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Lot Essay
The richly sculpted marble mantelpiece garniture uniting the Arts and Sciences presents a timepiece as an objet d'art and its pattern is likely to have been invented in 1785 for the Carlton House palace of the youthful George, Prince of Wales, later George IV. It reflects the taste first introduced in the 1770s by George III's Royal Academy under the direction of the Rome-trained court architect Sir William Chambers (d. 1796) and the court sculptor Joseph Wilton (d. 1803). Here, a youth attends a philosopher-robed genius who has alighted on the compass-fronted 'crepidoma' stepped-plinth bearing Apollo's laurels to crown the pearl-wreathed timepiece, which is set in a truncated Grecian temple pillar.
The court clock-maker Benjamin Vulliamy (d. 1811) demonstrated his adopted role as 'marchand-mercier', following his appointment in 1773 as a Royal Warrant holder, by the manufacture of such clocks, and this particular clock model was conceived in reference to a great prince's role in affecting time's course. The inscription 'Design'd for his R.H. Ye P. of Wales' appears on a fuller version of the model, which dates from 1788 and incorporates the additional figure of star-wreathed Urania, while the genius is winged and the youth bears a sextant (C. Jagger, Royal Clocks, London, 1983, p.117). The biscuit figures were commissioned from the Derby porcelain factory, the youth was modelled by Duesbury, and the genius may have been modelled to Vulliamy's drawing by the sculptor Valentin Sonnenschein (H. Young, English Porcelain 1745-95, London, 1999, pp.111). Another version of this model, with a wingless genius and an additonal urn, was supplied to Hugh Percy, Duke of Northumberland in 1787; while another is now in the Victoria & Albert Museum (A. Kelly, 'A Clockmaker's Taste for Ceramics', Country Life, 15 June 1967, pp. 1526-1528, and fig. 3).
The court clock-maker Benjamin Vulliamy (d. 1811) demonstrated his adopted role as 'marchand-mercier', following his appointment in 1773 as a Royal Warrant holder, by the manufacture of such clocks, and this particular clock model was conceived in reference to a great prince's role in affecting time's course. The inscription 'Design'd for his R.H. Ye P. of Wales' appears on a fuller version of the model, which dates from 1788 and incorporates the additional figure of star-wreathed Urania, while the genius is winged and the youth bears a sextant (C. Jagger, Royal Clocks, London, 1983, p.117). The biscuit figures were commissioned from the Derby porcelain factory, the youth was modelled by Duesbury, and the genius may have been modelled to Vulliamy's drawing by the sculptor Valentin Sonnenschein (H. Young, English Porcelain 1745-95, London, 1999, pp.111). Another version of this model, with a wingless genius and an additonal urn, was supplied to Hugh Percy, Duke of Northumberland in 1787; while another is now in the Victoria & Albert Museum (A. Kelly, 'A Clockmaker's Taste for Ceramics', Country Life, 15 June 1967, pp. 1526-1528, and fig. 3).