Mantel clock

The clock made to sit on a fireplace shelf, from gilded Paris pendules to Connecticut pillar-and-scroll, black mantel and tambour clocks.

What a mantel clock is

A mantel clock is a clock sized and shaped to stand on a mantelpiece, the shelf above a fireplace. It is defined more by where it lives than by how it works, so the name covers everything from an eighteenth-century gilded bronze clock to a plain wooden chiming clock of the 1930s.

In the United States the same clocks are often called shelf clocks, and the word is also widely written mantle clock, a spelling you will find in museum catalogs such as the Rosenberg Library's and Iowa State University's. Both spellings mean the same thing.

The French and English traditions

In France, clocks for the chimney piece became showpieces of decorative art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a Paris clock of about 1750, signed GOSSELIN A PARIS on its white enamel dial, with a bronze case by Jean-Joseph de Saint Germain that was originally gilded, silvered or lacquered. The museum points to its curling scrolls and flowers as typical of French rococo design and notes that cast ornamental bronzes like this filled eighteenth-century French palaces and townhouses.

In England the closest relative is the bracket clock, a spring-driven pendulum clock. Britannica notes that very few were actually made to hang on wall brackets, and that table clock or spring clock is the more accurate name; the term bracket clock only appeared in the 19th century. The Met's own title for its Paris clock, pendule à console, links it to a console, or wall shelf, which shows how blurred the line between these names can be.

American shelf clocks

In the United States, the mantel clock grew out of mass-produced wooden shelf clocks. Britannica describes the pillar-and-scroll shelf clock, made in quantity from the 1810s, as a rectangular wooden case topped by a scroll broken in the middle by an ornament such as an urn, with a slim pillar on each side. Eli Terry is the maker most closely tied to it, credited by Britannica with giving it its definitive form.

Most pillar-and-scroll clocks ran for 30 hours on a wooden movement of oak, laurelwood and black cherry. Britannica notes that brass replaced wood around 1840, once brass became cheaper.

Black mantel, tambour and chiming clocks

In the 1860s, French mantel clocks in slate, onyx or marble cases became fashionable in the United States, according to the Seth Thomas history site clockhistory.com. American makers answered with similar-looking cases in cheaper iron or wood. Seth Thomas covered wooden cases in Adamantine, a celluloid veneer patented by the Celluloid Manufacturing Company of New York in 1880, licensed it in 1881 and began making Adamantine clocks in 1882. The same site dates the black mantel clock's popularity to about 1880 through 1931.

Other firms found their own shortcuts. The Rosenberg Library notes that Edward Ingraham, son of the Bristol clockmaker Elias Ingraham, patented a method of finishing wooden cases in black enamel, a form of japanning that gave a cheap imitation of French marble clocks.

In the early 1900s a new outline arrived: a low, wide case with a rounded hump in the middle. Aberdeen's city museums explain that these clocks are often called Napoleon hat clocks for their resemblance to Bonaparte's hat, though tambour clock is the more correct name. The style was made in large numbers until the 1950s, and some were still made in the late 1960s, usually in oak or mahogany veneer with a silvered dial and a brass bezel.

Many twentieth-century mantel clocks chime the quarter hours. A 1950 Hermle mantel clock documented by C. Hamann of the Berliner Hochschule für Technik plays Whittington, St. Michael or Westminster tunes on eight hammers, with a switch to choose among them or silence them at night, and it has three winding holes: one each for the hour strike, the timekeeping and the chime.

See also: what a chiming mantel clock is playing each quarter hour on OnlineClock.app.

How to identify and date an antique mantel clock

Start with labels and signatures. French dials and cases are often signed, as Gosselin's dial and Saint Germain's case are, and American clocks often carry a paper label inside the case naming the maker. Clockhistory.com notes that many Seth Thomas clocks from 1881 to 1918 have a date code stamped in ink on the back or bottom of the case, which makes them easier to date than most.

Next, look at the movement. A wooden 30-hour movement in a pillar-and-scroll case points to the earlier years, since brass largely took over around 1840. Count the winding holes, too. On the Hermle each of the three powers a separate job, so extra holes generally mean extra functions such as a strike or a chime.

The case style sets a rough floor for the date. A black case in celluloid veneer or japanned wood belongs to the black mantel era of roughly 1880 to 1931, and Seth Thomas Adamantine cannot be earlier than 1882. A tambour or Napoleon hat case points to the twentieth century. If a period-looking clock has a battery movement behind the dial, it is either a modern reproduction or an old case that has been refitted.

See also: new mantel clocks with quartz or key-wound movements on OnlineClock.app.

Keep exploring

Sources

1. Mantel clock (pendule à console), Gosselin and Saint Germain, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
2. Pillar and scroll shelf clock, Encyclopaedia Britannica
3. Seth Thomas Adamantine clocks, clockhistory.com
4. Ingraham Mantle Clock, Rosenberg Library Museum
5. Napoleon mantel clock by James Carr, Aberdeen Archives, Gallery and Museums
6. Hermle Glockenspiel Mantel Clock, C. Hamann, Berliner Hochschule für Technik

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