Timepieces and Musical Mechanisms in the Collection of the State Hermitage

Экскурсия по маршруту открытого хранения

The new display in the Open Storage facility will presents some fifty masterpieces of the 16th–19th centuries from the stocks of the Hermitage. Primarily, they are timepieces in the broadest sense of the word – sundials and mechanical devices that include highly complicated astronomical clocks. The exhibits represent various stages in the development of horology and mechanical art in Russia and the countries of Europe, the evolution of conceptions of the purpose of timepieces and their artistic presentation. Mechanics is one of the oldest fields of learning, and mechanisms are a part of humanity’s technical culture that, along with pure science and artistic creativity, forms the overall concept of world culture. That is why the Hermitage, as an encyclopaedic museum, gives this sphere the attention due to it.

“This an innovative exhibition in the innovative setting of the Hermitage in Staraya Derevnya. One of the youngest laboratories, but already the recipient of a state prize, is presenting the results of its intricate labours, turned into an open-storage facility. The special method of presentation plunges visitors into the secret depths of museum life, where the restorers and curators accomplish miracles,” says Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage.

The earliest examples of the horologist’s art featured in the exhibition is a 16th-century German tabletop clock. At that time, it was in Germany, especially in the south – in the cities of Nuremberg and Augsburg, that the main centres producing portable tabletop timepieces developed. The example in the form of an architectural structure created by the Nuremberg maker Hans Gruber dates from the 1500s. In this timepiece, not only the case is richly decorated with engraving, but also the steel plates in the mechanism, one of which carries a depiction of the biblical Sacrifice of Isaac. Besides the usual mechanical timepiece, the case also has a sundial concealed within it. It is located on the inside of one of the side panels. For many visitors, the tabletop clock in the form of a crucifix will be a revelation – today such a design for a timepiece strikes us as extraordinary. Such articles came into quite widespread use in Germany from the early 17th century: the hands were firmly fixed to the case, while it was the dial that moved in order to tell the exact time.

The 18th century is represented in the display by almost 20 exhibits produced in various parts of Europe. A large marquetry floor clock from the first half of the 1700s was produced by the Amsterdam-based maker Adriaen van Turenbout. The typically Dutch case, with a massive lower part, is richly decorated with inlaid veneer. Besides hour, minute and second hands, the craftsman included two calendars within the dial. The first is an ordinary one, showing the month, day and date; the second is a lunar calendar that shows the phases of the Moon and the day of the lunar month. Beneath the dial, the maker placed a painted scene on the theme of Perseus and Andromeda. Many parts of this picture (such as the little ships or the waves of the sea) are in constant motion as long as the clock is running. Indications of the lunar calendar and phases of the Moon were common in that period, not only in Holland, but in other countries as well. In the second half of the 18th century, for example, the French maker Louis Poiret produced a clock for an Italian client (indicated by the inscription in that language). A large portion of the case at the front is taken up by the dial, which shows not only the time, day of the week, month and season, but also the current sign of the zodiac, phases of the Moon with a lunar calendar, the times of sunrise and sunset.

The horological art of Russian makers is presented in a fairly full and detailed manner in the exhibition. Visitors to the new display will encounter a spherical sundial created by two craftsmen of the Instrument-Making Chamber of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences – Isaac Bruckner and Piotr Osipovich Golynin. This masterpiece was presented to Empress Anna Ioannovna in 1735. A sundial is a device that actually measures time (in distinction from mechanical or clockwork timepieces that “keep” time) and right up until the invention of the high-precision chronometer mechanical clocks would be checked against the solar version. The name of another Russian empress is associated with a mahogany tabletop clock made in 1792 by the celebrated English firm Gravell & Tolkien. The case carries the engraved inscription: “By a Special Command of Her Majesty Catherine II Empress of Russia”. A little explanatory plate made specially for the Russian user states in quaint language: “If the pendulum stops should tug the spring.” The craftsmen incorporated into the timepiece an organ that could play a variety of tunes, the titles of which were shown on the dial.

An example of high-precision clockmaking in 1850s Saint Petersburg is provided in the exhibition by the “regulator” wall clock produced in the workshop of Bernhard Florian. Timepieces of this sort were used in astronomical observatories and in other fields of scientific research. These “reference clocks” with an exceptionally accurate mechanism might go a full year between windings. A similar regulator, also from Florian’s workshop, was installed in the Winter Palace and acted as “chief timekeeper” for the imperial residence.

