Christie of London Gothic Oak Bracket Clock

• Fusee - The fusee movement was used in clocks and pocket watches from the mid 17th century. The fusee is a cone shaped drum within the works that is linked to the barrel of the spring, usually by a length of chain.
  
  As the mainspring loses its tension over time, the cone shaped barrel compensates for this by increasing the tension, by pulling the mainspring tighter, thus ensuring the time remains constant.
  
  Use of the fusee in clocks was superseded by the "going barrel" in the mid 19th century and for pocket watches at the beginning of the 19th century.
  
  The fusee continued to be used in marine chronometers until the 1970s.
• Movement - The technical name for the workings of a clock or watch, and does not include the dial or case.
• Oak - Native to Europe and England, oak has been used for joinery, furniture and building since the beginning of the medieval civilisation. It is a pale yellow in colour when freshly cut and darkens with age to a mid brown colour.
  
  Oak as a furniture timber was superceded by walnut in the 17th century, and in the 18th century by mahogany,
  
  Semi-fossilised bog oak is black in colour, and is found in peat bogs where the trees have fallen and been preserved from decay by the bog. It is used for jewellery and small carved trinkets.
  
  Pollard oak is taken from an oak that has been regularly pollarded, that is the upper branches have been removed at the top of the trunk, result that new branches would appear, and over time the top would become ball-like. . When harvested and sawn, the timber displays a continuous surface of knotty circles. The timber was scarce and expensive and was used in more expensive pieces of furniture in the Regency and Victorian periods.
• Pugin - Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, (1812-52) was an architect and designer and leader of the Gothic Revival movement which was so important an influence on Victorian taste. His father had an architectural drawing school, and artists from that school, including Pugin, then 15 years old, were employed to make drawings of the furniture to be taken to Windsor palace. Later in the year he was employed to design and make working drawings of furniture for the palace. He also designed silver for the royal goldsmiths Rundell Bridge & Rundell. By the 1830s he was insisting on historical accuracy, and published a number of influential books on the Gothic style. He was responsible for furniture in the Houses of Parliament (1836-7) the design of the tower that houses Big Ben. He became a Catholic in 1833, and he and his son Edward Welby Pugin (1834-75) designed and built several churches. In his short life, he married three times. After his death Pugin's two sons, Edward Welby Pugin and Peter Paul Pugin, continued operating their father's architectural firm under the name Pugin & Pugin.

This item has been included into following indexes:

• clocks, type - bracket 328