Tall Clock

Tall Clock

Movement: Benjamin Chandlee (1723–1791)

Case: John Janvier (1749–1801)

Head of Elk (Elkton), Maryland, ca. 1770

Brass works; mahogany, tulip poplar, pine

Museum purchase; 2009.9

John Janvier’s trade label is inside the waist of this clock. It indicates that Janvier made this clock shortly after his Philadelphia apprenticeship, when he established a cabinetmaking business at the top of the Chesapeake Bay. This label dates the clock as the earliest known example of Delaware’s soon-to-be most famous furniture-maker. John Janvier settled a few years later in Cantwell’s Bridge, now Odessa, Delaware, where he enjoyed an illustrious career while training the next two generations of Delaware’s finest cabinetmakers.