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At first glance, it is simply a tall clock, crafted circa 1815, of graceful, familiar mahogany. But the longer you stand before this Rhode Island rocking-ship example, the more it behaves like a kind of visual riddle, offering detail after detail with the quiet confidence of something made to be studied, not merely used. Its surface is alive with inlay: tulips repeated in alternating arrangements, bands of cross-banding, and a line of minute square inserts so small and exacting they seem less installed than drawn with a pen. Time, too, has done its part, settling into the old finish and leaving behind a warm patina.
The case rises on four gracefully flared French feet above a double-drop apron, a refined base treatment that signals the cabinetmaker’s ambition. The lower panel is framed in layers, tulip borders, mahogany cross-banding, and a thread of tiny squares, before arriving at a central field of select crotch mahogany whose grain blooms outward in symmetrical, sweeping lines. Above, a cove molding transitions into the waist, where the rectangular door is bordered with applied molding and cross-banded mahogany, its inner edge again marked by the minute square inlay. Fluted quarter columns occupy the corners, stopped halfway with fine inlay and finished with brass quarter capitals. Beneath them, honey-colored birch-veneer panels glow against the darker casework, their frames accented with yet another tulip band.
The bonnet, in the traditional fretwork style, is topped with three brass finials mounted on inlaid plinths. Its panels are outlined with the same decorative vocabulary, horizontal tulips, vertical stringing, and contrasting woods, while the turned columns are themselves inlaid and set into brass Doric capitals. The arched bonnet door, veneered in figured mahogany, is framed on both its inner and outer edges with the tulip inlay, a flourish that feels both rare and quietly extravagant.
And then there is the dial, where the clock unveils its most theatrical feature: an automated rocking ship in the arch, moving side to side with the pendulum. In the lunette, an American masted ship sails along a coastline marked by stone towers. The corners are filled with oval medallions, gold floral ornament on red, surrounded by lace-like patterns. The pierced steel hands are finely and uniquely shaped.
Inside, the movement is weight-driven, eight-day, and fitted with a rack-and-snail strike that sounds the hours on a bell. But perhaps the most moving detail is hidden behind the waist door, where generations of Rhode Island repairmen left their pencil record: cleaned in 1869, purchased in 1871 from “Misses” Sally Eddy of Warren for $50, then tended again in 1897, 1902, 1912, re-corded in 1913, and cleaned once more in 1934. It is, in its way, a second dial, marking not minutes, but the long life of an object that has been watched, wound, and preserved for more than two centuries.
Dimensions: Height 8' 1", Width 21", Depth 10.5"
Inventory 226013
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