clocks or parts of clocks given by Dr L. Hildburgh FSA. Dr Hildburgh had an endearing habit of giving the museum presents at Christmas and on his own birthday. Dr Hildburgh bought boxwood carvings, Spanish silver, the interiors of the Northumberland House Glass Drawing Room; and when he died bequeathed the rest of his collection.

The German towns of Augsburg and Nuremberg dominated production in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, although towards the end of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) in 1645, there were only seven master clockmakers left in Augsburg. T. Garzoni wrote in La Piazza Universale di tutte le professioni del mondo, Venice, 1595, 'a great number of German craftsmen exel in the art of horology and all the best and the most precise timekeepers actually come from Germany'. In about 1600 Fynes Moryson wrote that 'touching manuall arts, the Dutch are a people more industrious then the Germans and excell them in all arts and trades ..however, I must confess that the Germans of Nurenberg in those parts are esteemed the best workman for clockes and some like things. Fynes Moryson, Itinerary (ed. C.Hughes), London, 1903.

A gilt-copper calendar from a clock (now missing) dated 1667, South German. The calendar includes the twelve months, the signs of the zodiac, the Four Elements, the phases of the moon and the rising and setting of the sun.

M.23-1952