This tall-case clock hood is based on plans published by Franklyn Gottshall.

 

After building and fitting a door to the hood of the Lonnie Bird pattern clock case I built several years ago, I decided it was time to complete a door for this clock hood. Plans for this clock case were published by Franklyn Gottshall. As I have only photocopies made of the clock's plan pages, I can't tell you which of Gottshall's books of measured drawings these plans come from. The door frame was glued up in early December. Then I came down with the flu. I was flat on my back or sitting in a chair for two weeks. Needless to say we got a very late start on decorating for Christmas. I didn't get a tree until Wednesday of last week. This is the first Christmas season in years where we didn't go over to our nieghbor Brad Blake's farm to cut a tree. Time. lack of energy. and neither of the boys around to make the trip special made me opt for a tree purchased off a parking lot in town. Since dinner today is just for Ann and I, Andrew being in Seattle and Ian cooking Christmas dinner at the Highlands, I am baking pork pie for the two of us.

With a few spare minutes available between opening presents and starting the pork pie, I slipped out to the shop and took this picture.

 

To fill the empty dial frame I set one of the antique hand-painted clock dials I have picked up over the years in the hood. This one has obviously lost a lot of its original paint. I was thinking of sending it to Angela Piacine to be restored. I hestitated about following through on this because the female figure in the upper right spandral is a 'pink lady.' Every clock dial made between roughly 1760, when engraved dial faces started to fell out of fashion and into the 1830's, was hand painted. Most of the painters are unknown. There is one unknown artist whose works can be identified because he always painted one of the female figures, representing either the muses or in this case the continents, pink. I ended up with a dial face probably painted in the 1770's by this unknown painter. Given the dial's probable historic connection to this lost artist, I am not going to have the dial repainted.

 

Enjoy the day with your families. Thanks for looking in. STB