‘Delaware Clocks’ At The Biggs Museum Of American Art

Tall clock, Wilmington, Del., 1785–1799. Eight-day brass movement by Jonas Alrichs (1759–1802). Case probably by John Erwin (1727–1797) or possibly by James Erwin (working 1797–1799). Finials are replacements. "Jonas Alrichs/WILMINGTON” painted on dial. "ASHWIN & CO” stamped into false plate. Mahogany with hard pine, painted iron dial; 100 inches tall by 21¾ inches wide by 10¾ inches deep. Biggs Museum of American Art.

Furniture and machinery at the same time, tall case clocks are the work of many hands: movement maker, cabinetmaker and the engraver or painter of the dial. Tall clocks are kinetic sculpture and musical instruments. Their complexity has long captivated and, where scholarship is concerned, sometimes intimidated.

Thanks in part to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1845 poem, "The Old Clock on The Stairs," and Edward Lamson Henry's 1868 painting of the same name, grandfather clocks were prized by the first collectors of American antiques, who noted the anthropomorphic qualities of their "ticking" hearts. Sentimentalists associated the disappearance of the form with the passing of the colonial era.

Not surprisingly, early antiquarians wrote about clocks. In his Colonial Furniture of New England (1891), Hartford, Conn., collector Irving W. Lyon included a chapter on timepieces. Seven years later, the Historical Society of Delaware published Henry C. Conrad's Old Delaware Clockmakers, the basis for all subsequent studies of Delaware clocks.

"For whatever reasons, the few modest-size towns that grew up along the Delaware River supported clock-making communities responsible for producing remarkable examples of the craft. Many of these early clocks exhibit designs that are unique to the region," writes Zimmerman.

The Biggs Museum exhibition features nearly 20 clocks made in Delaware between 1740 and 1815. The 30 lenders and supporters of the Delaware clock project included Winterthur, Yale, the Historical Society of Delaware, Mr and Mrs Joseph Hennage, and Mr and Mrs Edward F. LaFond Jr.

Thomas Crow label, probably Wilmington, Del., late 1790s–1810s. "Thomas Crow / Watch & Clock Maker / At the Dial [illegible] 4hrs@28 37 / [illegible] / Makes & Sells Clocks & Repairs Watches / at a Reasonable Rate / NB Country Orders Carefully Exec [uted] / [illegible] hr as Clocks cleaned &rc.” Printed and written in ink on paper label and pasted on waist of door of a mahogany tall clock case with a painted iron dial. Private collection.

The Biggs Museum is housed on the second and third floors of a contemporary brick building on Dover's historic green. Dover was founded by William Penn in 1683 and has been Delaware's capital since 1777.

The museum was created by Sewell C. Biggs, a Middletown, Del., native who began collecting Delaware and Delaware Valley decorative arts and American representational painting in the 1930s. Biggs died in 2003 at age 88 while en route to New York City to preview the Americana Week auctions. The Biggs Museum opened in 1993.

In 2002, the museum published The Sewell C. Biggs Collection of American Art, a two-volume catalog. Zimmerman surveyed furniture in the collection, providing entries for six Delaware clocks.

"I was constrained by the format. Those six clocks told a much bigger story," recalls the Lancaster, Penn.-based independent scholar, who suggested that the treatment be expanded into the present catalog and exhibition.