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The Clockmakers' Museum of Watchmaking
The Clockmakers' Museum situated in London's Guildhall is often referred to as "one of London's best guarded secrets", although it is closed just for one morning weekly for rewinding the timepieces. It is hidden somewhere among the maze of majestic buildings which make up Guildhall.
The museum comprises the entire history of watchmaking featuring the oldest collection of clocks, watches and sundials that range from the smallest screw used by the American Waltham watch company (47,000 of such screws could be placed inside a thimble) to a broken chronometer balance spring which was skillfully fixed by a Chinese watchmaker nearly 200 years ago.
The Clockmakers' Company
The Clockmakers' Company represents the oldest horological establishment in the world, an active City of London craft guild, a prominent livery company given its charter by King Charles I in 1631. Since the 17th century up to the turn of the 20th, the members of the company united their efforts at transforming the City of London into a centre of horology. English masters such as Dr Robert Hooke, Thomas Mudge and George Graham worked hard to bring about distinct improvements bearing great influence on the development of timekeeping and which are still significant to the science today.
The company’s priority was to take care of watch and clock making and support related skills, such as engraving, sundial producing and mathematical instrument making. The Company was also responsible for quality control, training the apprentices and the welfare of its members.
The members of the Clockmakers' Company organized meetings in the City’s King’s Head tavern, their "home" for some years, until the establishment moved to three rooms of the London Tavern. The chronometer maker FJ Barraud hit upon the idea of founding a clockmaker’s library.
Organizing the Library an the Museum
Barraud asked some of the famous English makers to donate books for the library. Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy looked after the library for a few years. He became Master of the company five times and produced watches for such outstanding clientele as George IV, William IV and Queen Victoria.
In 1814 the company deputed Vulliamy to acquire a silver half-seconds beating watch, regulator pallets and the short duration timekeeper produced for Captain John Phipps’s Polar voyage.
At this point the company’s committee decided to add objects to the library, so they continued to get some further donations and procured the timepieces of the first makers to set up a collection featuring the most distant dates.
The company’s members were quite enthusiastic about the project, and helped Vulliamy to purchase a secondhand mahogany bureau for placing the increasing collection and set it up in the King’s Head.
By 1819, the company owned the collection of 110 books, 48 watches or movements, 12 drawings, some things from the Cummings sale as well as the oldest livery records.
After Vulliamy’s death in 1854 there was nobody to move the museum project in the proper direction, so in 1871, John Grant, the member of the Company’s library committee, offered to display the collection in Guildhall Library.
The museum was finally welcomed the public in 1873. Its collection continued to grow and purchase many essential exhibits, such as John Harrison’s fifth marine chronometer, and the first surviving self-winding watch, developed by Breguet commissioned by Tsar Nicholas I.In 1894 the collection was lit by electric light for the first time that made it more and more attractive for the growing number of visitors.
The future of the collection was threatened after 1945, but it managed to survive together with the original Vulliamy’s bureau.
The Clockmakers' Company Library Today
The Clockmakers' Company Library comprises the ancient manuscripts of the Company being of great assistance to the most standard reference works about British clockmakers.
It also features a great variety of printed books, often given as a gift to the library by their authors, or annotated by great clock and watchmakers. The collection of the library is unique as it holds rare clockmakers workbooks and other important documents, for example Victor Kullberg's Records and some holograph manuscripts created by John Harrison dated from the 18th century.
Being displayed in the City's Guildhall Library since 1925 up to the present time, the Clockmakers’ Library collection is freely available for the public.
The Clockmakers' Museum Nowadays
The Clockmakers' Collection of horology has remained on continual public exhibition since 1874. The Collection is demonstrated in one room and features some 600 English and European watches, 30 clocks and 15 marine timekeepers, as well as some rare horological portraits. The majority of items in the Collection embrace the period of 1600 -1850.
One of the most significant parts of the Collection is represented by the marine timekeepers that underline the importance of horology in the field of navigation. The best examples are a marine timekeeper of 1724 developed by Henry Sully, a silver deck watch by Thomas Earnshaw owned by Captain George Vancouver who had discovered the Island named after him and the famous 5th marine timekeeper developed by John Harrison and finished in 1770.
The existence of the Clockmakers' Company Library and Museum helps support a promising future for the world of clock and watch making of today by reviving interest in modern horology.
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