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| The English king Charles II possessed an astronomical clock by Ahasuerus Fromanteel. His son was apprenticed to the Hague clockmaker Salomon Coster, which is where he must have learned the principle of the clock. |
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| Astronomical clock by Ahasuerus Fromanteel |
In 1625, the Dutch clockmaker Ahasuerus Fromanteel (1607-1693) settled in London. Around 1630, his name was well known and he contributed significantly to the founding of the London guild of clockmakers, commonly known as the 'Clockmakers' Company'.
His contemporary, John Evelyn, gave a detailed description in 1660 in his diary of an astronomical clock by Fromanteel in the cabinet of the English king Charles II. This planispherium-clock showed the times of sunrise and sunset with the position of the Sun in the zodiac. The Sun was portrayed as a face surrounded with golden beams against an azure-blue sky. The seasonal variation in the daily path of the Sun above the horizon was also indicated against a scenic landscape of hills.
From 3 September 1657 to 1 May 1658, John Fromanteel (1638-before 1692), the eldest son of Ahasuerus, worked as an apprentice under Salomon Coster in The Hague. After his return in late 1658, he introduced the first clocks in London. Together with his younger brother Ahasuerus II Fromanteel (1640-1703), John settled in Amsterdam in 1681 as a clockmaker. After John's death (around 1690), Ahasuerus II continued the workshop single-handed and made a 'finely wrought, accurate and precious in four different cases' for the queen of Denmark. After 1696 his brother Abraham Fromanteel (died 1731) formed a partnership with Ahasuerus's son in law, Christopher Clarke (1668-c. 1730), under the company name Fromanteel & Clarke.
Sources: K. Ullyett: In Quest of Clocks (London/New York/Sydney/Toronto 1950); R. Plomp: The 'Dutch Extraction' of the Fromanteel-Family (London, 1971); J. Zeeman: De Nederlandse staande klok (Assen/Amsterdam 1977); H.M. Vehmeyer: Antieke uurwerken: Een familieverzameling (Houten 1994)
Illustrations:
1)Portrait of King Charles II (National Portrait Gallery)
2)Fromanteel's signatures, London
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