page_title: Clockmakers' Museum
section_title: The collection
hierarchical_section_title: Clockmakers' Museum / The collection
caption_attribution_description: John Harrison's famous chronometer
context_page_description: The Clockmakers’ Museum in London, England, is believed to be the oldest collection specifically of clocks and watches in the world. The collection belongs to and is administered by the Clockmakers’ Charity, affiliated to the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, founded in 1631 by Royal Charter. Since 2015 it has been housed in a gallery provided by the Science Museum in South Kensington, having formerly been located in the Guildhall complex in the City of London since 1874, where it first opened to the public. Admission is free.
  The formation of the collection dates back to 1814. The principal goal of the museum is to educate the public about the history of the field of clock and watchmaking, principally in the City of London, and also to promote education and career possibilities in the craft of horology, which as of 2019 was placed on the HCA Red List of Endangered Crafts. The Archive of the Clockmakers is managed on its behalf by the London Metropolitan Archive and is located at Guildhall Library, where the Library collection of printed books is also held and managed.
context_section_description: The collection on display includes rare horological portraits, and numbers some 660 English and European watches, 30 clocks, and 15 marine timekeepers, which are broadly arranged in chronological order, starting in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries at the east end (with some European objects), but soon moving to the seventeenth century and the emergence of a clock and watch trade in London, initially populated by immigrant craftsmen. The gallery moves forward in time as it progresses westwards through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is completed at the west end by recent and current objects, such as watches made by and other items associated with George Daniels, a former Master of the Company, and an explanation of the wristwatch now being manufactured by Charles Frodsham in Sussex. To support horological education, the museum has an information board at the west end, emphasizing the possibilities for new students and entrants to the field of horology, particularly at West Dean College, Birmingham School of Jewellery, part of Birmingham City University, and the British School of Watchmaking.
  The chronological story set out in the gallery in information panels and labelling has been resolved into a single narrative account, The Clockmakers of London, by the Keeper Emeritus, George White, first published in 2000 and since revised in a new edition with high-resolution images (2018).
  Highlights include:
  Star watch by David Ramsay
  Clocks and watches by Edward East
  Table clock by Samuel Knibb
  Astronomical table clock by Samuel Watson, possibly belonging to Isaac Newton
  Clocks and watches by Thomas Tompion
  Watches and clocks by George Graham
  Marine timekeeper by Henry Sully
  Longcase clock by James Harrison
  Longcase movements by John Harrison
  Watch by John Jefferys, made for John Harrison, and on long-term loan to the Museum
  John Harrison’s H5 marine timekeeper
  Chronometers by John Arnold, and significant personal Arnold ephemera
  Chronometers by Thomas Earnshaw
  Watches by Abraham-Louis Breguet
  Smiths wristwatch worn by Sir Edmund Hillary to the summit of Mount Everest
  Watches by George Daniels, including the Space Traveller (on loan to the Museum)
  Original portraits of many eminent clock and watchmakers
  In 2019 the museum acquired a large portrait (970mm x 800mm) in a silvered frame, showing a well-dressed gentleman holding a fine and complicated watch, dated perhaps to the 1670s. The watch is very similar to the astronomical watch, c.1660, by Nathaniel Barrow, shown in Case 7 in the museum.
caption: John Harrison's H5 marine timekeeper
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