Two timepieces serve to characterize a very important stage in the evolution of the “mechanical arts” in Russia – both creations of graduates of the clock class of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts in the last quarter of the 18th century. One is a large marble portal clock with a mechanism designed by Alexei Filippovich Gladky (who went on to become the head of the Academy’s clock class). The second is a small clock with an exceptionally elegant mahogany case decorated in the églomisé technique, with a mechanism that has been hypothetically identified as the work of Peter Nordsteen, the first head of the clock class, and also head of clock factories in Dubrovno and Kupavna.

In 2022, the 350th anniversary of the birth of Peter the Great is being widely celebrated in Russia. The exhibition “Timepieces and Musical Mechanisms in the Collection of the State Hermitage” includes two mantel clocks devoted to Russia’s first emperor. The Bronze Horseman clock is a free reproduction in that metal of the famous monument created by Etienne Maurice Falconet. The piece was made by the well-known Russian bronzesmith Ivan (Johann) Dipner in the 1830s. In creating it, the craftsman slightly altered the proportions of Falconet’s design, following the special laws governing artistic bronzes. The model for this timepiece was probably developed specially to be shown at the Moscow Industrial Exhibition. Dipner presented the clock to Emperor Nicholas I in 1836. It was installed in one of the rooms of the Imperial Hermitage, but moved only a year later to the Winter Palace, to the schoolrooms of Tsesarevich Alexander Nikolayevich, the future Alexander II. The Hermitage collection includes a watercolour by Nikanor Chernetsov depicting one of those rooms, where the Bronze Horseman clock can clearly be made out standing beneath a glass dome on a large table. Models for mantel clocks featuring Peter I intended for the Russian market were also produced by French craftsmen. They might subsequently have been copied by domestic makers as well. Such pieces include the ormolu clock featuring a bust of Peter with two winged female figures holding a wreath above his head.

The exhibition presents not only European timepieces that are more or less familiar to people today, but also examples of oriental mechanisms. A 19th-century Japanese clock catches the attention. Mechanical timepieces were brought to Japan by Dutch traders in the 16th century. The first Japanese clocks simply imitated European designs, but later they were adapted to the local system of reckoning time which had six daytime periods and six nighttime periods in each cycle. The daytime “hours” were counted from sunrise, the nighttime ones from sunset. The daytime “hours” were therefore longer in summer and shorter in winter. Clocks would chime between four and nine times (the first three strokes did not indicate the “hour”, but rather served as a signal for the start of prayers). At sunrise and sunset, the clocks struck six. Each “hour” had a corresponding animal from the Oriental zodiac. The rat, for example, was midnight, the rabbit daybreak, the horse midday and the cockerel nightfall. This method of reckoning time persisted in Japan until 1873, when the country changed to the western system of timekeeping and the Gregorian calendar.

The exhibition “Timepieces and Musical Mechanisms in the Collection of the State Hermitage” is the result of joint work between the museum’s researchers and restorers. The display presents items from the stocks of three Hermitage departments. Behind each of the works there is a story of study, at times lengthy scholarly searches, refinement of the attributions and datings. Some pieces have come down to us in good working order; others required restoration and reconstruction of their mechanisms. The Laboratory for the Scientific Restoration of Timepieces and Musical Mechanisms has existed in the Hermitage for almost 30 years now. Over those decades, its staff have restored more than 500 exhibits, some of which will be featured in the exhibition. It is important to note that the display is at the same time an open-storage facility – exhibits may be removed for restoration, transferred to another exhibition in the Hermitage or beyond. In that event they will be replaced by others close in terms of date and style. This sort of “living” display format makes it possible to acquaint visitors to the Staraya Derevnya Restoration and Storage Centre with the characteristics of internal museum life.

The exhibition curators are Anastasia Anatolyevna Kudrina, junior researcher in the Department of Western European Applied Art, Grigory Borisovich Yastrebinsky, senior researcher in the Department of Russian Culture, and Mikhail Petrovich Guryev, head of the Laboratory for the Scientific Restoration of Timepieces and Musical Mechanisms.