Antiques Trade Gazette
9
“It is thought that the clock was probably acquired by Naser Al-Din (1831-96), Qajar Shah of Persia”
Left: automaton elephant clock, £1.4m at Sotheby’s. Right: Fromanteel longcase, £320,000 at Christie’s.
high creation is signed by Peter Torckler, a fi gure about whom relatively little is known beyond the fact that he is listed in London trade directories in 1780-83 working in Clerkenwell, London’s clock and watchmaking district. He could also be the same Peter Adolph Torckler born in Riga who arrived in Calcutta in 1795 and was a partner in the mercantile fi rm of Howell and Torckler. Torckler’s elephant clock does have
a grand later provenance, however. As discussed when this clock last came up for auction, at Bonhams in 2002, a card inscription that had been inserted into the clock and was included with the lot this time, recorded various repairs made by one Khawaja Mustafa, clockmaker at the Imperial Qajar court, in the early decades of the 20th century. It is thought that the clock was probably acquired by Naser Al-Din (1831-96), Qajar Shah of Persia. When the clock was offered at
Bonhams it had been acquired by the vendor’s mother in the 1960s from an antiques dealer for whom she worked and who is thought to have purchased it at an auction held in 1925 when the Pahlavi took over from the Qajar dynasty. Sotheby’s vendor bought the clock
around it came with an estimate of £300,000-£500,000, a pretty punchy guide, perhaps, but a measure of how much top-end Golden Age clocks have increased in value. It sold towards the lower end of that margin at £320,000. There were three other clocks
included in the Exceptional sale, all geared towards Far Eastern interest, being either Chinese-made or Chinese market pieces and all exceeded their estimates. They were a George III period, ormolu-cased musical automaton table clock made by Henry Borrell c.1795 for the Chinese market that realised £620,000 and two Chinese ormolu- cased and paste-set clocks of Qianlong period made in the Guangzhou workshops: a white marble double- gourd clock that went for £380,000 and a musical and automaton timepiece table clock with contemporary European
mechanisms that sold for £460,000. The ultimate exotic export timekeeper
featured in Sotheby’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) Treasures sale on July 4. It was one of those all-singing, all-dancing paste-set musical automaton clocks made in the second half of the 18th century for export to the East where they were known as ‘Sing Songs’. The principal automaton element in
this instance was a model of an Asian elephant whose trunk, ears and tail are all articulated and can move in conjunction with a choice of six tunes, while the canopied howdah is topped by a fi nial of typical paste-set spinning Catherine wheel form. The pachyderm is set on a rockwork base inset with the clock dial, while the musical movement is contained in a canted corner lower section applied with ormolu mounts. This impressively sized 3ft 4in (1m)
at Bonhams for £250,000. This time around it was put up for sale at a much higher £1m-2m, a refl ection of the huge increase in demand, principally from the Far East, for Chinese-taste clocks and their subsequent rise in value. It found an Asian buyer at a mid-estimate £1.4m. Anne Crane
W. F. BRUCE HIS T O RY IN M O TI O N
www.wfbruce.co.uk
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