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Ref: CK-29 Longcase Clock

Clockmaker/By : Thomas Ore of Birmingham.

Duration : 8 Day

Circa : 1785

Height : 92 inches

Case :
Typical Midlands style with long wavy top door.
Swan neck with original brass paterae.
Oak, medium colour.
Mahogany turned pillars to hood with Corinthian brass capitals.
Mahogany reeded quarter columns to trunk with Corinthian brass capitals.
Canted corners to base.
Ogee feet.
Width at widest point is 21.5ins (hood base).

Movement/Dial :
Painted arched dial with rolling moon.
Wilson dial featuring roses and strawberries in the spandrels.
Arch dial 18.0 ins by 12.75 ins.
Matching steel hour and minute hands.
Aperture calendar mouth.

Maker :
Thomas Ore was a renowned clock maker who made the turret clock for St. Phillip's Cathedral in Birmingham. He was a member of the Lunar Society who met in Soho, Handsworth each Lunar month at the home of Matthew Boulton. Josiah Wedgwood, John Whitehurst of Derby and other leading industrialists of the day were members of the Society. In view of the travel involved they elected to meet on full Lunar moonlit nights.

Thomas Ore was apprenticed to John Baddeley of Tong, Shropshire and his known working dates are:
New Chapel, Wolverhampton 1759-77
Newmarket Row, Gt.Charles St., Birmingham 1779-86

In 1780 James Keir, a fellow member of the Lunar Society, and friend of Matthew Boulton wrote to his friend " I forward you a letter from the Duke of Northumberland concerning a clock which I suppose you will decline undertaking unless you choose to get Ore to make it …". Such was the esteem in which Ore was held.

Boulton had began making clocks which were housed in ormolu cases and rivalled French clocks for beauty.

He married Jane Phillips of St Nicholas, Worcester, at Wellington, Shropshire in 1760. His children were all baptised at Tong: Joseph 1763; Ann1765 buried 1766. He made a sundial for St. Bartholomew's, Tong signed Tho.Ore, 1776 which was fixed to the church but which was stolen in the 1990's.

Thomas Ore died in December 1786 and his wife continued the business but in 1789 the Birmingham Gazette records the sale of "the working told and unfinished clockwork etc belonging to the late Mr Thomas Ore, clock & watchmaker in Great Charles Street."

Guarantee : 12 months.