That’s Charles Frances Annesley Voysey, of course, the English architect and designer. Some 120 years ago he was also a major player in the Arts & Crafts movement’s response to the perceived vacuousness of Victorian factory wares. A member of the Arts Worker’s Guild, C.F.A. Voysey designed buildings, wallpaper, fabric and furniture over a long career. Refusing all attempts to be lumped with pre-existing categories he developed a particularly British aesthetic that shaped the efforts of many who would follow. In short, he was big. Many of his buildings still stand but his work, today, is largely appreciated in museums with some residual demand for wallpaper and small furniture reproductions.

My current interest is in one of his clocks. Around the turn of the twentieth century Voysey conceived a couple of shelf clocks that have since become design icons. On first impression these cases appear downright Dr. Seussian but upon closer examination their statements (and beauty) come through.

For this Project, I was looking to make an heirloom clock as a gift for my niece Hannah and her fiancé Jake on the occasion of their upcoming nuptials, and the dark wood specimen shown above caught my attention. Minus the three-tiered “superstructure”, this would still be an impressive clock and one that might situate itself better with surrounding keepsakes on a mantle. Poking around on the internet for a better picture I happened upon a specially commissioned version of this clock, constructed sans steeple, for sale at a high-end British antique gallery. Dating from 1921, it is reputed to be Voysey’s final clock and came complete with a 100 year-old, hand-drawn diagram as provenance. Irresistible!

Design

a la (Fr.) prepared in the manner of.

Translating the dimensions from this reduced-sized printout to a full-sized plan was a treat, aided substantially by the HxWxD numbers found on the Museum of the Home’s website. The 2024 version would be 9 1/2 inches tall and carry the proportions of the original features throughout. However, I planned to alter some of the details. For one, the radially symmetric dial with Arabic numerals would be replaced. This dial configuration, used extensively to good effect with Roman numerals, always seemed a bit wacky to me when used with “Arabics”, as was the practice a hundred years ago. I think it’s the upside-down “6” that bothers me most. Orienting all numbers upright would be my change here. And, since I planned to make the case from figured, quarter sawn white oak, the shaped moldings present in the original would be replaced by simple chamfers so as not to overcomplicate the look. I would strive to keep everything else true to design but with some additional changes in material.

Materials

The original clock face did not have visible winding arbors and I also wanted to preserve this clean look. It must have been wound from the back through the sliding door feature. Further, the new clock would not have room for a pendulum and so a movement employing a balance wheel (think: pocket watch) was used instead. This new fangled invention (c. 1675) was used as an alternative to the pendulum (c. 1656) to govern the rhythmic escape of a clock’s potential energy. Both were invented by Christian Huygens, although in typical fashion Robert Hooke would claim to have conceived of them first. (He may have a beef here, but that’s a topic for another post.) Happily, I could find a movement that both wound from the back and employed a balance wheel, along with hands, key and special clock mounts from my favorite clock shop, Clockworks. The movement also used a bell instead of a gong. I’m not sure about the original, but a bell seemed fitting for this compact clock.

That takes care of the insides. For the outside, nearly every other material would be different yet still sum to an honorable version of the original.  To start, the exotic ebony would be replaced with white oak, stained to mimic the “Centennial” finish of Stickley mission furniture; still dark, but sustainably so. In that vein, the ivory inlaid dial face would become acrylic; something simpler (and legal). The plan was to also replace the copper hands with some golden colored metal, and the round bronze feet with either brass or wood. I wanted to see how the case looked before making some of these final calls. That original was some clock indeed!

Dimensioning

The framed panel design of this clock case makes construction a bit more involved than a simple box, but not complicated. The only challenge looked to be the rather unique sliding door that makes up the back of the case. Anyway, that’s 19 oak parts in all, which were dimensioned to specifications using leftover boards from the No. 220 Project (details kindly omitted by the author).

This clock Project has one operation that falls midway between Dimensioning and Assembly: face making. During their heyday, clocks were manufactured in massive quantities and the metal or paper dial faces were, by necessity, also mass-produced to keep up. Not so with Arts & Crafts clocks, where each face was typically created on the clock, one at a time.

The original version of our clock used inlaid material for the numerals and tick marks and that’s what I wanted to use, as well. However, with no time to learn this craft I resorted to the use of late-twentieth century technology, the laser cutter. Now, I had no time to learn the workings of this machine either but my son, Andrew, was already a master and had access to a good one, thus a collaboration was formed. My part of the co-labor involved securing the dial design on Etsy in the form of a .svg file and, later, coloring the wood. Andrew did all the rest.

