The Art of Timekeeping: Shirley Slocombe, Percy Macquoid, and the William & Mary Grandfather Clock
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There is a particular quality of attention in the finest furniture scholarship — a willingness to look at an object not merely as a historical document but as a made thing, the product of hands and tools and the accumulated knowledge of a craft tradition. Percy Macquoid (1852–1925) possessed this quality in abundance. His four-volume A History of English Furniture, published between 1904 and 1908, remains the foundational scholarly work on the subject — a monument of Edwardian connoisseurship that combined archival research with an intimate knowledge of the objects themselves.
For the illustrations, Macquoid turned to Shirley Slocombe (1849–1923), one of the foremost draughtsmen of English antiques. Slocombe's drawings had a quality that photographs of the era could not match: the ability to render the surface qualities of marquetry, the grain of walnut, the proportions of a case clock, with a precision that was simultaneously scientific and aesthetic. His illustrations for The Age of Walnut — the second volume of Macquoid's history, covering the William and Mary and Queen Anne periods — are among the finest documents of English decorative arts ever produced.
The William and Mary Period
The reign of William III and Mary II (1689–1702) transformed English furniture. Dutch craftsmen arrived with the new monarchs, bringing with them the techniques of marquetry — the art of inlaying contrasting veneers to create decorative patterns — that would define the period's aesthetic. Walnut replaced oak as the primary cabinet wood. Case furniture grew taller and more architectural. The grandfather clock, or longcase clock, reached its first great flowering.
Slocombe's illustration for the front cover of this journal documents three landmark pieces of the period. At the left stands a grandfather clock with pale seaweed marquetry — once owned by Percy Macquoid himself, a measure of his personal investment in the objects he studied. At the right, a clock with rich dark marquetry from the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Between them, a walnut chair with a tall decorated back and a richly framed marquetry mirror complete a composition that reads as both a document of material culture and a study in decorative harmony.
The House of Quality: Commerce and Elegance
The back cover presents a different kind of document: a period trade advertisement from The House of Quality, c.1900–1910, cataloguing grandfather clocks by New Haven Clock Co., Waterbury Clock Co., and Ansonia Clock Co. — three of America's most celebrated clockmakers. Prices ranged from $84 to $110, an investment equivalent to some $3,000 today.
The advertisement is a remarkable document of Edwardian commercial art: its typographic confidence, its assumption that the reader would understand the significance of an eight-day weight-driven movement, its appeal to domestic elegance and social aspiration. The grandfather clock, it suggests, is not merely a timekeeper but a statement — of taste, of permanence, of the kind of home one keeps.
Together, the two covers form an uninterrupted meditation on the art of timekeeping: from the marquetry masterpieces of 17th-century London workshops to the weight-driven precision movements of Edwardian America. Two centuries of craft, two cultures of connoisseurship, united in a single full-wrap design.
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