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Oak Eight-Day Longcase
Longcase clocks

Oak Eight-Day Longcase

Eight-day movement, anchor escapement, 2 040 mm case in country oak. Came out of a house in Grahamstown with the seatboard packed up on offcuts and the case standing a good ten millimetres out of plumb. Fully stripped and rebushed here, the hood re-fitted, and it has held to within a minute a week against the wall since March. It wants a solid wall and a level floor, and I deliver and set it up myself rather than putting it on a courier.

R48 000.00Add to cart
Mahogany Arched-Hood Longcase
Longcase clocks

Mahogany Arched-Hood Longcase

Eight-day movement, rack striking on a bell, 2 260 mm case in flame mahogany. The best case I have had through the workshop in three years — the original stringing is all there and all three finials are still on the hood, which almost never happens. Weights and pendulum are original to it. The movement was sound and has been cleaned rather than rebuilt, and the old plate marks have been left alone. Delivered and set up by me.

R86 000.00Add to cart
Vienna Wall Regulator
Regulators

Vienna Wall Regulator

Weight-driven movement, wooden-rod pendulum, 1 180 mm ebonised case. The glass is all sound and the crest has never been repaired, which is rarer than the movement is. It wants a solid wall — brick, not drywall — and about ten minutes of setting up to get the beat even. Once it is level it keeps better time than anything else in the shop.

R22 500.00Add to cart
Brass Bulkhead Clock
Ship’s clocks

Brass Bulkhead Clock

Platform escapement, eight-day run, 205 mm brass case. Off a coaster that worked the coast out of East London, and the tarnish has been left on it because that is the honest state of the thing. Cleaned and re-oiled, glass sound, bezel closing properly. It takes knocks better than anything else here and it will hang on four screws in a passage without complaining.

R7 900.00Add to cart
Gilt Carriage Clock
Carriage clocks

Gilt Carriage Clock

Lever platform escapement, 165 mm with the handle down, English corniche case. All five bevels are intact and the handle still swings properly on its pins, which is where most of these have been fiddled with. Cleaned and adjusted, and it keeps time well enough to live on a desk instead of behind glass in a cabinet. It comes in its own travelling case.

R16 500.00Add to cart
Full Strip-Down and Overhaul
Restoration

Full Strip-Down and Overhaul

Longcase, bracket and wall movements, six to eight weeks, collected and returned anywhere in the Cape. Every movement comes apart to the last pin, gets pegged out, gets rebushed wherever the pivots have worn oval, and goes back together with fresh oil. Then it runs on my wall for a fortnight before it goes home, because a movement that behaves on the bench does not always behave in a house. The price is for a standard eight-day movement; a repeating or musical train costs more and I will tell you before I start.

R9 800.00Add to cart

Not furniture.

Everything on this page has a movement in it that somebody cut by hand before there were machines to cut them with, and every one of those movements will run for another two hundred years if it is looked after and stop inside a month if it is not. A longcase is not a cabinet with a face stuck on the front of it. It is a machine that has to stand plumb, hang square and be wound on the same day every week, and the case is only the box the machine lives in. That is the whole of the work here: get the movement right, then get the case right, then leave the two of them alone.

Rehoused.

Eight-day longcase, Tulbagh
Eight-day longcase, Tulbagh
Mahogany longcase, Graaff-Reinet
Mahogany longcase, Graaff-Reinet
Vienna regulator, Woodstock
Vienna regulator, Woodstock
Regulator, NG kerk, Riebeek-Kasteel
Regulator, NG kerk, Riebeek-Kasteel
Bracket clock, Parktown North
Bracket clock, Parktown North
Longcase, Franschhoek wine estate
Longcase, Franschhoek wine estate

At the bench

I served four years under a Swiss-trained clockmaker in Salt River from 1998, doing tower clocks and church dials, and opened this workshop in Observatory in 2004. The bench in that photograph is where the actual work happens: mainsprings hanging on the wall in order of size, a loupe I have had longer than the business, and a jar of pivot broaches that gets opened every single day. Nothing here goes through an ultrasonic bath and straight back together. A movement comes apart to the last pin, gets pegged out by hand, gets rebushed wherever the pivots have worn oval, and goes back with fresh oil — six to eight weeks of work, most of which is waiting. In twenty-two years I have not yet had one through here that I could not get running again.

Come and see it running

The workshop is at 14 Trill Road, Observatory, open Tuesday to Friday, 9h00–16h00. Come and stand in front of the thing first — nobody should buy a clock they have not heard running.