Antique Clock Collecting: Boston Clock Company

Video Transcript

"The Boston Clock Company is one of my favorite clock makers and Boston area producer. It really begins the story of Chelsey, as I'll tell you when we get to Chelsey Clocks, but It begins with a man named Joseph Eastman who was a wonderful clockmaker, inventor, mechanic, but not a very good businessman. He made very good clocks, but he wasn't too good at selling them, so that there aren't that many of them and they're rare, but extremely high quality. We are looking at a few of them here. This company existed from the mid eighteen eighties to the mid eighteen nineties. They were really trying to compete with the quality, high quality French clocks of the period as opposed to the Connecticut clocks or any of the other makers. In this case we have a crystal regulator we saw some of those before in a different style, but he's copied the features of it in very high quality, the beveled glass all around, the porcelain dial, but you see no pendulum swinging below, because Eastman made balance wheel movements rather than pendulum movements, so there's just something ticking inside that may have actually been a problem for him in selling this clock, because people were so used to seeing the pendulum swinging below that they thought it looked odd if it didn't have it. The other feature of his clocks, the ingenious one that you can see on this clock particularly is that there is only one winding hole. Which normally would tell us that this is just a time keeper, but in fact this is a time and strike clock and he had developed a system called tandem wind where you'd actually you would turn the key in one direction to wind the time train and reverse direction, wind it in the other direction to wind the strike train. Complicated, but interesting in the fact of only one winding hole. He also made carriage clocks; again, high quality ones. The only really quality carriage clocks made in this country to compete with the Frenchman's of the time. These are rare and interesting, also balance wheel clocks of course, not pendulum. This is the Sparta model in an unusual silver case; mostly they were gold or polished gold or polished brass. This is an even rarer model; the Cypress model which is a miniature striking carriage clock, again with that tandem wind feature, but very rare, very collectible. They also again made wall clocks to try to compete with Howard and the other companies. They a; many of those styles can be seen in this reproduction Boston Clock Company catalog which is available for you to look at and find the model that you may find to begin your Boston Clock Company collection."