Rhode Island Furniture Archive - Yale University Art Gallery

Photo: Courtesy Skinner, Inc., Boston and Marlborough, Mass. Click the image to enlarge	Tall case clock
	Object number RIF4217
	Maker Casemaker Unknown Clockmaker Squire Millerd, 1749?1820 Alternate name(s): Squire Millard
	Dimensions Height: 83 in. (210.82 cm) Height, brass dial: 12 in. (30.48 cm)
	Date 1770–77
	Current location The Rhode Island Historical Society
	Geography Made in Warwick, Rhode Island (view a map of Rhode Island)
	Medium Cherry
	Marks "Squire / Millerd / Warwick," engraved in arch
	Inscriptions Unknown
	Style Chippendale
	Provenance Probably Silas Clapp (1717–1777), Warwick, Rhode Island; probably by descent to his son John Clapp (1754–1817) and his wife Ann Waterman (1748–1844), Warwick, Rhode Island; probably by descent to their son Waterman Clapp (1788–1884) and his wife, Eliza Woodward (1793–1826), Providence and Warwick, Rhode Island; by descent to two of their daughters, Marcy Stafford Waterman Clapp (1821 - 1913) and Mary Magdalene Greene Clapp (1825 - 1919), Warwick, Rhode Island; by descent to their niece Eliza Woodward Tiffany (1858–1934) and her husband Frank E. Olds (1866 - 1956), Cranston and Providence, Rhode Island; by descent to Eliza’s cousin Ellen Louise Clapp (1856–1938) and her husband Charles Henry Allen (1844–1922), East Greenwich, Rhode Island; by descent to their son Howard Vernon Allen (1878–1969) and his wife Alice Whitford Butts Allen (1883–1944), Warwick and East Greenwich, Rhode Island; by descent to their son Vernon Sterns Allen (1906–1983), East Greenwich, Rhode Island; by descent to his wife, Ruth Curtis Allen (1908 - 1995), East Greenwich, Rhode Island; consigned to Christie Mercurio & Company, Wickford, Rhode Island, May 18, 1991. Skinner, Boston and Bolton, Massachusetts (sale held Bolton), November 1–2, 2008, lot 318; Stanley Weiss Collection, Providence, Rhode Island, 2010; gift to Rhode Island Historical Society, Providence, 2019
	Associated names Silas Clapp John Clapp Ann Waterman Clapp Waterman Clapp Marcy Stafford Waterman Clapp Mary Magdalene Greene Clapp Frank E. Olds Ellen Louise Clapp Allen Charles Henry Allen Howard Vernon Allen Alice Whitford Butts Allen Vernon Sterns Allen Ruth Curtis Allen Christie Mercurio and Company Skinner, Inc. The Stanley Weiss Collection
	Notes This clock may be the one recorded in the 1777 inventory of Silas Clapp of Warwick, Rhode Island. That clock passed to his grandson, Waterman Clapp, and was running in his house in the late nineteenth century. According to family tradition, it had purchased with the proceeds of the sale of an ox named "Golden." When the clock struck, a servant in the family was known to say "Old 'Golden' roars." Source: Ebenezer Clapp, The Clapp Memorial: Record of the Clapp Family in America (Boston: David Clapp and Sons, 1876), 289, 291, through the courtesy of A. Patnaude.
	See also RIF637 RIF2053 RIF2713 RIF3807 RIF5439 RIF5845 RIF6340
	Bibliography Benjamin H. Smith The Times of the Rhode Island Historical Society (Fall 2019): n.p., ill. Skinner, Inc., Boston, American Furniture and Decorative Arts, sale cat. (November 1–2, 2008), 147, lot 318, ill. David Hewett, "Skinner Holds Pre-Election Sale of Americana," Maine Antique Digest (January 2009): 7–D, ill. "Chippendale Cherry Tall Clock," http://www.tildenthurber.com/stanleyweiss/pages/items10/sw01056r.html (accessed August 27, 2010). 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), 112n22, 423n1. Stanley Weiss and Brock Jobe, Fine American Antiques in the Stanley Weiss Collection (Providence, R.I.: The Stanley Weiss Collection, 2019), 29, sw01056, ill.