20 October 2020
The Worshipful Company of Clockmakers and the British Museum historically hold annual horological lectures. The Worshipful Company of Clockmakers' lecture is named after the 18th century horologist John Harrison, who discovered the method of finding longitude at sea through the accurate measurement of time. The British Museum and Clockmakers' Company joint Lecture is presented in the name of Dr. Eric Dingwall and Reginald Gowan Beloe who generously left bequests which fund the annual lecture in their names. Both of these lectures are prestigious and present material that has not been published.
In 2020, we were delighted to have merged the lectures to welcome three speakers to talk about the subject of Proportion, Aesthetics and Beauty in watch, clock and sundial design, including discussion of "The beauty of asymmetry" and "the importance of spacing in clock and watch dial design".
09/02/20
Liveryman and Steward Sean Moran writes:
What a challenge this year has been for our Master. Has she let it get in the way of delivering a wonderful alternative programme for the Company? No.The Company had hoped to hold its Michaelmas Dinner and the annual Harrison* lecture this year only to be confounded by “the Rule of Six”.Whilst we were deprived of one of our usual convivial evenings of fellowship, we were not deprived of the Harrison lecture, indeed as a result of the Master’s determination to maximise virtual possibilities, we got so much more - not one lecture but three and not one lecturer, but three and all of them renowned experts in their field. How did we get to such a treat? The British Museum is currently not able to host events and the annual Dingwall-Beloe* lecture was also threatened. This was compounded by Oliver Cooke, Curator of Horology at The Museum, who orchestrates that lecture, being also furloughed from the Museum at this time.Clockmakers to the rescue - Oliver is also a Freeman of the Company and he graciously donated his time and worked with the Master to create a joint Harrison-Dingwall-Beloe lecture which was to be delivered virtually via zoom and this year was broadcast around the globe.
The subject of the lecture - Proportion Aesthetics and Beauty in watch, clock and sundial design - was inspired by a conversation between the Master and a member of the Court of Assistants, Dr Peter Thomas, on why some watch styles are immediately attractive and some or not and why Breguet’s asymmetric dials just sing out with wonder. A format was designed to deliver 3 “mini” lectures over an hour with time for questions and answers. As a result we were treated to a triumvirate of lecturers exploring the subject from their own specialist field.Firstly, the Master, who had stepped in to fill an unexpected gap, explored the present and past use of the“Golden section” in horology and shared images of her work to describe how she uses it in the design of the sundials she makes to commission and how it was used in the design of her studio, which apparently, makes visitors to it feel like they are taking a warm bath!
Next up was John Martineau the acclaimed geometer, a graduate and occasional lecturer at the Prince’s Foundation for Traditional Arts, editor of the Liberal Arts compendia QUADRIVIUM and TRIVIUM and publisher of the outstandingly beautiful “wooden books” series.Using some incredibly visual slides he discussed the overarching principles of proportion - harmonic, geometric and natural - demonstrating how principles of proportionality tie into symmetry, aesthetics and timekeeping, from minutes and seconds to the longer cycles of planetary orbits and precession.My favourite was the one below showing the Fibonacci sequence through the orbit of Venus around the Earth.
The more technical of my colleagues became very excited when John shared with them a new discovery,“The integrated Calendrical Solar System of the Ancient Maya” - you will have to watch the video of the lecture for more detail of that particular subject!Finally and by no means least Lee Yuen-Rapati, the much applauded watch designer treated us to the extraordinary detailed skill and thought behind the design and typographic principles as they relate to timepieces; I would never imagined I would have taken as much pleasure from an ink trap and a flared serif. I immediately signed up to follow his daily instagram illustrations @onehourwatch.The whole online event was masterfully orchestrated by Chris Mann of time4apint.com, using zoom technology. It was a zoom webinar and not a zoom meeting which meant that we were saved from those “embarrassing microphone moments” whilst still being able to send in our questions for live answers from each of the lecturers.I have to say, for me it was the first lecture I have attended that I have understood almost the whole way through! It informed, educated and entertained a global audience of well over four hundred people, including members of the Worshipful Company of Scientific Instrument Makers, The Art Workers Guild, The HandEngravers Association, The Prince’s Foundation, The Chelsea Arts Club and the European Boxwood andTopiary Society, not an easy task to pull off. It may well have been a British, even a World record for attendance at a horological event.An erudite and entertaining vote of thanks was given by the Master’s Consort, Sir George White, so good, it almost, but not quite, overshadowed the lecturers themselves! A tale of him using dental dividers that he had sent for, for which he was to use in his horological work for proportion, were used first to determine whether his Golden Retriever Phoebe had “Golden Proportion” - of course , she did. Sir George left us with the perfect quote from Orlando Gibbons (English composer, 1583-1625) to sum up the event:“It is proportion that beautifies everything, the whole universe consists of it, and music is measured by it”.
The Lecture can be viewed here on Youtube.
The Clockmaker 26th October
