An inlaid oak 'Adam & Eve' automata longcase clock with a James Wilson dial and an eight-day duration movement which strikes the hours on a bell. The twelve-inch arched dial is beautifully painted with typical Wilson strawberry & fruit decoration to the corner and a superbly painted 'fantasy' scene within the arch showing the Garden of Eden with various animals, many of them coming from the painters imagination, along with Adam & Eve stood beneath a tree with the automata being the arm of Eve, complete with apple in hand, moving toward Adam whose arm in return moves up. The rear of the dial is inscribed with Wilson's number along with his typical paint blob. The rear of the date wheel is stamped for Wilson as is the falseplate. The dial has black Roman hour numerals, subsidary seconds and date dials, decorative blued steel hands and is signed by the maker 'Jas Webb, Frome'. The oak case has Sheraton style shell inlay to the trunk door, hood and raised base panel, with further inlay to the trunk and hood, whilst the fluted pillars to the hood have cast brass capitals with fluted canted corners to the trunk.
James Webb is recorded as working in Broad Street, Frome, Somerset from circa 1785 until 1821. He is known to have taken on a number of apprentices, including Moses Abraham on the 1st of December 1789 for a period of six years on payment of £26-3-0. Churchwarden's accounts show that James Webb was also paid over a period of some years (1794-1813) to maintain the Frome church clock including in 1800 £4-12-0 for supplying and fitting a sun dial and 'For beer when the dile was put up £2-0'. He also maintained various other local church clocks including those at Nunney and Maiden Bradley. Webb came from a well-known and highly regarded family of clockmakers and his work was always of a high standard. Other examples are known with similair Sheraton style inlay and Adam & Eve automata.
* The dial is typical of Wilson's work with the strawberry corner spandrels, the inner & outer lines to the numerals, the dotted minutes, the style of numerals and the style of Adam & Eve' decoration to the arch. James Wilson was a pioneer of the painted 'enamel' dial having started his manufactory in Birmingham in circa 1772 in partnership with Thomas Osborne when he was aged about seventeen and Osborne about twenty. An advert from Aris's Birmingham Gazette in 1772 describes the partners making 'White Clock Dials in Imitation of Enamel, in a Manner entirely new', being the new style of painted dial that was to become so popular. On the dissolution of the partnership in September 1777 James Wilson set up on his own account at 11, Great Charles Street before enlarging into number 12. He is considered one of the best of the Birmingham dialmakers and certainly one of the most important. As in this example his dials are often signed on the date dials with the addition of a white 'splodge' on the rear of the dial painted with an initial, thought to be the actual painter of that particular dial, and also numbered. James Wilson died in 1809, aged 54, and his business effectively went with him after a relative of his wife, Nathaniel Porter, tried unsuccessfully to run it but going bankrupt in 1811.
Price: £6,500.00