New American Clock book......

dsredlin

Well-known member
If anyone is interested, I just noticed in the latest Antiques and Fine Art Magazine, Summer/Autumn2009, a new 376 page American clock book is available in September, through Hohmann Holdings, LLC.  Hard Cover is around $125.  The title is Timeless-Masterpiece American Brass Dial Clocks.  Article states it has over 500 color pictures of 100 of the very finest brass dial clocks from 1720-1785.  

Also available at:
http://www.nawccstore.org/ViewProduct.asp?ModelNumber=00321

Thanks,
Dave
(I have no affiliation with the magazine)
 
Has anyone actually seen this book?  We are doing a Chippendale brass dial clock at Olde Mill this year, so I have a lot of interest in the topic.  But at $125 I would want to hear that it is worth it from a woodworker's standpoint.

Thanks,
Tom
 
    I just received the book recently, and I have not had time to read much in it, yet.   Some of the topics covered are as follows: clocks and society, the business of clockmaking in 18th century America, clocks and clock shops, clock cases, accuracy of colonial time keeping, and a comparison of 10 clock movements.  There are photos of about 100 clocks with an overall view of the clock and a close up of the hood as well as biographies of the clockmakers.  The main reason I ordered the book was to hopefuly get close up photos of the carving.  About a third of the photos are good, a third fair, and a third poor.  This was a disappointment.  However, they now have a website where you can access all of the photos in the book plus a few more.  Being able to enlarge the photos is wonderful.  Go to hohmann3.com and click on the Wintherthur link.  Just bring up the photo you want and click on it to enlarge.  I  am puting the finish on a Phil. clock now.  I wish I could have had the book and website before I began this piece.  It would have been a great help.  This isn't much of a review, but maybe it will be of some aid.  One other note.  There is no mention of any restoration or repairs.

Kirk
   

 
I just received my copy yesterday.  My initial reaction was the picture quality was not what I expected.  Many photos are very dark which hides detail.  The book write-up mentioned "high resolution digital photography".  I wonder if the printer in China just did a poor job.  On many pictures you can't read the engravings on the dial faces.  At $125, I'm not sure I would have bought it had I known the pictures were available - very high quality - on-line.  But I do think the text portion of the book will be very interesting, and I only spent five minutes looking the book over.

Olde Mill just finished a class on the "Nusrala" clock - number 53 in the book.  It would have been great to have the on-line photos for the class.  They are much clearer than from the auction catalogue.  David Lindow visited the class to show clock set-up, and he thought the book was fantastic.  After meeting him and seeing his clock works I am looking forward to reading about the actual clock mechanisms in the book.  He mentioned that they only printed 1200 copies of the book (or was it 2400?).  In any case this is likely to be a book which will only have one printing and if you want it, now would be the time to buy it.  I imagine most of the folks in the class have ordered theirs by now.

Tom
 
I went to the hohmann3.com page and clicked on the Wintherthur link. Gorgeous pictures is an understatement. I went to the Wintherthur home page and tried to thread my way back to the clocks page through their menu system, impossible. Does anyone know of any other links into the back roads of the Wintherthur site for similar photographs of furniture?

Bob
 
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