Name: Edward Duffield
Brand: Bob Frishman
Price: 60.0 USD
Availability: InStock

Bob Frishman

Edward Duffield

$60.00

The first comprehensive study of the life and times of colonial Philadelphia clockmaker Edward Duffield

Edward Duffield (1730–1803) was a colonial Philadelphia clockmaker, whose elegant brass, mahogany, and walnut timekeepers stand proudly in major American museums and collections. Duffield, unlike other leather-apron ‘mechanics,’ was born rich and owned a country estate, Benfield, and many more properties. He was deeply involved in civic and church affairs during crucial years in American history—his lifelong close friend, Benjamin Franklin, was staying at Duffield’s Benfield estate when Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams first discussed the Declaration of Independence. Sally, Franklin’s daughter, brought her family there for extended periods during the Revolution and Franklin’s wife, Deborah, was best friends for fifty years with Duffield’s mother-in-law. Duffield was even one of three executors of Franklin’s will.

In this lavishly illustrated book, Bob Frishman catalogs and describes seventy-one known Duffield clocks and instruments and reveals how, during the mid-eighteenth century, they largely were not fabricated from scratch by isolated individuals. He contends that Duffield and his fellow clockmakers were not furniture-makers; they were mechanical artisans whose complex metal machines rang the hours and steadily ticked inside wooden cases made by others. Existing books on Philadelphia clocks have focused on these artifacts as furniture, including their woodwork, cabinetmakers, and decorative aspects. However, Frishman, a professional horologist for nearly four decades, brings his vast expertise to bear on this first comprehensive study of Duffield’s life and work.

Far more than a treatise on pre-industrial horological timekeeping, this book tells the compelling stories of a man, a city, and an era, while deepening our appreciation for Duffield’s stately sentinels—often a colonial American family’s most valuable possession—and the times and places in which their makers lived.

William Pettas

Sixteenth-Century Spanish Bookstore

$45.00

An article pub. in 1952 on early foreign printers in Burgos mentioned the existence in that city’s archives of a 1556 document concerning the shop of the printer-bookseller, Juan de Junta, an Italian by birth, son of the famous Florentine publisher Filippo di Giunta. The document is a legal contract written in 1556 by the notary Pedro de Espinosa for the lease of the Junta bookstore and print-shop in Burgos and also contains “a very interesting inventory of everything which was in the shop in that year.” Few contemporary documents give us as much primary evidence for the kinds of materials a 16th-cent. Spanish bookstore contained as this document does, for it provides the titles of all the books in the stock, the number of copies of each title, the costs of the individual books, in most cases the format of the book, and, in many cases, the city of publication or the name of the publisher.

Cover image for Sixteenth-Century Spanish Bookstore, isbn: 9780871694041

Murphy D. Smith

Due Reverence

$40.00

This vol. evolved from a tiny segment of the author’s study of the Cabinet of Curiosities of the Am. Philosophical Soc. (APS). One of the divisions of this Cabinet is “Objets d’Art” and he included furniture in this division. As time passed, awareness grew of several fascinating and valuable antiques in the Soc., begining with 1769. Most of the “objets” pertain to various presidents of the Soc., although a few are from members whose activity in the Soc. was memorable. Some items were purchased, also, or made, for the Soc. No work has been done hitherto on this furniture as a unitl. Several pieces are well known and have been researched at various times: Franklin’s library chair, the Rittenhouse astronomical timepiece, the chair which Jefferson purchased in Philadelphia in 1776 and used while he wrote the Declaration of Independence, for example. Little is known of most of the various artifacts, however, or their provenance. Photos.

Cover image for Due Reverence, isbn: 9780871692832

Bob Frishman

Edward Duffield

$60.00

The first comprehensive study of the life and times of colonial Philadelphia clockmaker Edward Duffield

Edward Duffield (1730–1803) was a colonial Philadelphia clockmaker, whose elegant brass, mahogany, and walnut timekeepers stand proudly in major American museums and collections. Duffield, unlike other leather-apron ‘mechanics,’ was born rich and owned a country estate, Benfield, and many more properties. He was deeply involved in civic and church affairs during crucial years in American history—his lifelong close friend, Benjamin Franklin, was staying at Duffield’s Benfield estate when Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams first discussed the Declaration of Independence. Sally, Franklin’s daughter, brought her family there for extended periods during the Revolution and Franklin’s wife, Deborah, was best friends for fifty years with Duffield’s mother-in-law. Duffield was even one of three executors of Franklin’s will.

In this lavishly illustrated book, Bob Frishman catalogs and describes seventy-one known Duffield clocks and instruments and reveals how, during the mid-eighteenth century, they largely were not fabricated from scratch by isolated individuals. He contends that Duffield and his fellow clockmakers were not furniture-makers; they were mechanical artisans whose complex metal machines rang the hours and steadily ticked inside wooden cases made by others. Existing books on Philadelphia clocks have focused on these artifacts as furniture, including their woodwork, cabinetmakers, and decorative aspects. However, Frishman, a professional horologist for nearly four decades, brings his vast expertise to bear on this first comprehensive study of Duffield’s life and work.

Far more than a treatise on pre-industrial horological timekeeping, this book tells the compelling stories of a man, a city, and an era, while deepening our appreciation for Duffield’s stately sentinels—often a colonial American family’s most valuable possession—and the times and places in which their makers lived.

Cover image for Edward Duffield, isbn: 9781606180105

Murphy D. Smith

Due Reverence

$40.00

This vol. evolved from a tiny segment of the author’s study of the Cabinet of Curiosities of the Am. Philosophical Soc. (APS). One of the divisions of this Cabinet is “Objets d’Art” and he included furniture in this division. As time passed, awareness grew of several fascinating and valuable antiques in the Soc., begining with 1769. Most of the “objets” pertain to various presidents of the Soc., although a few are from members whose activity in the Soc. was memorable. Some items were purchased, also, or made, for the Soc. No work has been done hitherto on this furniture as a unitl. Several pieces are well known and have been researched at various times: Franklin’s library chair, the Rittenhouse astronomical timepiece, the chair which Jefferson purchased in Philadelphia in 1776 and used while he wrote the Declaration of Independence, for example. Little is known of most of the various artifacts, however, or their provenance. Photos.

William Pettas

Sixteenth-Century Spanish Bookstore

$45.00

An article pub. in 1952 on early foreign printers in Burgos mentioned the existence in that city’s archives of a 1556 document concerning the shop of the printer-bookseller, Juan de Junta, an Italian by birth, son of the famous Florentine publisher Filippo di Giunta. The document is a legal contract written in 1556 by the notary Pedro de Espinosa for the lease of the Junta bookstore and print-shop in Burgos and also contains “a very interesting inventory of everything which was in the shop in that year.” Few contemporary documents give us as much primary evidence for the kinds of materials a 16th-cent. Spanish bookstore contained as this document does, for it provides the titles of all the books in the stock, the number of copies of each title, the costs of the individual books, in most cases the format of the book, and, in many cases, the city of publication or the name of the publisher.