MARLBOROUGH, MA – MARCH 18, 2020 – Clocks, Watches & Scientific Instruments are on offer as an online internet auction at www.skinnerinc.com with bidding open from April 6-14. The sale offers rare and unusual horological and early optical apparatus finds, as well as vintage wrist watches from the 1920s through the early 2000s.
Tuesday, February 4 | 1:30PM – 4PM
Robin S.R. Starr – Director of American & European Works of Art, will be on-hand to evaluate paintings, prints, sculpture, and photography for upcoming auctions. She is looking forward to seeing examples by listed, sought-after artists, as well as iconic works of fine art photography from the 19th through 21st centuries, with market interest over $1000.… Read More
A Lecture by Laurent Adamowicz, Author of Codes & Symbols of European Tools
Wednesday, April 18, 6PM
This illustrated talk takes a look at Laurent Adamowicz’s research on antique tools and the codes and symbols associated with them over the centuries. Adamowicz will discuss how they relate to Europe’s history of conflicts, wars, secret societies, and religious and political allegiances.
Laurent Adamowicz holds a BA in International Affairs from ESCP-Europe in Paris, an MBA from the Wharton School, a Master of Arts in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University in New York, and is a Senior Fellow of the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University.… Read More
An illustrated lecture by Robert C. Cheney, Director Clocks, Watches & Scientific Instruments. Held in conjunction with the Clocks, Watches & Scientific Instruments preview and sale.
Skinner Marlborough 274 Cedar Hill Street Marlborough, MA 01752
Contact 508-970-3240 events@skinnerinc.com
Friday, May 3 Presented by the Clocks, Watches & Scientific Instruments Department and featuring Historic Arms & Militaria
“St. Dennistoun Mortuary” is a coin-operated automaton, attributed to John Dennison, c. 1900. The mahogany cabinet and glazed viewing area displays a Greek Revival mortuary building with double doors and grieving mourners out front. When a coin is inserted, doors open and the room is lighted revealing four morticians and four poor souls on embalming tables. The morticians move as if busily at work on their grisly task and mourners standing outside bob their heads as if sobbing in grief.
“Antiques—Old and New” reads the sign on a less traveled rural road in Maine. “New” antiques, may seem like an oxymoron, but it all depends on your point of view. At the next Science, Technology and Clocks auction to be held on June 2, 2012, really ,really, old antiques will be offered: a private collection of fossils 10,000 to 600 million years old! Compared to that, your typical 19th century clock is pretty new.
It’s always exciting to discover a beautiful object that is unknown to the collecting world. When I saw this perfectly proportioned dwarf clock on a house call in Beverly, Massachusetts, it was still running, and had been passed down in the same family for 80 years. At the moment we discussed the possibility of selling it, the clock struck twelve. The clock was made by Joshua Wilder in Hingham, Massachusetts between 1821 and 1824, and is a true miniature of a tall case clock constructed in the same manner, and with a full striking movement. This places it in a category of being the most sought-after and desirable type of dwarf clock.
Singing mechanical bird boxes have fascinated viewers since the 18th century. Contained within these small, elegant boxes is a complex mechanism and bellows which provide mechanical movement to the bird, wings, tail and beak while pumping air through a multi-pitch whistle providing the sound. Many of the later boxes, like the one shown in this video, are made in Germany and are available for a fraction of the cost of the 18th century examples.
On July 16th, Skinner will sell Henri Robert’s perpetual calendar clock, which was shown in the Paris Exposition of 1839. The calendar mounted in the lower section of the Belgian slate case was uniquely designed to show the year, month, day-of-the-month and day-of-the-week through the use of a single silvered dial and concentric hands, all self-correcting for the four-year cycles of leap year.
