152. $200
Ansonia Brass Co. “OOG” with Seem calendar dial, ca. 1869. This clock is unusual in several respects: It has an Ansonia Brass Co. label – this company was formed in 1854 and ran until
1869, when it was superseded by the Ansonia Brass & Copper Co. Ansonia Brass Co. was a shortened name for the Ansonia Brass
& Battery Co. There are only a few examples of clocks with this label, as most used the full name of the company (AB&BC). Second, it has the rare Seem calendar dial; Josiah K Seem was a teacher and jeweler who had a fascination for making calendar mechanisms. In 1882 he founded the Macomb Calendar Clock Co. in Macomb, Il, which made more complicated calendar mechanisms than found in this
early example (likely made around 1869). This calendar works on a simple mechanism in which a pin on the back of the hour hand
advances a star gear on the back of the dial once every 12 hours, which moves the day wheel forward. Two revolutions of the
hour hand (24 hours) moves the day wheel forward one day and also advances the date wheel one day. There is also a month wheel
at the bottom of the dial that shows the number of days in the month; this wheel does not advance with the time and must be rotated
by hand to show the current month. This is not a perpetual calendar and has to be adjusted each month, but it is ingeniously
simple and the calendar dial can be added to any clock. You can read more about Seem and his calendars in Ly, Calendar Clocks,
on pages 226-233; this exact clock is shown on page 229 from when Mr. Larry Funk owned it.
The OOG case is 18.5 inches tall
with good, grained mahogany or rosewood veneer on the front and sides; note some minor losses on the trim piece at the top right. The finish is old, as are both glasses, with much of the tablet retained. This small OOG is shown on page 431 of Ly’s book on
Ansonia Clocks; it hold an unsigned 30-hour time-and-strike movement that is running and striking on the wire gong, and the calendar
dials are advancing. As noted, there is a good label inside. I can find no sales examples for this model, but they may
be out there. In the meantime, I’ll start this rare example at $200. $200–$500.
Antique American Clocks JANUARY 2024
