Tall Clock (c. 1880): Art, History and Details

Tall Clock (c. 1880) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Tiffany & Co. (America, New York, est. 1837).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In 1879, Louis Comfort Tiffany joined several other artisans to create an interior decoration firm called Associated Artists. The firm was very influential in advocating a rejection of historical styles in favor of the new fashion from more eclectic sources of inspiration, including the Islamic world and Japan. One of Tiffany's partners, Lockwood De Forest, traveled extensively in India to find carved wood and other decorative accessories that could be used in their designs. This clock's design was one result of this collaboration. The heavily carved panels on the clock were likely purchased in India during this time and assembled with a clock mechanism from Tiffany's father's shop, Tiffany and Co., whose name appears on the clock face.

Object facts

• Title: Tall Clock
• Date: c. 1880
• Creator attribution: Tiffany & Co. (America, New York, est. 1837)
• Culture: America, New York
• Type: Furniture and woodwork
• Technique: mahogany, teak with dial faces of gilded and patinated metal, glass
• Dimensions: Overall: 247.3 x 66 x 36.5 cm (97 3/8 x 26 x 14 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Furniture
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1992.70

A detail from the museum

Associated Artists assembled this clock using imported carved wood panels from India. For an American owner, the motifs suggested decorative styles from faraway places.

Collection credit

The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. "The Year in Review for 1992." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (1993): 38-79.
• Hawley, Henry. "An Indo-American Tall Clock." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 4 (1993): 170-73.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.