A Pillar-and-Scroll Shelf Clock
date: label: Date made
content: 1825-1828
label: date made
content: 1824-1827
name: label: maker
content: Eli & Samuel Terry
notes: label: Description
content: Eli Terry began to mass-produce his austere but serviceable box clock (See Cat. 317044) in 1816 and immediately proceeded to refine it. The plain box case acquired a pair of slender pillars on the sides, scrollwork on top, and a set of graceful feet. A dial was added, and the lower portion of the glass door was reverse-painted. In the movement, Terry experimented with modifications of the escapement, revised the gear trains, and replaced the rack-and-snail striking mechanism with the more economical count wheel. The result of these efforts, patented in 1823, was another wooden, weight-driven, hour-striking, thirty-hour clock that soon became widely known as the Connecticut pillar-and-scroll clock.
label: Description
content: As the design of the clock was perfected, Terry set about organizing its manufacture. Production was underway in 1822. By 1825, Eli Terry, in partnership with his brother Samuel and his sons Eli, Jr., and Henry, was operating three factories, each turning out two to three thousand pillar-and-scroll clocks a year. Originally, Terry's clock cost fourteen dollars, but before long its price dropped to under ten dollars.
label: Description
content: Other clockmakers, notably Seth Thomas, soon produced clocks after Terry's design. The output of the new clock industry soon became too large to be absorbed by the local market. Scores of traveling salesmen were dispatched to sell clocks in the rural West and South. "As to the Yankee clocks peddler," reported an English traveler in the 1840s, " in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and here in every dell of Arkansas and in every cabin where there was not a chair to sit on, there was sure to be a Connecticut clock."
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: Place Made
content: United States: Connecticut, Plymouth
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Mechanisms
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content: Industry & Manufacturing
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content: Domestic Furnishings
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of James Arthur Collection, New York University
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1984.0416.033
label: catalog number
content: 1984.0416.033
label: accession number
content: 1984.0416
objectType: label: Object Name
content: pillar and scroll clock
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: glass (door material)
label: Physical Description
content: wood (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: brass (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 31 1/2 in x 17 5/8 in x 4 5/8 in; 80.01 cm x 44.7675 cm x 11.7475 cm