A table clock by Hans Gruber of Nuremberg

A table clock by Hans Gruber of Nuremberg

Engraved and fire-gilt brass with engraved and blackened silver, glass, iron hands, iron cogs. Day-running with hourly striking to a bronze bell in the roof lantern. Formed as a tower resting on a flat sockle and four lion's paw feet, flanked by four fluted columns and surmounted by a pierced gallery and a domed roof lantern with a figure of Minerva at its summit. The dial to the front amid foliate engravings with indices to mark the hours and a quarter-hour aperture below. The right side panel decorated with an engraved scene inscribed "VOM KVNG HISKA", from the life of King Hiskija. The panel can be removed via a spring mechanism to reveal a sundial and compass. The left panel engraved with a scene of the baptism of Christ to the outer and an allegory of Fortitudo to the inner side, also removable. The back panel engraved with foliage and a mascaron and signed to a banderole in the centre "Peter Hell Nürnberg". Marked two "HG" with crossed spades, dated 1573, to the base beneath the removable side panels. H 28.7, W 12.9, D 12.7 cm.
1573.

Provenance

Private collection, Lower Saxony; purchased from Chronometrie Beyer Zurich, 1980.

Literature

Maurice lists the only known table clocks by Gruber, kept in the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Württembergisches Landesmuseum in Stuttgart and the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich (Die deutsche Räderuhr, vol. II, Munich 1976, illus. 104 - 113, 127). Further works by Gruber in cat.: Die Welt als Uhr, Munich-Berlin 1980, no. 16 (from the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore) and no. 24 (Stuttgart, Württembergisches Landesmuseum).