The ormolu and patinated bronze case has cove moldings top and bottom, block feet and supports the large movement above.

The engine-turned silvered dial has painted Roman numerals for the hours and ormolu Breguet-style hands.

The large horizontally oriented two week time and strike movement has thick plates, massive screwed posts, long steel screwed hold-downs with large knurled ormolu heads and a dead-beat escapement with jeweled pallets. Within the case is the motion work, mounted behind the dial and driven from above, and the bell that is struck by torsion. The compensating grid-iron pendulum is suspended by a steel spring, adjusted for fast slow from above, has a screwed beat adjustment off the crutch and hangs down into the case.

The original spring has numerous inscriptions that include the date the spring was finished, ‘juin 1833’ and also several repair dates that include ‘Clean’d New York 1843 JNB’ and ‘J. Buchanan at WM Moir March 13, 1883’.

William Moir (1826-1896) was a prominent jeweler who emigrated from Scotland to New York in 1835. He became a journeyman to Emmet Pell and subsequently, upon Pell’s retirement in 1844, bought and ran the business at 315 Hudson St. with his brother John. In 1870, after his brother retired, William Moir commissioned a five-story, cast-iron-clad structure (Theodore A. Tribit, architect) for his own business at No. 711 [originally 373] Sixth Avenue, at the southwest corner of West 23rd Street. Moir’s business in 1872 included a fine selection of French clocks and bronzes, specially imported by him.

For a similar clock see:
‘La Pendule Francaise’ by Kjellberg, pg.315.