Exhibition | Handel and Charles Clay’s Musical Clocks
From the Handel House:
Handel and Charles Clay’s Musical Clocks
Handel House Museum, London, 20 November 2013 — 23 February 2014
In the 1730s Handel provided music for a series of clocks created by watch and clockmaker Charles Clay. These beautiful machines, which incorporated automata, paintings, sculptures, furniture and gold and silver work by some of the finest artisans in London, also included chimes and pump organs that played extended musical excerpts from popular operas and sonatas.
This exhibition provides the opportunity to view a Clay clock from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in an intimate Georgian setting which recalls the context in which such new inventions were originally viewed in the clockmaker’s own home. It will be joined by a gilt bronze relief from another Clay clock on loan from the V&A, and a manuscript of Handel’s clock tunes from the British Library. In addition, a recording of the music from a Clay clock in a private collection demonstrates the earliest ‘recordings’ of Handel’s music made during his lifetime.
For more information about the Kensington Palace clock, view a video here. For details of the Windsor clock, click here.
The exhibition is kindly supported by the A.C.H.Crisford Charitable Foundation.
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Additional information and images are available from the Handel House; also see a posting at the Antiquarian Horological Society’s blog The Story of Time.
Spring 2014 at the Bard Graduate Center
Details for upcoming events are available at the BGC Calendar:
As part of the Bard Graduate Center’s commitment to making our innovative programming more widely available and so shaping the global discourse about the cultural history of the material world, we will be live-streaming our seminar series and symposia on the BGC’s channel. We look forward to seeing you on West 86th Street in New York City for these events; however, for those of you who can’t attend in person, we look forward to your watching us live online.
February 11, 6:00–7:30
Conservation Conversations
Francesca Brewer, “Material Matters: Early Scientific Inquiry in Archaeology and Art”
Laurent Olivier, “Henri Hubert Between Durkheim and Mauss: The Visual Reconstruction of Archaeological Time”
February 12, 6:00–7:30
William Stenhouse, “Conserving Relics of the Classical Past: Civic Bodies and the Preservation of Antiquities in the Renaissance”
February 19, 6:00–7:30
Lara Penin, “Design Futures: Service Design for Social Innovation”
February 25, 6:00–7:30
Birgitt Borkopp-Restle, “How To Do Things with Textiles: Marie Antoinette at the Courts of Vienna and Versailles”
March 5, 10:00–5:45
Symposium | “The Material Text in Pre-Modern and Early Modern Europe”
March 25, 6:00–7:30
Alexander Marr, “Early Modern Instrument Aesthetics”
April 1, 6:00–7:30
Max Tillmann, “Les derniers goûts de France: Elector Max Emanuel and French Decorative Arts about 1715″
April 3, 9:00–5:30
Symposium | “Material Reformations: Towards a Material Culture of Protestantism”
April 9, 6:00–7:30
Glenn Wharton, “The Painted King: Art, Activism, and Authenticity in Hawai’i”
April 11, 9:00–5:00
“Objects and Power: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Medieval Islamic Material Culture”
April 14, 1:30–5:00
Symposium | “Woven Worlds: The Social Lives of Andean Textiles”
April 23, 6:00–7:30
Nathan Schlanger, “Material Culture: The Concept and its Use in Historical Perspective”
April 24, 6:00–7:30
Conservation Conversations | Judith Olszowy-Schlanger & Michelle Chesner, “Case Study in Collaboration: Conserving Thousands of Lost Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts”
April 25, 9:00–5:00
Symposium | “Mapping New York”
April 29, 6:00–7:30
Ines Rotermund-Reynard, “Beads and Buttons from Briare: A Global Industrial Success Story from 19th-Century France”
May 9, 9:00–6:00
Symposium | Day 1: “History and Material Culture: World Perspectives
May 10, 9:00–6:00
Symposium | Day 2: “History and Material Culture: World Perspectives”
May 15, 6:00–7:30
Symposium Keynote: “Majolica: A World View”
May 16, 9:00–6:00
Symposium | “Majolica: A World View”
Enfilade 
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