The BBC “History Of The World In A Hundred Objects” series recently cited some of John Harrison’s significant horological inventions. None is more significant though than his work with maritime chronometers, devices that literally revolutionised the science of navigation at sea. The Comitti Grasshopper clock is a faithful reproduction of one of Harrisons more exotic chronometers but the BBC series focused on the historic time keeping device that was kept aboard HMS Beagle and accompanied Darwin on his epic voyages.
The BBC has recently broadcast a series of historical documentaries on Radio 4 entitled History of The World in One Hundred Objects. The series attempts to define the inventions or artifacts that have had a marked effect on the development of society, the evolution of science / engineering and ultimately defined aspects of modern life today. Obviously, the clock and time keeping is a very important aspect of this and a number of John Harrison’s inventions and patents have been cited in the documentary.
This is an interesting article about his Precision Pendulum Clock that became a vital time reference instrument, which played a significant role in maritime time keeping and navigation. In some ways it was a little like the base time atomic clocks of today.
An example of the pre-owned wristwatches currently available from Prestons of Bolton. The Patek Philippe Gondola Serata ladies watch is set with over 100 diamonds in a white gold casing with mother of pearl face. You can see the website entry here pre-owned Patek
Patek is a very distinguished name and one of the oldest Swiss watchmaking firms but probably not quite as well known as other prestige names such as Rolex and Longines. Prestons of Bolton are a major stockist for Rolex and also supply new watches by all of the other luxury brands. Over the coming months the pre-owned wristwatches collection is expected to grow exponentially and there are likely to be many interesting and highly collectable timepieces available for purchase at reduced prices.
For many years Prestons of Bolton (a well known jewelers in the northwest UK) have been renowned for their exquisite range of high prestige wristwatches. Prestons is the most significant Rolex dealer in the North but now they have also moved into the pre-owned high value wristwatch market. A new page has appeared on the website where you can see some of the magnificent and often highly collectable pre-owned watches that are currently available in store. Many of course, are available with substantial discounts!
Comitti has had many delighted customers over the years and we thought we would include a few of the testimonials written for us by customers who have had so much pleasure from their Comitti purchases.
Many of our correspondents describe how their clocks have provided a source of enchantment and interest. The comforting presence of a grandfather or grandmother clock is a theme that comes up fairly often too. "Our Kensington gradfather clock arrived last week. It is absolutely beautiful! The mahogany pillars with brass caps I had requested are exactly how I wished them to be! He is now a British/Texan Clock. Very special indeed! We will always treasure him! To you and everyone there, all our thanks! When we go by London we will come visit you." Ana Morcate, Texas, USA
"It is very seldom that I write to a company thanking them for their service, but you compel me to act. My Trafalgar mahogany grandfather clock is absolutely perfect. I am over the moon. I only have praise for the person who installed it, very proficient and dedicated. Ever since 1950 I always wanted a grandfather clock and now I have one. Thank you very much for this splendid product." Mr Salter, Surrey, UK
"This is to acknowledge the return of my clock. Your service is very much appreciated and it is very pleasant to find a company that still believes in good customer service and I would have no hesitation, in the future, of recoomending your clocks." R Cowx, Kent, UK
"I telephoned recently regarding a replacement key for a mantel clock. This has now been received and I would like to thank you very much for your kind attention and assistance in this matter. It is reassuring to receive service such as this, which is most certainly a welcome change." G West, Surrey, UK
"Just wanted you all to know how much I enjoy my grandfather clock which arrived today. It is the Admiral Nelson grandfather clock and is beautiful." Joan Quigley, Massachusetts, USA
"We just wanted to convey our delight with our beautiful grandmother clock which was delivered and set up yesterday. I have always wanted to own a grandmother clock and it is everything I hoped it would be-and much more! It looks magnificent in its position in our hallway-in fact it looks as if it has been made especially for that particular space-and I just want to keep looking at it and listening to the chime! The skill of the craftsmen who made it is evident and I would be grateful if you could pass on our thanks and appreciation to them." Mrs Tyson, Berkshire, UK
Just a handful of the many encouraging testimonials that we have received recently. Comitti are grateful for your feedback as we are a small and dedicated company and it is always interesting to know what our customers feel, and of course, we are always delighted to hear stories about how much pleasure our lovingly hand crafted clocks have brought into peoples lives.
