Benjamin Vulliamy, Clockmaker to the King from 1773, was closely involved in the production and development of a new type of mantel ornamental clock case in the 1780s, in which high quality gilt bronze was combined with finely modelled biscuit porcelain figures. In an attempt to surpass French biscuit porcelain production and to promote English manufacture, Vulliamy collaborated with William Duesbury of Derby in the employment of artists capable of producing small-scale sculpture of the finest quality in the most up-to-date neo-classical idiom. He engaged the interest of the royal family in pursuit of this aim, showing a Derby biscuit head from a clock case figure to Queen Charlotte, the Princesses and the Prince of Wales in February 1787. They were ‘pleased to express great satisfaction at seeing it and were glad to see the improvement we were making in this Country’, as he reported to Duesbury.

Possibly as a result of this demonstration, Vulliamy was commissioned to make this elegant neo-classical ‘temple’ clock for Queen Charlotte: the King and Prince of Wales already each possessed at least one Vulliamy clock with a Derby biscuit figure ornamenting the case. The case is of white marble surmounted by ormolu vases and the clock case which itself is surmounted by a stylised finial. It rests on a semi circular canopy supported by four columns with ormolu capitals and bases. Under the canopy is a female figure in biscuit porcelain playing a flute with, at her feet, a gilded scroll of music. The original movement was replaced in 1845. Vulliamy number 1694.

An earlier version of the ‘temple’ design, produced in 1787-8, included a Derby figure modelled by C.F. Rossi of a girl sacrificing. Rossi proved unsatisfactory and for the figure of Euterpe, the Muse of Lyric Poetry or Music, Duesbury and Vulliamy engaged the Swiss-born sculptor J.J.W. Spängler in 1790.

The clock was originally in Queen Charlotte’s Dressing Room at Buckingham House. Its original watch movement was replaced in 1845 by Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy with an eight-day timepiece with a fusee movement and ½ dead beat escapement. The silvered and engine turned dial has the 12 hours represented in Roman numerals with blued steel moon hands.

Catalogue entry adapted from George III & Queen Charlotte: Patronage, Collecting and Court Taste, London, 2004