A Dutch ebony Hague clock

Titel:
A Dutch ebony Hague clock

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PeriodBy Steven Tracy, Rotterdam, last quarter 17th centuryDescriptionThe black ebonised case surmounted by a split pediment stands on small ball feet, the black velvet face with an openwork dial with Roman numerals and Arabic second digits, signed on a silver shield ‘Steven Tracij, Rotterdam’, the face flanked by two half columns on a square pedestal, the mechanism with a verge escapement and a cord suspended pendulum, both the going train and the striking mechanism driven by a single spring in a barrel with two toothed wheels, the clock striking once on the half hour and the whole hour in full, regulated by a count wheel on the back, the separate alarm mechanism regulated by a disk on the dial mounted separately in the case, together with a later corresponding black wooden wall console.This ebony table clock by the Rotterdam clockmaker Steven Tracy (before 1650-1703) is one of the earliest pendulum clocks in the world. Tracy was a true pioneer, in the same spirit as his contemporary Huygens, and others like Reinier de Graaf and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Tracy is best known for creating a planetarium, the ‘Leidse Sphaera’, now on proud display at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave in Leiden. He was born in England and was active in Rotterdam from around 1671 onwards. The clock in our auction would probably have been made a few decades after the invention of the clock pendulum by Christiaan Huygens. An invention like this one was truly revolutionary; the result was a much more reliable clockwork and would set the standard for centuries. In 1657, Huygens obtained the patent for his invention and granted the production to Salomon Coster. Soon after that, this principle was copied throughout Europe.Dimensions32,5x23,5x12 cm