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Abraham and David Roentgen were renowned German cabinetmakers whose workshop was famed throughout Europe for its exquisite marquetry work and complex mechanical devices. Proportioned for a stately public room or library, this musical clock is likely to have been the first Roentgen object to reach the United States, belonging to Gouverneur Morris, one of the nation’s founding fathers. Not only does it tell time, but it also displays the interior works, which are hidden in most clocks.
This clock, from The Nemours Foundation, is featured in the exhibition Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens (on view October 30, 2012–January 27, 2013).
David Roentgen: Long-Case Clock
The Roentgens' Berlin Secretary Cabinet
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Rolltop Desk by David Roentgen: Demonstration
(00:02:17) 18103 views
Rolltop Desk by David Roentgen: Animation
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Dinner fork (one of twelve)
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This artwork is not on display
Marking:  IT monogram in shaped punch (maker's mark);
 X in square (date letter for 1727-28);
 E P in shaped punch (mark of assay master Edward Penman);
 another; partial strike (three-towered castle Edinburgh town mark)
Location of marks:
- on underside of body inside foot ring.
Major Ian Shaw of Tordarroch, M.B.A. (until 1983; sale, Christie's and Edminston's, Glasgow, March 29 , 1983, no. 83)
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