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4: The Kitchen

Console clock

Late 17th century

Frisia (Netherlands)

Wood, pewter and brass

Installed in the Kitchen is a console clock produced in the late 17th or early 18th century in Frisia, the north-eastern part of the Netherlands. The open-work panel was cast in pewter and decorated with painting. The face of the clock has hours marked in Roman figures and minutes marked in Arabic ones.
Such Frisian clocks were a form of folk art. Clockmakers made only the mechanisms, while the decorative elements were created by members of peasant families. One family would specialize in working with wood, another in cutting brass, a third in casting lead. This was the first instance of division of labour in Europe.

 

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