Important Collectors’ Wristwatches Po...

Geneva, Hotel Des Bergues, Oct 21, 1995

LOT 13

Joseph Knibb, London, circa 1690 Extremely rare eight-day duration night-clock with silent escapement.

CHF 60,000 - 80,000

Sold: CHF 57,500

C. Contemporary style ebony veneered oak with double stage moulded pelmet (a replacement without provision for smoke evacuation), barley twist pillars and gilt bronze mounts. D. Gilt brass finely engraved in perspective with columns and vertical floral decoration, painted in the centre with scene of two riders dismounted in a landscape standing beside their horses and with dog; arched slot above to show the hour numeral transit against quarter hour indications engraved above, the hour numerals pierced on a blue ground and flanked by cavorting cherubs. M. Rectangular, brass, full plate, fully enclosed; turned banded pillars, horizontal verge escapement with steel pallet arm and pendulum rod, pallets restored, fusee and wire line replacing the original gut. Signed on the dial "Joseph Knibb Londini fecit". Dim. 52 x 39.5 x 22 cm. In very good condition.


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Notes

Provenance: from the collection of H. Alan Lloyd, the noted collector and horological writer. Sold Sotheby's by Lloyd's widow 2 December 1974, lot 33 Note: Illustrated in H. Alan Lloyd, A Collector's Dictionary of Clocks and Watches, London, pp 134-5, fif. 354. Only three other night-clocks by Knibb are known, and the dials of ail of them were engraved and painted by the saine bands as worked on the present example. For details concerning them see see R.A. Lee, The Knibb Family Clockmakers, London, 1964, pp 151-53. P. Dawson, C.B. Drover & D. Parkes, Early English Clocks, Woodbridge, 1982, pp 516-7. h1 his book, Chats on old Clocks, London, 1951, pp 178-9 Lloyd, discussing night Clocks wrote '...one by Knibb lias burned regularly every night in the author's bedroom for the past fifteen years, including the night when his house received a direct hit in 1940, when beyond stopping around 3 am and going out it suffered no damage at ail. The marvel was that it did not seem pârticularly dusty inside when everything else was smothered.'