Very Fine and Rare Chippendale Block- and Shell-Carved Mahogany Tall Case Clock, Newport, Rhode Island, Circa 1775

Please note that the finials may be of a later date.

This clock retains its original painted dial and an old surface. It has the English makers mark of “Wilson” cast in the intermediate plate between the movement and the dial. The clock is housed in a mahogany case made in Newport with a domed top, fluted colonnettes, a blocked shell-carved drawer, an applied base panel and ogee feet. A closely related Newport tall case clock with an unsigned painted dial and the same overall case design is in the collection of Yale University and illustrated in Edwin Battison and Patricia Kane, The American Clock, 1725-1865 (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society Limited, 1973),p. 158, no. 35.  Two other tall clocks with similar cases include one signed by John Townsend and dated 1793 illustrated in Morrison Heckscher, John Townsend: Newport Cabinetmaker (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), pp. 124-5, no. 22. and one illustrated in Michael Moses, Master Craftsmen of Newport (Tenafly, NJ: MMI Americana Press, 1984), p. 297, no. 7.21.