Victorian Mahogany Long-Case Clock with Painted Dial

• Victorian Period - The Victorian period of furniture and decorative arts design covers the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901. There was not one dominant style of furniture in the Victorian period. Designers used and modified many historical styles such as Gothic, Tudor, Elizabethan, English Rococo, Neoclassical and others, although use of some styles, such as English Rococo and Gothic tended to dominate the furniture manufacture of the period.
  
  The Victorian period was preceded by the Regency and William IV periods, and followed by the Edwardian period, named for Edward VII (1841 ? 1910) who was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India for the brief period from 1901 until his death in 1910.
• Movement - The technical name for the workings of a clock or watch, and does not include the dial or case.
• Rosewood - A dense timber that varies in shade to very light brown to almost black. When rosewood is cut and sanded the colour of the timber will turn black, and after polishing and exposure to daylight, the surface will gradually lighten over time to light brown with black streaks.
  
  The name comes from the odour emanating from the timber when it is planed, sanded or cut.
  
  Rosewood was very popular for use in Victorian furniture in the second half of the 19th century, and at that time most of the rosewood was imported from Brazil. However it also grows in India and Indonesia.
  
  It is used in the sold for chairs and table legs, but for carcase furniture such as side cabinets and bookcases, and for table tops it is always used as a veneer.
• Date Aperture - A date aperture is a cut out section in the face of a watch or clock, displaying the day of the month.
• Moon Dial - If we imagine life in the 17th century, the only source of ascertaining the time of day or night would have been the local church or municipal clock striking every quarter hour, and able to be heard by all in the village. In England, when longcase clocks became popular and more affordable in the late 17th century, the function of timekeeping and source of time was moved to within the home.
  
  An additional feature on some longcase clocks was to display the phases of the moon, that is the new moon, the full moon and the waning moon over the lunar 29 ½ day cycle. This information was important for farmers for working out cropping schedules; for travellers to know the amount of moonlight on a night they planned to travel; and for those who lived near the sea required knowledge of the tides.
  
  Where included, the moon dial is usually in the form of a disc incorporated into the main dial plate, usually in the arched top section. The lunar cycle starts with the new moon displaying, which is a dark night sky and no man-in-the-moon face being displayed, and then progresses to the full moon face showing on the 15th day of the lunar cycle, and back to no face displaying as the moon wanes. Most lunar dials are partially concealed on each side of their opening in the main dial plate by semi-circular "humps" that allow the painted face to emerge slowly just as the real moon goes out of and back into the earth's shadow.
  
  Nowadays, details of the lunar cycle is published in diaries, almanacs, and newspapers and although some modern longcase clocks are still manufactured with working moon dials, they are more for decoration than for use.
• Mahogany - Mahogany is a dense, close grained red-coloured timber from the West Indies and Central America. It was first imported into Europe in the the early 18th century and its use continued through the 19th century. It was popular for furniture making because of its strength, the wide boards available, the distinctive grain on some boards, termed flame mahogany and the rich warm colour of the timber when it was polished.. The "flame" was produced where a limb grew out from the trunk of the tree, and this timber was usually sliced into veneers for feature panels on doors, backs and cornices.
  
  Some terms used to describe mahogany relate to the country from which it originally came, such as "Cuban" mahogany, "Honduras" mahogany etc. However unless the wood has been tested the names assigned are more a selling feature, rather than a true indication of the timber's origin.

This item has been included into following indexes:

• clocks, grandfather / longcase, period or age - 19th century, mahogany cased 76