Eli Terry’s Clocks
Clocks were luxury goods in America at the start of the nineteenth century. A master clockmaker painstakingly produced only ten to fifteen sets of brass movements (the internal parts of a clock) per year. To make these parts, he melted down old kettles, cast approximate shapes, slowly hardened them by hammering, and cut and filed gear teeth by hand. The clock’s face might come from an old pewter plate, with hands shaped and hammered from spoon handles. The result was a precision instrument, a unique mechanism with each part exactly fitted to mesh with all the others. Each clock was ordered in advance by a patron who separately commissioned a cabinetmaker to fashion a wooden case, often richly inlaid and ornately carved according to current furniture styles. The result was a handsome instrument, usually six feet (about 2 meters) high and weighing a hundred pounds (45 kilograms), often a wealthy household’s most expensive possession.
