"....It was bought on the morn of the day he was born...", one of the manifold charms antique furniture has is its' ability to transport you to past times merely by its presence in your life. Such is the charmed hold my two longcase clocks have on me. One, a solid mahogany-beveled glass paneled Edwardian gem, was purchased at W.J. Sloane and Company by my maternal great-grandparents sometime after the great fire had destroyed their house. The elegant clock stood for its first 65 year's in the hallway of 519 Castro Street, the Victorian set of flats above one of their stores, which become their main residence after they choose to cut their house on Baker Street into units in response to the massive housing shortage post '06. The new homes location in the than country, belied the furnishings and fittings of the interior. San Francisco was still very much a gentleman's adventure pre-World War 1 and gentleman had longcase clocks, study's, dining room, a formal parlor and back parlor. The rooms may have been liliputan in size compared to the massive scale of the Nabob mansions but the furniture, art and endless amounts of bric-a-brac would, at least in this instance, did not have pail in modesty had any comparison been made.
It has stood in elegant silence in my front foyer for the last 40's years. It has silently witnessed the maturation of several generations as well as the passing of several. It's use as a lucky touchstone by my grandmother, who would touch one of it's wood columns for luck as she passed on her increasingly infrequent strolls through the house, has long ended and its deep resounding chime has been silent even longer still. The beloved heirloom is mostly an elegant reminder of past times, a cherished relic of a beloved branch of my family. It also foils rather well my George the Second, George the Third and Federal period pieces. It's a great layer in a roomful of 4 centuries of fine furniture, ( the 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st centuries all being represented).
In the mornings I awake in my bedroom suite the first thing I recognize is the refined elegance of the George the Third longcase clock standing against the far wall from my bed. It's highly polished wood gleaming in the morning light. I never fail to smile when I see it. I've no idea who originally owned it and I love playing a story game which has no end of versions but will start with. I was made in the year 1783, than any number of versions of the following... of loyalist flight from newly independent Unites States, bought by a loyalist American to furnish his new London townhouse on the day his son was born and given to his son on the day his son was born when Waterloo ended the Wars started when Louis was King and given to his son on the day he married in the year that Victoria ascended the throne, than passed to a daughter on her wedding day the year Albert died, and left to a nephew upon her death the year Shaw opened his first play in London, than given to a grandchild the year Victoria died to mark the birth of a son who married the year the treaty of Vesailles was signed who presented it to his son upon downsizing from the manor house to a bedsit in Brighton the year Ireland ended its's love affair with English Royalty and India was no longer the Empire. Who in turn gave it to a grandchild that found it all to dark and had it auctioned off to purchase a Eurobox! Which caused it to be bought by me in the year a sailor landed in my life when the second boom of the 21st century was in flower!
It has its spell and I adore it!
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