It’s Fergie Time! - New York Sale Gets Astronomical Price for Astronomical Clock
It’s Fergie Time! -
New York Sale Gets Astronomical Price for Astronomical Clock
Now the first person to get “Fergie Time” wasn’t Sir Alex, one of that great line of Caledonian football managers, it was James Ferguson the well known Scottish astronomer and painter. Now one of his clocks that he took to making late in life has been sold in New York. A clock made by the 18th century great Scot has sold for more than £23,000 at auction in New York.
Ferguson died in 1776 and the clock was made in collaboration with London Clockmaker William Dutton the year before he died. It was a pretty fabulous clock too. It of course told the time, it told the date and the position of the sun. It also showed the lunar cycle, signs of the zodiac and the time of high water at London Bridge, which he painted in miniature on the face.
Time for Sale
Fergie lived next door to William Dutton in London and the clock was a hot item in a recent sale by auctioneers Bonham’s in its “Art of Time” sale in New York. Unfortunately it has left the country and gone to an American buyer.
Fergie didn’t train as a clockmaker, no indeed he was first a miniature painter before he achieved great renown as an astronomer, not quite the Sir Patrick Moore of his day, but very well known at a time when astronomy was a national obsession. Ferguson’s clock is a thing of beauty, as you would expect from a painter and its functionality is breathtaking. The painted metal dial includes a scene of London and an automaton of rising water to tell you the high tide. It also gives a number of astronomical indications throughout the year for both the Moon and the Sun.
Self- Taught Son of a Tenant Farmer
Ferguson who was always super smart was the son of a tenant farmer in Banffshire and he learnt to read by listening to his father teach his elder brother. He started work as a shepherd boy and studied the stars and planets by night, making maps with beads and thread. As he grew up he became a self-taught astronomer and inventor of scientific instruments and pocket globes. He travelled the length and breadth of the country giving lectures on the heavens illustrating his lectures using devices of his own design.
A Thing of Beauty and a Joy Forever – The Gift of Time
Now we don’t have any 18th century astronomical clocks for sale here at James Pirie, but we do have some little beauties in the Greenwich Range and they all display the modern art of time. For instance try this nice and elegant hand cut crystal small London clock. Make your own Fergie Time.