Here is an interesting site dedicated to antique British railway clocks. Some of the designs have strong similarities to the Comitti Victorian Wall Clock and others. Railway clocks are particularly popular with collectors and thematic designers not to mention railway enthusiasts and heritage railway organisations. You can see that many of the clocks employ a particularly robust design with very interesting and often quite stout hands to complement heavy and bold face markings; these also include 24 hour scales. The site has clocks from all of the major pre-nationalisation companies along with early British Railways designs.
This is an animation of the Comitti Congreve clock, another popular and well known specialty model from the makers of the equally notable Grasshopper.
The clock is based on a design by William Congreve c1808, a very popular concept clock with a curiosity value revered by collectors through the ages. The solid brass ball rolls along specially constructed guide channels on a tilted plate where it then triggers an escapement which in turn tilts the plate in the opposite direction sending the ball back to the other end of the channel and again triggering the escapement thus reversing the process once more.
The function of the clock manifests an engaging delineation of the passing of time as a physical process of momentum. The Victorians were particularly keen on machines or mechanical devices that employed novel systems or appeared to describe, measure, or define the magical, divine or simple processes of time and nature, this was a time when the barometer, music boxes and all manner of automata became popular household novelty items.
The Congreve clock actually pre-dates the Victorian era by more than 20 years and many of the innovations that came to be synonymous with the industrial age though it is a highly advanced piece of mechanical engineering. The cycle and regulation of the clock is determined by very complex calculations which take into account the mass, diameter and velocity of the rolling ball and part of this is a function of the angle of the sloping plate, the length of the guide track and radius of the bends in it. The passage of the ball from one end of the track to the other takes approximately 15 seconds. The essential appearance of the clock gives an impression that it is somehow in a state of perpetual motion with only gravity and the potential energy of the ball as a driving force but this can not be possible as another form of energy is required to lift the plate and the ball at each end of its travel. The main driving force for this clock is a large wound coil spring and this provides the lifting energy for the plate which is then transferred to the ball that in turn operates the escapement mechanism.
please visit the Comitti website for more information on the Congreve clock and other traditional grandfather clocks, table top and wall clocks.
Here is an impressive piece of work created by our new graphics junior, it shows an overview of the movement action of Comitti’s famous Grasshopper clock. This is based on a photo that has been used on both the Comitti site and some of our printed literature designed by the folks at the Gate.
The original form of this clock (an 18th Century design by John Harrison) can be seen at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. The animation demonstrates the movement of the double pendulums which were cleverly designed to counteract perturbations that can arise from changing orientation of the clock itself as would happen on board a ship. Our designer has applied the same animation technique to other specialty clocks by Comitti and we will feature those here in the coming days.
The Sheraton Stick Barometer by Comitti of London.
Many people may already know that Comitti is one of a very small number of companies in the UK that manufacture traditional barometers. In fact, you could count these companies on the fingers on one hand. Barometer making has been a significant craft in Britain for nearly 350 years and ties in with that perennial British obsession --- the weather! This in turn has its roots in traditions arising from our status as an island based nation of seafarers. Barometers were first manufactured for maritime use and employed in both land based and sea going contexts, they gave seafarers a huge advantage as a knowledge of likely and impending weather conditions was so vital in the age of sailing ships.
Now after nearly 350 years the survival of the British craft of barometer making is once again facing a serious threat thanks to ongoing EU legislation on the use of mercury in non-medical instrumentation.
Traditional barometers rely on mercury which is used in the measuring tubes for both temperature and atmospheric pressure. The more sophisticated and scientifically orientated barometers may also contain a wet bulb hygrometer for measuring relative humidity; this is another component that makes use of a small amount of mercury. but later aneroid types with a dial dispaly also use small amounts of mercury for the high accuracy thermometer component. The aneroid barometer will be most familiar to the majority of people. We will keep all interested parties informed through our website, this blog and also the Comitti Face Book page.
Comitti have just released a new version of the well know Grasshopper chronometer clock. This highly crafted and intricate time piece now comes with a base finished in Chinoiserie, a style of finish that invokes the feel of ancient Chinese decorations. Chinoiserie is in fact, a uniquely European style that is more a caricature of the traditional Chinese style, a romantic interpretation that appears to meld the oriental with a well established fondness for chintz in 18th century Europe. The Chinoiserie range is very popular and Comitti also make a wide range of table top (bell top) clocks replicating Georgian clock designs in Chinoiserie.
