Fancy Clock with Glass Dome & Music Box Base, Attributed to Simon Willard

Simon Willard Jr. Brass Skeleton Clock, Boston, Massachusetts, or New York City, circa 1825-35. Auguste Moinau et Rolland Degrege, Paris. Two-day, weight-driven skeleton clock.

Catalog Note: A few examples of this style skeleton clock are known bearing the signature of Simon Willard on the thermometer scale, in addition to having the names of Moinau & Degrege on the back plate. See "The Willard House and Clock Museum and The Willard Family Clockmakers," by Dr. Roger W. Robinson and Herschel B. Burt, pp. 203-204 for illustrations of an example in the Willard House collection. Object left powers the clock with smaller counter weight for pull cord wind without removing the glass dome. Object right for symmetry, all resting on two brass pillars flanking a silvered brass plate.

Additional discussion and another example is found in Derek Roberts, Continental and American Skeleton Clocks, p. 97. It is likely that skeleton clocks of this type were imported by Simon Willard Jr. and sold under his own name while working with his father in Roxbury as Simon Willard & Son, or while working with Dominick Eggert in New York.