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Circa 1857
Sold
20½ inches high
A fine gilt-brass month-going tripod table timepiece retailed by Hunt & Roskell, London. DIAL The circular silvered dial has painted Roman chapters and delicate blued steel hands. It is signed by the retailer HUNT & ROSKELL LONDON above chapter XII and has a subsidiary seconds ring below XII within the symmetrically engraved centre which is engraved with delicate flower heads and scrolling foliage on a geometric hatched ground, the steel winding square below is set within a curved brass apron. MOVEMENT The movement comprising two individual sections, the lower section stamped on the backplate with Cole’s serial number 1437/49 and holding the spring barrel and centre wheel with five crossings, the upper section with shouldered backplate and carrying the remaining four wheels of the train terminating with a Vulliamy-type deadbeat escapement with typical gilt-metal sleeved pendulum terminating with a re-silvered spherical bob with milled rating nut below and sliding fine adjustment weight above, the movement and dial are secured to the front tripod legs by means of brass milled knobs, the top of the rear tripod leg is further stamped 1437/49, the circular stepped base is engraved with foliage and set with a semi-circular glazed barometer with silvered register scale and a blued steel hand, with mercury thermometer behind within a foliate engraved gilt frame, spring-loaded pendulum securing block sits behind the thermometer; the base resting on three adjustable gilt-metal leveling nuts; together with an early glass dome. Thomas Cole was born in 1800. He and his elder brother James Ferguson Cole were immensely talented clockmakers. After a brief partnership, which produced some outstanding complicated travelling clocks, the two brothers went their separate ways. By 1845 Thomas began making a very successful series of highly individual table and travelling clocks which greatly appealed to a rising class of wealthy nouveau riche Victorians. Literature • J.B. Hawkins, Thomas Cole & Victorian Clockmaking, A.C.C., 1975, pp.108-9, fig 37