Exhibition

A Longcase Clock by Jean-Pierre Latz. Marking the end of the restoration

Place

Menshikov Palace

Universitetskaya emb., 15

Category

Exhibition

Date

26 may 2018, 12:00 — 02 september 2018, 19:00

Events / Exhibition

On 25 May 2018 an exhibition opens in the Menshikov Palace: “A Longcase Clock by Jean-Pierre Latz. Marking the end of the restoration”. Its distinctive feature is the presentation of the case and the clock mechanism separately in order to show what could not be seen in the assembled timepiece. After the exhibition ends, the clock, reassembled and in working order, will return to display.

The Hermitage collection of timepieces is the richest in Russia and one of the best in the world. It includes around 3,000 mechanical timekeeping devices of all sorts, from pocket watches to turret clocks.

It goes without saying that a clock is a complex object, a product of technical and artistic culture simultaneously. The finest artists and sculptors of the days participated in the making of clock bodies, while the design of the mechanisms exploited the latest achievements of science and technology. Interior timepieces – longcase (floor), wall and mantel clocks – were always a mark of status, a symbol of the owner’s wealth and enlightenment.

The clock, of the type known as a régulateur de parquet, was made in France in the mid-18th century. The design and the body of the clock with its elaborate rocaille shape is considered to be the work of the outstanding cabinet-maker Jean-Pierre Latz (1691–1754). That virtuoso craftsman specialized in producing furniture and clock cases finished with marquetry using precious varieties of wood or in the Boulle technique that combines tortoiseshell, brass and mother-of-pearl together with abundant ormolu (gilded bronze) mounts. Those same characteristics can be seen in the clock from the Hermitage collection. The case is veneered with Hungarian ash and densely covered with relief bronze mounts. The upper part of the timepiece is framed by rocaille scrolls with flowers, into which two small dragons are entwined. The figure that tops the case is a sun god – Phoebus, “the radiant”, one of the personifications of Apollo. Beneath the dial, on the clouds is Diana, the goddess of the hunt, who in classical mythology was an embodiment of the Moon. In Latz’s conception the bronze decoration of the clock is an allegory of Night and Day. The longcase clock entered the Hermitage after the 1917 revolution. It came from the mansion of Illarion Ivanovich Vorontsov-Dashov (1837–1916) on the English Embankment in St Petersburg (10, Angliyskaya Naberezhnaya; 9, Galernaya Ulitsa).

At the time of its nationalization and removal to the Hermitage or before, the clock lost its 18th-century mechanism and dial. In the 1930s, the classification and allocation of items that came into the museum was carried out on the basis of external characteristics. The case of a floor clock was assigned to the furniture stocks, the contents – the mechanism, weights and pendulum – to the metal stocks. This produced “orphans”: cases without movements, movements without cases, separated weights and pendulums. The desire to recreate a full timepiece often led to the “marriage” of a case and mechanism of different origins. This happened in its time to this French longcase clock: a good quality, but typically English early 19th-century mechanism was inserted into the sumptuous Baroque case.

In order to correct this state of affairs, the staff of the Laboratory for the Scientific Restoration of Timepieces and Musical Mechanisms selected a mechanism from a French longcase clock. The inscription on the dial – Barbier Lejeune / Paris – indicates that it was the work of a well-known French clockmaker who attained the status of master in 1770. An interesting feature of this mechanism is that the pendulum is attached not at the back, but at the front, between the movement and the dial. This led to the immediate selection of one of the “orphaned” pendulums that had an opening to accommodate the axis of the hands of the clock. The large, heavy lens-shaped bob of the pendulum accorded with the massive, high-quality movement, while its polished front side was indicative of a large window in the case. As a result, after trying out the mechanism for size, the whole assembly of the clock fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle.


The dial of cold white enamel looked fairly modest. By the middle of the 18th century composite enamel dials had already gone out of fashion, while large single-piece ones were still too difficult to make. So, a dial painted in imitation of enamel was a commonly used alternative. The delicate restoration of this component was carried out by staff of the Laboratory for the Scientific Restoration of Easel Paintings.

Following examination of the clock case and the study of historical analogies, it was decided to make a pedestal for the case, the lost upper part of the back wall of the case and an oak seat to hold the chosen movement, to remove the hinge and recreate the original method by which the door was attached, and also to carry out a complete restoration of the case, the covering and varnish of the body. This work was carried out in the Laboratory for the Scientific Restoration of Furniture.

So, the restoration of the clock, like its original creation, involved the collaborative work of specialists in various crafts.

For a timepiece to be considered truly authentic, it has to have a working mechanism because it is precisely the presence of a movement, of mechanical life, that sets a clock apart from the general mass of museum exhibits. The manifestations of a functioning mechanism – the motion of the hands, the measured swing of the pendulum, the chimes – contribute along with the outward appearance to the formation of the complete image of a timepiece. In the museum setting, generally oriented on visual perception, an additional acoustic component is also present.