This late 17th century ebony veneered table clock with a pull quarter repeat took a mid-estimate £17,500 at Chiswick Auctions on June 6. The dial is signed Edmund Massey High Holborne, a well-known student of Joseph Knibb (1640-1711) who was made free of the Clockmakers’ Company between 1683-90. He began his apprenticeship at the Dyal, near Serjeant’s Inn in Fleet Street, in 1674, four years after Knibb had made his move from Oxford.
Many of Massey’s clocks betray the influence of his master and key elements of this clock – including the dial and the movement – are virtually identical to those made by Knibb in the 1690s.