Here’s how it went. A 1/8 in. thick mdf board unto which a white oak veneer had been applied served as the clock face material. This was then covered tightly with masking tape and the clock face pattern burned through with a laser cutter, previously programmed with a right-sized version of the dial pattern. A second 1/8 in. mdf board was then glued beneath. The numerals and tick marks could be laser cut in a similar fashion from an adhesive-backed 1/8 in. thick white acrylic panel. It was so easy that a duplicate was made … just in case.

Once the components were delivered to the workshop, the face board, including the tiny wooden interiors of the 4, 6, 8, and 0 (taped to the bench) were dyed, glazed and then varnished similar to the procedure used for the clock body (see below). Next, it was time to inlay the dial. This was accomplished by removing the tiny release paper from the adhesive on each acrylic part and then gently tapping those parts into their place on the dial - all 81 of them. Following this, the numeral cavities were filled with their dyed wooden plugs. There is a delicate rhythm to the inlaying process which Andrew got very good at by the end.

I have to admit, the result was better than I had expected. The face looked wonderful!

Next, I had to figure out how the clock movement would mount inside the case. Enlarging the laser-cut hole for the hand shaft at the drill press was easy, but because that shaft was quite short, the 1/4 inch face board proved to be too thick. When pressed together, the winding arbors and the three attachment nuts hit the back of the dial preventing the hand shaft from protruding far enough beyond the other side. To remedy the situation I was able to mark these touch points on the mdf and then carefully drill & chisel 1/8 inch deep cavities so that the metal pieces could snuggle themselves into the back of the face while the shaft poked through the front. This was a dicey maneuver after having put so much effort into the dial, but it worked out.

Now that the mechanism was mated with the face I just needed to find a way to firmly secure it into place. For this I swapped-out the clock’s three flat mounting plates for dog-eared versions and installed those backwards compared to their usual configuration. This produced a 5/8 inch gap between the mounts and the framing of the case which I could fill with scrap oak spacers, thus giving substantial material to screw the works into. These scraps were glued to the inner sides of the case frame which was dry-fitted for the purpose of drilling the pilot holes to complete an operation that, with apologies, was far easier for me to execute than explain.

Assembly

At last it was time to put the pieces together. I started with the spherical brass feet, which were purchased online as “knobs” from a cabinet hardware shop. Wooden knobs would also work, but I had grown fond of how the bronze material made that original clock appear dauntless. They mounted with bolts recessed and inserted at the corners of the beveled base board and worked perfectly for this purpose.

Next the case was assembled. The two sides were glued-up first (four frame parts and a panel, each), followed by the door which had been previously notched for a finger hold to facilitate opening. Then the front and back rails along with the clock face were glued to complete all sides of the box.

At this point, a cardboard mask was fashioned for the face to protect it during all subsequent operations. The sliding door was then worked into smooth operation by hand planing and sanding the various contact points. It will be waxed at the very end to enhance the glide. The rest of the case was planed and card scraped to level all of the joints and then the whole case was sanded to 180 grit.

The final assembly step was to join the case “box” with the top and bottom boards. This was accomplished by first gluing some scrap oak blocks to the inside of the box along the top and bottom. Once dried, the exposed block surface would then be glued to the top and bottom boards, themselves. It might have been proper to use a couple screws here, but I think glue will be enough. In the end, I waited to fasten the top until after the finishing steps were completed simply to make things easier to handle.

Finish

With everything but the clockworks in place it was time to finish the wood. I decided to leave the interior unstained, but would apply a varnish coat there to avoid uneven water exchange between the inner and outer sides of the boards, which could invite warp. On the exterior I was aiming to create a dark brown body with highlights of darker grain and lighter rays; a uniquely rich look, only accessible with quarter sawn white oak and a bit of finishing care. To create what the L. & J.G. Stickley catalog called their “Centennial” finish I used the 4-step Jewitt process described in previous posts: dye (dark mission brown)/seal/glaze with gel stain (Java)/varnish. I used two coats of the glazing on this one as I found that the rays were still too “wild” for my taste following the initial application. After the final varnish coat, the top was glued into place and it came out well (if I do say so).

All that remained was to re-mount the works and fiddle with the hands some. First, I needed to change the color of those black hands and so I gave them a spritz of metallic gold spray paint. They now match the ball feet and provide a better contrast against the dark dial. The mechanism was screwed into place and, gratifyingly, everything operated properly within their cozy confines. Next, the hands were mounted and the minute hand adjusted to synch up the bell strike with the hour. With this balance wheel movement there is a small, threaded bolt near the top of the works that is used to adjust the speed and I spent a week or so fiddling with this to achieve accurate timekeeping. A final wax of the door edges then completed the clock. Voysey rides again!

Congratulations Hannah and Jake! Time to enjoy a wedding.