Night Clock

The red and gilt jappened night clock in form of a neoclassical lidded vase with round base, mounted on a stepped wooden base. This highly decorative table clock is designed to be used both during the day and at night. The vase contains an oil reserve and wick that can be lit at night which projects the time through an adjustable lens in the reverse from a movement in the inside of the vase with a concave silvered dial in the form of a concave mirror. The finial is removed to act as a chimney for the flame.

The night clock has a typical French-Swiss pocket watch from around 1800 set inside the vase, on the back of the movement is a silvered dial with hours I- XII and minutes 30-60 with hands in Breguet form; verge escapement, chain driven, enamel dial with Arabic hours and minutes 15-60, signed: Mermillon à Geneve.

History

The invention of a night clock goes back to the instrument maker and watchmaker Campani of Rome. In 1655, the newly elected Pope Alexander VII, who was suffering from insomnia, a called for: ”Could but someone invent a clock that shows me also the time at night! A clock, where you do not have to light a candle first to see the dial and that makes no noise, with all the moving wheels that keep you awake for the night.” On the 30th of August 1659 Guiseppe Campani was confirmed by the Pope as the inventor of such a clock type; and in 1660 the Grand Duke of Tuscany issued him a ten-year privilege for the production of night clocks.

The required clear readability of the time was achieved by the restriction to a segment of only a few backlit numbers with the concentrated light of an oil lamp. Campanis night clocks are hand-less projection clocks with rotating glass discs and are based on the principle of the ‘magic lantern’, a kind of projector of images, using an artificial light source. Soon after, the idea of a night clock became great fashion .

However, with the invention of the repeating mechanism in the late 17th century, which allowed the time to be accurately determined in the dark, the interest in night light clocks declined significantly. Only in the period around 1800, the time measurement became increasingly important for the social and economic development. The idea of ​a projection timepiece is rediscovered and further developed; though this clock type differs in construction and in the way of time display at night significantly from the previous models.

In April of 1803, the principle of a ”Nachtlichtuhr” was announced as the invention of the clockmaker P.J. Eckhardt in the ”Journal des Luxus und der Moden” edited by Friedrich Justin Bertuch in Weimar under chapter XI Ameublement and published together with a copper plate illustrating such a timepiece.

Stobwasser Factory

The year 2013 marked the 250th anniversary of the company, that was founded by Johann Heinrich Stobwasser (1740-1829) in 1763 with the main factory in Braunschweig and since 1772 with a subsidiary one in Berlin. They specialized in small objects, notably boxes very finely painted. They soon became one of the most important japanning factories of the day with a broad aristrocratic clientele such as the Princely house of Weimar, the Prussian court or the daughter of the Tsar Maria Pavlovna (1787-1859), who bought many pieces for the castles in and around St. Petersburg. But even the upper middle class, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller or E.T.A. Hoffmann are among the clients of Stobwasser.

A very few examples of this night clock from the Stobwasser manufactory have come down to us. There are only two comparative examples known, one in the Städtisches Museum Brunswick and another from a private collection in Brunswick. The here presented ”Nachtlichtuhr” is complete and functionally preserved and an absolutely rare collection piece.