Enfilade

I’m sorry to have missed the first half of the series; the last two talks take place in March and April. –CH

Tempus Fugit / Time Flies: Measuring, Perceiving, and Living Time in Early America

Online, Historic Deerfield, Sundays: 26 January, 23 February, 30 March, 27 April 2025

Tall Clock, detail, by Aaron Willard of Boston for Asa Stebbins of Deerfield, Massachusetts, ca. 1799 (Historic Deerfield).

Early New Englanders frequently invoked the passage of time in religious terms, but the ‘horological revolution’ of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced technological developments in timepieces that complemented older cultural views of time. These developments went on to play an important role in the standardization of timekeeping, the rise of market economies, and industrialization. Sundials, mechanical clocks, and pocket watches were not only scientific marvels but also style-bearing objects that displayed refinement. Such objects provide suggestive windows into everyday life, especially when we broaden our sense of the many different objects and practices that marked the passage of time for diverse early Americans. This series features speakers who will address both the abstract and material nature of time found not only in clocks but also in other objects and processes central to life in early New England such as brewing, needlework, husbandry, farming, and cooking. Together the presentations will complicate our sense of what the passage of time meant for early New Englanders who had more than one way to ‘keep’ and ‘spend’ time. All lectures are free of charge and will be presented virtually via Zoom webinar. Registration required.

January 26, 2pm
Bob Frishman | Edward Duffield and Colonial American Clockmaking

Bob Frishman has professionally repaired nearly 8,000 timepieces and sold more than 1,700 vintage clocks and watches. In recent years, he has reduced his clock-repair activities and now devotes his time to research, writing, and lecturing. He has organized horology-related conferences at the Winterthur Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Henry Ford Museum, the Museum of the American Revolution, and the Horological Society of New York; he was also an organizer of the 2019 Time Made in Germany symposium in Nuremberg. Along with more than 100 articles and reviews, his recent book on the Philadelphia clockmaker Edward Duffield was published by the American Philosophical Society Press in 2024.

February 23, 2pm
Alexandra Macdonald | ‘Regard Not Time, but This Sign’: Recipes and Embodied Knowledge

Alexandra M. Macdonald is an historian of labour and the body with a particular interest in embodied knowledge and practices of making in the Atlantic world in the eighteenth century. As part of her research, she is interested in using period specific ingredients and methods to recreate historical craft and culinary recipes, for example indigo vats and preserved food. Alexandra has received a number of fellowships to support her research, including a fellowship from the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium which brought her to Deerfield. Most recently she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library where she worked closely with conservation scientists to analyze a canvaswork embroidery made in Connecticut in the mid-eighteenth century. She is currently the Social Science and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at Brock University where she is working on a book length study of indigo in the Atlantic world.

March 30, 2pm
Sara Schechner | Marking Time during the American Revolutionary Period: Sundials and Clocks

Sara J. Schechner is the David P. Wheatland Curator of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University.

April 27, 2pm
Elizabeth Bacon Eager | Mastering Time: Slavery, Self-Sovereignty, and the 18th-C. Clockmaker

Elizabeth Bacon Eager is an assistant professor of art history at Southern Methodist University, where she teaches courses on early American art, architecture, and material culture. Exploring intersections between art, science, and technology of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Atlantic World, she is particularly interested in questions of materiality and process and fascinated by the reconstruction of historical tools and techniques. Her current research examines the material culture of time in early America, with a particular focus on objects and images produced by Black, Indigenous, and female makers. Dr. Eager’s work has been published in The Art Bulletin, Journal18, and Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art.