According to a recent BBC business news item there has been something of a resurgence of interest in wristwatches with mechanical movements, this in turn has increased the need for more craftsmen (and women) equipped with the unique time honoured skills required for precision watch and clock making. The increased need for specialist craftsman to service mechanical watch movements has also come about as a result of increased ownership of high value prestige time pieces by Rolex and Breitling etc , a legacy of more economically buoyant times. The maintenance of these exquisite and highly intricate watches requires considerable skill as some, especially those with chronograph and chime movements, involve levels of mechanical intricacy that are close to the limit of human dexterity.
The British School of watchmaking based in Manchester is now a rapidly growing institution that provides a comprehensive training in the full range of watchmaking crafts and skills, obviously considerable dexterity and patience is a prerequisite for any budding watchmaker and it is necessary for students to be able to work at the micron scale --- eventually. The schools training program starts at the big end so to speak, ‘big’ here means fractions of a millimetre but even at this scale the level of dexterity and concentration required is beyond many of us.
For more info have a look at the WOSTEP website and / or listen to the BBC in Business piece below.
I just found this on youtube and thought it was a little quirky, the clock movement is steam powered and a series of steam whistles take the place of more conventional chimes. These clocks are very rare though there are other examples across the world. All were designed by the Canadian horologist Raymond Saunders.
The comitti flickr site has been a little dormant for the last few months but hopefully we will be able to upload some new images quite soon. This photo shows an artist hand painting the faceplate of a longcase clock. It is an age old tradition to decorate the face surround of longcase or grandfather clocks and the method is more specifically known as Japanning. Illustrations depicting an idea of time passing were very common with day to night motifs being particularly popular. The idea of time and the temporal cycle of life also ties in with patterns of celestial activity and the celestial connection with time was another common theme in clock face decoration. Anthropomorphic sun and moon iconography featured strongly and some clocks had beautiful sun – moon ‘flags’ that passed through cutouts in the face as the time passed from day to night and vice versa. Our painter is illustrating this face with a nautical theme which is a little more novel but not uncommon in clocks specifically intended for nautical institutions. Many old clocks intended for industrial or company use had their faces hand painted with logos or other relevant details and many of these are exceptionally collectible. Large numbers of specialist and ornately decorated clocks were manufactured for the railways and shipboard use with major lines.
Starting our YouTube with a simple video, (well a still with sound track) of the Georgian break arch clock in chinoiserie. We hope to include more material in the coming weeks and some of this may give an insight into our range of crafts and manufacturing processes. Many of the crafts employed by Comitti are now exceptionally rare and highly specialised, often requiring considerable artistic talent and skill. Chinoiserie along with marquetry and ornate cabinet making are significant crafts at Comitti. We also employ the skills of highly creative metal workers who’s abilities are not only essential to the manufacture of traditional clock movements but also our range of specialty clocks with all moving parts on display, essentially constituting an artistic statement in mechanical form.
Comitti may be well known for their extensive experience in the production of more tradition clock designs and mechanisms but did you know that they also make a range of unique specialty clocks? The Grasshopper clock is a particularly interesting example, this exquisite clock is rhodium plated and based on a reciprocating mass concept employed in the first marine chronometers designed by John Harrison (1693 - 1776). It is a very reliable and robust design as befitting shipboard chronometers and more immune to changing orientation than a single pendulum clock.
This is a new blog for all those interested in horology or clocks, clock making and especially the collection of antique or reproduction clocks. We have a particular interest in Comitti Clocks of London, a very well established clockmaker that continues to produce the most exquisite longcase (grandfather) clocks, mantle, shelf and wall clocks, many of which follow design patterns that are more than 250 years old. Comitti is committed to sourcing and retaining a wide range of associated skills in marquetry, chinoiserie, carpentry and cabinet making and the most skilled craftspeople in these fields have contributed significantly to the ageless or rather ‘timeless’ production quality of the Comitti range of clocks.
Over the coming weeks we will publish a range of stories, links and articles which you may find interesting or useful. These will include news items or other interesting articles from Comitti themselves.
