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Photo: Courtesy Winterthur Museum and Country Estate, Del., Photo by Laszlo Bodo
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Dwarf case clock

Object number

RIF782

Maker

Maker Unknown
Clockmaker Thomas Claggett, ca. 1730?1797

Dimensions

Height: 61 in. (154.94 cm) Width, cornice: 13 7/8 in. (35.243 cm) Width, shaft: 9 in. (22.86 cm) Width, pedestal: 11 5/8 in. (29.528 cm) Width, feet: 14 1/2 in. (36.83 cm) Depth, cornice: 7 3/4 in. (19.685 cm) Depth, shaft: 5 1/2 in. (13.97 cm) Depth, pedestal: 6 7/8 in. (17.463 cm) Depth, feet: 8 in. (20.32 cm) Dial, less lunette: 7 × 7 in. (17.78 × 17.78 cm)

Date

1755–65

Current location

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Geography

Made in Newport, Rhode Island
(view a map of Rhode Island)

Medium

Mahogany (primary); white pine (hood top and back and seat board); spruce (backboard)

Marks

"Thomas / Claggett / Newport," engraved on boss in dial arch

Inscriptions

Scratched on backs of cupid spandrels: "II, III, V, VI, X"

Style

Chippendale

Provenance

George S. Palmer (1855–1934), New London, Connecticut; sold to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1918

Associated names

George Smith Palmer

See also

Bibliography

Charles O. Cornelius, Early American Furniture (New York: Century Co., 1926), pl. 31.
Bernice B. Osburn and Burl N. Osburn, Measured Drawings of Early American Furniture (Milwaukee, Wisc.: Bruce Publishing Company, 1926), 63–65, ill. and measured drawings.
Brooks Palmer, The Book of American Clocks (New York: MacMillan Company, 1928), pl. 17.
Verna Cook Salomonsky, Masterpieces of Furniture Design (Michigan: Periodical Publishing Co., 1931), pl. 101 (measured drawings).
Wallace Nutting, The Clock Book (Garden City, N.Y.: Garden City Publishing Co., 1935), no. 75.
Brooks Palmer, The Book of American Clocks (New York: MacMillan Company, 1950), no. 17.
Wallace Nutting, Furniture Treasury (New York: MacMillan Company, 1963), no. 3244, ill.
Herbert F. Schiffer and Peter B. Schiffer, Miniature Antique Furniture (Wynnewood, Pa.: Livingston Publishing Co., 1972), 138–139, ill. p.144.
William H. Distin and Robert Bishop, The American Clock: A Comprehensive Pictorial Survey, 1723–1900: With a Listing of 6153 Clockmakers (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1976), 81, fig. 160.
Richard L. Champlin, "Thomas Claggett: Silversmith, Swordsman, Clockmaker," Bulletin of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, Inc. 21, no. 2 (April 1979): 172.
Morrison H. Heckscher, American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Late Colonial Period, The Queen Anne and Chippendale Styles (New York: Random House, 1985), 292–94, no. 189, ill.
Patricia E. Kane et al., Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650–1830, exh. cat. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2016), 297n2.
Donald L. Fennimore and Frank L. Hohmann III, Claggett: Newport's Illustrious Clockmakers (Winterthur, Del.: Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library, 2018), 218–21, 247, no. 22, TC-2, ill.