Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in great bright condition. Some light marking due to age. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> This book based entirely on newly-researched material is the history of 700 years of the clock and watchmaking trade in an important English provincial city. It includes extensive extracts from historic archives and from early West Country newspapers. The top Exeter clockmakers such as Ambrose Hawkins Jacob Lovelace and several generations of the Upjohn family were superb craftsmen and clocks which are outstanding by provincial standards are illustrated. Biographical details are given on more than 300 former makers many of whom emerge not just as names in a reference book but as real people. Of unusual interest are the lengthy extracts from the unpublished Memoirs of the Exeter watchmaker and jeweller Henry Ellis who was born in 1790. These give a first-hand account of his harsh days as an apprentice his experiences in the watch-finishing trade in Clerkenwell and his subsequent business career in Exeter which culminated in him and his son manufacturing articles from Devonshire silver and being appointed silversmiths in ordinary to Queen Victoria. (LL)