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Maine Antique Digest, May 2015 31-C
- AUCTION -
☞
T
wenty-six hours was not too long
to wait. The New York City snow-
storm abated so bidders a day later
could try for clocks rarely available to buy
or even to view in museums. Described as
a “New York Kunstkammer,” the Abbott/
Guggenheim collection, belatedly offered
at Christie’s on January 28, included 59
preindustrial clocks in its 117 lots. The
other lots were equally important sculp-
tures, mostly bronzes, also collected for
decades by Drs. Peter Guggenheim and
John Abbott of Warwick, New York.
Eighty-five lots sold, 50 clocks among
them, for a sale total of $11,454,875.
Guggenheim, a psychiatrist and pro-
fessor of psychiatry, died at age 84 in
2012, survived by his partner of over 60
years, John Abbott, whom he married
in 2007. Related to “the” Guggenheims
(his great-uncle Solomon’s museum is on
Fifth Avenue, and his aunt was Peggy),
Peter received his first clock at age six
and never stopped collecting. He was an
amateur repairer who
amassed and gener-
ously lent a collection
of mostly German
16th- and 17th-cen-
tury
timekeepers,
many with additional
complications, func-
tions, and automation. Such clocks, fab-
ricated by masters working long hours
before mass production and division of
labor, were inaccurate and ornate, costly
and few, owned solely by royalty and the
very wealthy. Other such collections are
unlikely to appear on the market anytime
soon, and now this one has been scattered.
Two iconic museum exhibits had show-
cased many clocks from the collection.
From January 4 to March 28, 1972, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted
Northern European Clocks in New York
Collections
. The thin softcover catalog,
written by assistant curator Clare Vin-
cent, described the show’s 81 clocks, 27
of which belonged to Guggenheim, and
21 of those clocks were in the recent
Christie’s sale. Vincent remains a cura-
tor in the Met’s department of European
sculpture and decorative arts, and she is
preparing another clock exhibit for later
this year. In the Christie’s auction cata-
log’s opening pages, Dr. Klaus Maurice
refers to her as “the female pope of clocks
and watches.”
Maurice had been closely associated
with the other major exhibit,
The Clock-
work Universe: German Clocks and
Automata, 1550-1650
, which graced the
Smithsonian’s National Museum of His-
tory and Technology from November 7,
1980, to February 15, 1981. As noted in
the captions, many Guggenheim clocks
were on view and also were described in
the large related book of the same title
by coauthors Klaus Maurice and Otto
Mayr.
Another smaller exhibit had included
three Guggenheim clocks. From Decem-
ber 18, 1999, to March 19, 2000, at the
Bruce Museum of Arts and Science in
Greenwich, Connecticut,
The Art of
Time
displayed what now became
Christie’s lot 30, selling for
$62,500 (with buyer’s premium).
It is a gilt-brass and ebony German
striking and automaton clock by
Paullus Schiller of Nuremberg,
1620-30, with the figure of the
goddess Urania pointing to the
passing hours. The other two
Guggenheim clocks pictured in
the Bruce Museum booklet were
not in the current sale.
I lent two American
clocks to the Bruce
Museum exhibition,
and although I never
met Peter Guggen-
heim, I may have
been in the same
room with him if he attended the opening
reception at the museum.
Another lender, 19 clocks, to the
1972 Met exhibit was Winthrop “Kelly”
Edey of New York City. This eccen-
tric collector of mainly French Renais-
sance clocks passed away in 1999. He
donated a small but valuable clock col-
lection and a large archive to the Frick
Collection in NewYork City. He authored
two books on French clocks, and I
have been researching his unpublished
writings and notes, which may still be
of use. In his papers, I have seen many
references to Peter Guggenheim as they
collaborated and competed. A 1965 Edey
receipt for a clock purchase noted, in an
unintended admission of auction pool-
ing, that it was “bought jointly by me
and Peter Guggenheim, then auctioned
between us for $11,000.”
The Christie’s catalog weighs in at
more than four pounds, with beautiful
full-color full-page photographs and
detailed listings of features, provenance,
exhibitions, and related literature. It
instantly has become a valuable reference
resource and joins a small number of vol-
umes that constitute most of the available
concentrations of material on these
Christie’s, New York City
Early Clocks, One Day Late:
The Abbott/Guggenheim Collection
by Bob Frishman
Photos courtesy Christie’s
By my calculation,
the total for the
50 sold clocks was
$4,352,125.
The top-selling clock, and second
only overall to a bronze Hercules
that sold for $2,045,000 (see p.
33-C), this 1580-90 German gilt
striking and automaton lion
clock by Philipp Miller went to
a determined phone bidder who
steadily jumped bid increments
until the hammer fell far above
the $150,000/250,000 estimate.
This clock earned $965,000.
The lion’s eyes, jaw, tongue,
and foreleg also would jump
into action as each
hour rang out. It
was number 25
at the 1972 Met-
ropolitan Museum
of
Art
clock
exhibit and num-
ber 90 in the
1980 Smith-
sonian
The
C l o c kwo r k
Un i v e r s e
.
Second-highest clock, and
third-highest lot overall
in the sale, was this
German gilt striking
and
astronomical
table clock from
Augsburg, 1560-70.
Jump bids by the
same phone bidder
as for the top-selling
clock were ultimately
successful,
again
at a multiple of the
$200 , 000 / 300 , 000
estimate. It sold for
$725,000.
Number
13 in the 1972 Met-
ropolitan Museum of
Art exhibit, the clock has
a lengthy description of its
many features and functions in
that exhibition catalog by curator Clare Vincent. It is
number 41 in
The Clockwork Universe
. Philip Poniz
reported that the price is a record for this style and
justified by its remarkably good condition despite a
few later changes to the case.
Sixth in the sale’s top ten
lots, this large Augsburg
German gilt bronze and
brass
quarter-striking
astronomical clock, dated
1625, was maker David
Bushmann’s
master-
piece, required for admis-
sion into the elite guild.
Deservedly displayed at
the preview among paint-
ings, not the clocks and
bronzes, it was described
by Philip Poniz as having
an astonishing state of
preservation except for a
small missing bit of the
top armillary sphere.
Number 30 in the
1980 Smithsonian
The Clockwork
Universe
, it sold
for $569,000.
Toby Woolley, head of Christie’s clock department,
appeared thrilled to be standing with the Bushmann
masterpiece. Based in London, Woolley was in New
York for the preview and sale. Frishman photo.
This circa 1680 month-du-
ration ebony long-case clock
by famed maker Joseph
Knibb had been in the
Wetherfield collection. Eric
Bruton’s book noted several
originality problems typical
of Wetherfield’s clocks that
often were severely restored,
some say “butchered.”
Selling under estimate at
$149,000, theKnibb retained
its waist door sticker from
New York dealer Arthur
S. Vernay, who purchased
nearly half of the famed
English collection. Weth-
erfield had strongly hoped
that all his clocks would
remain in England, not be
sold to “persistent Ameri-
can millionaires,” but we do
not know if the high bidder
is repatriating this example.
One of the few French clocks in the sale, this gilt-brass and copper striking
table clock by Nicolas Plantart is circa 1600 fromAbbeville. It was number 2 in
the 1972 Met exhibit and was pictured and described in Winthrop Edey’s 1967
book on French clocks when it was already in Guggenheim’s collection. Edey
noted that it signified a new square shape, superseding the older hexagonal
form. The engraved illustration portrays Christ meeting pilgrims on the road
to Emmaus. It brought $100,000.