The Chandos Delander | Circa 1715
A unique George I silver-mounted, month-going equation and year calendar longcase clock with duplex escapement by Daniel Delander, London.
Height: 8 feet 7 inches (2616 mm).
Case: The case possibly designed by the architect, James Gibbs (1682-1754), with an oak carcass veneered in ebonised fruitwood, the breakarch hood with five (replacement) gilt- metal urn finials on wood plinths, the front angles with substantial gilt brass columns over integral foliate scroll, canted pedestals, the breakarch side panels set with elaborate gilt-metal frets, the dial door composed of a heavy cast shaped gilt brass bezel frame having a breakarch top and concave lower corners conforming to the similarly shaped, concave throat moulding, the trunk with canted front angles, the rectangular door with related gilt brass moulded frame and two raised, shaped panels with wood mouldings, the shallow-breakfront base set with a rectangular panel over a double- skirted foot, raised on boldly modelled gilt brass scroll feet.
Dial: Conforming gilt brass moulded frame to the 13 inch (330 mm) wide dial plate secured by four latched feet, the plate and frame shape conforming to the hinged gilt brass bezel on the hood, the breakarch top set with a spherical moon with mechanically operated shutters to indicate phase, the concave-sided lower section set with a sector engraved with concentric calendars for Sun’s Place (in the Zodiac), times of Sun’s Rising and Setting, Sun’s Right Ascension, Sun’s Declination, and days of month, all within a chamfered silver frame below the maker’s signature plate Delander LONDON, ivory plate spandrels (originally painted to represent the Sciences) enclosing the silvered Roman and Arabic chapter ring with fleur-de-lys half-hour and lozenge half-quarter marks, enclosing an upper subsidiary ring for seconds numbered for every 6 seconds below XII and a lower subsidiary above VI for lunar calendar, calibrated 1-29, enclosing a concentric equation of time ring, the matted centre overlaid with cast and pierced silver decoration of lambrequins and floral festoons below solid reserves engraved (left)Tempus aequale, et inequale horologio hoc indicator, and (right) Differentia est aequatio temporaria Flamstedy; replacement blued-steel hands.
Duration: One month.
Movement: The rectangular, heavy-gauge plates secured by six pinned finned baluster pillars, the 5- wheel trains reversed, hour strike via inside rack on bell above, with the equation cam mounted on the frontplate, and double-wheel duplex escapement having a large escape wheel on the backplate and smaller (replaced) internal pin escape wheel, the whole secured to the baseboard by 3 latched brass brackets at the base of the plates.
Escapement: Delander’s duplex.
Strike Type: Inside rack hour strike.
Provenance:
• Documented as made for James Bridges, 1st Duke of Chandos (1673-1744), probably for his out-of-London country seat, Cannons House, Enfield, Middlesex (now outer NW Greater London); the subject of counter-suits in the Court of Requests in 1722 between Delander and the duke over non-payment; subsequently sold by lottery by order of the court.
• James Cox (c.1723-1800), of Shoe Lane, London, jeweller, mechanical clock, watch and ‘toy’ maker, famed for automata destined for the Oriental market; sold at his sale by Benjamin Lucas, auctioneer, May 1765.
• Sotheby’s London, 9 Oct. 1989, lot 303, sold to R A Lee.
• Christie’s London, 11 Dec. 2002, lot 80 sold for £214,882.
Literature:
• Antiquarian Horology, Dec. 2020, Evans & McBroom, ‘The Chandos Delander’, p.521- 530. The rediscovered provenance.
Searches by Jeremy Evans and Anne McBroon in the Burney Newspaper Collection of the British Library have enabled the reconstruction of the present Delander clock’s provenance, as follows:
First, a May 1765 advert for auction of ‘the Stock and Effects of Mr James Cox, of Shoe Lane, jeweller’ announced the sale would include ‘a most curious astronomical clock, that goes a month, made by Delander’.
Two further newspaper reports of the sale give additional particulars of the clock, which can be conflated to read as follows:
The clock was made by Mr Daniel Delander for his Grace the late Duke of Chandois and was afterwards put up for raffle, at the Court of Requests, to fifty subscribers, at ten guineas each. It goes a month. It shows equal and apparent Time by different minute hands, the Sun’s Place in the Ecliptic, Rising and Setting, Declination, right Ascension, and Amplitude, the Day of the Month, the Age of the Moon and her Phases, and the Time of High Water.
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