James Condliff, Liverpool

Circa 1870

Sold

Height with dome 15½ inches

A very fine skeleton clock with passing strike. Type: Series Three DIAL With a narrow silvered chapter ring with Roman numerals and outer minute track and blued steel Breguet-style hands. FRAME With a rectangular brass base supported on ball feet and raised on a mahogany-veneered oval plinth containing the hour gong and with bun feet. The front of the base is applied with a silvered oval plaque engraved James Condliff LIVERPOOL. The delicate scrolling frame has six slender pillars secured by blued steel screws to the front and pinned at the rear. MOVEMENT The movement has a single spring barrel with an oversized great wheel with six crossing; the wheel train all have five crossings including the escape wheel which has a deadbeat escapement with the original pendulum and glass dome. This is a typical, but very original example of one of Condliff’s third series skeleton clocks. Characteristic features are the employment of a going barrel with great wheel with an even larger diameter than even the chapter ring. The scroll frame retains its lovely delicacy and the chapter ring is very narrow to match the frame’s slender appearance. The rectangular platform base with ball feet is essentially the same as the second series and the oval base is almost identical and in this instance it contains the hour gong – a rarified example as most third series timepieces do not have passing strike.