THE BRASS LANTERN CLOCK

The domestic clock—Its use as a bracket or wall clock—Seventeenth-century types—Continuance of manufacture in provinces—Their appeal to the collector.

The form of the lantern clock is one that appeals to the artist. We love the candelabrum with candles, with its finely, fashioned brass forms, Dutch and English. It adds a grace to the interiors of the old masters of the Low Countries. Nobody is especially interested in the gas bracket or the paraffin lamp. There is the picture of The Doctor by Luke Fildes, but here the lamp only adds to the poverty and anguish of the scene. It is realistic and had to be there, and it makes a great factor in the lighting. But the chandelier with candles is the most beloved by the artist who inclines to the primitive, as we all do. The electric light must come into art and it does. The lift and the telephone are facts, but they are difficult, naked and unashamed as they are, to clothe with æsthetic drapery. The cubist and the modern pseudo-scientific realist revel in incongruities repellent to art. They seize these as their own, and make them in their presentation more repellent.

Happily the clock has not received the attention of the modern sensation-monger. We are left with the heritage of the past undisturbed. He may gibe at the paint and canvas of old masters, he may deride the grace of the Greek in sculpture, but the simple mechanism of the clock symbolizing "the inaudible and noiseless foot of Time" mocks the charlatan of a little day, with oblivion tracking his scurrying heels.

The name of lantern clock may puzzle the modern collector, but its shape followed the lantern of the period, and, like the lantern, it was made to hang on the wall. We illustrate (p. [47]) a silver ship's lantern of the period of Christian IV of Denmark, of the late sixteenth century, with the King's monogram. It was doubtless used in the expedition round the North Cape. It is in the collection at Rosenborg Castle at Copenhagen. This lantern shape is found in German clocks of the period, and in English seventeenth-century clocks the same shape is continued. A fine example by Bartholomew Newsam is illustrated (p. [47]), showing the early type conforming to the lantern design.

Not only the form but the usage determined the name. The lantern had spikes or metal hooks to hang upon. The clock similarly was affixed to a wall, and we know it as a bracket clock, because, whether on a wall or on a bracket, it had chains and weights suspended beneath it, as it was not in its early form capable of being placed on a table.

SHIP'S LANTERN OF SILVER.
Used by Christian IV of Denmark on his voyage round the North Cape.
(At Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen.)