Clock

This clock was manufactured for Liberty & Co., whose pewter homewares were very popular in the early 1900s. The sparsely applied decoration, using stylised natural forms and blue enamelwork, are characteristic of Archibald Knox’s influential design work for Liberty’s.

The ‘Tudric’ pewter range was launched by Liberty’s in 1901 as an affordable alternative to their successful ‘Cymric’ range of silverware. Liberty worked in partnership with W.H. Haseler to develop a metal alloy that replicated ‘the best of old English pewter’. [1] In contrast to the hand-finished Cymic silver range, Tudric pewterwares were produced in large quantities, using iron moulds.

Archibald Knox began working for Liberty’s in the late 1890s, designing homewares, fabrics and jewellery. His designs for the Tudric and Cymric ranges in the early 1900s were informed by his specialist knowledge of Celtic art and played an important role in the Celtic revival in the arts in this period. [2]

The Andersons purchased this clock from an antique shop in Aldeburgh in 1963, along with two pewter candlesticks. [3] Other related items in the Anderson Collection include a tobacco box and decanter from the Tudric range and a selection of jewellery designed by Archibald Knox for Liberty’s.

Lisa Newby, May 2020

[1] Quote from a 1904 lecture by Arthur Lasenby Liberty on ‘Pewter and the Revival of its Use’. See Barbara Morris, Liberty Design (London: Pyramid Books, 1989), p.91.

[2] Greenhalgh, Paul, ed., Art Nouveau 1890-1914, (London: V&A Publications, 2000), p.50.

[3] Alice Millington-Drake, ‘A Love of Collecting: The Andersons and Art Nouveau’ in The Anderson Collection of Art Nouveau, ed. By Amanda Geitner and Emma Hazell (Norwich: Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, 2003), p.16.