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Clock

  • Designer / Maker

    Designed and manufactured by Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy
    (1780-1854)

  • Detail

    Ormolu, bronze and black marble

    33.5 x 23 cm) x 12.5 cm

    English, 1808

  • Marked

    Vulliamy / London / No. 432.

  • Provenance

    Dr Henry Vaughan (1766–1844), purchased from Vulliamy in 1808; […]; Christie’s South Kensington, 26 October 1990, lot 67, bt Blairman; Sarofim Collection, 1990–95; sold Christie’s (London), 16 November 1995, lot 108, bt Ian Craft; sold Sotheby’s (London), 14 July 2010, lot 182, bt Blairman; Horace W. Brock

  • Literature

    Egyptomania: l’Egypte dans l’art occidental, 1730–1930, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1994, no.145, pp.246–7 (for an identical clock in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, sold by Vulliamy to Princess Mary on 5 June 1812 for 50 guineas (M.119:1 to 3–1966))

    H. Blairman & Sons, Regency Furniture and Works of Art, 2020 (online catalogue), no. 6

  • Collection

    Private Collection

  • Notes

    John Hawkins has identified Dr Vaughan as Sir Henry Halford, physician to George III, George IV, William IV and the young Queen Victoria. Vaughan, who changed his name when he was made a baronet in 1809, was also the recipient of the jewel-encrusted bust of George IV in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (see cat. no. 1, fig. 4).

    Roger Smith has identified the present clock in the earlier of Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy’s two surviving Clock Books, which has 467 entries; the British Horological Institute owns both books. The entry describes the same model as 414 (delivered in December 1807, untraced) and 438 (delivered in February 1808, now V&A, M.119:1 to 3–1966).