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A pewter and enamel mantel timepiece designed by Archibald Knox, Liberty & Co., circa 1905

Auction Closed

September 8, 06:42 PM GMT

Estimate

2,000 - 3,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

A pewter and enamel mantel timepiece designed by Archibald Knox, Liberty & Co., circa 1905

4½-inch enamel dial decorated with berries, the French movement with lever platform escapement, the rectangular case cast with stylised leaves, the base stamped English Pewter Made by Liberty & Co., 0609, Rd.468016

21cm., 8¼in.

Christie's, 17 July 1991, lot 50

Liberty Pewter Sketch Book, Westminster City Archives, London, n.d., p. 59, no. 0609
Victor Arwas,  Liberty Style, Tokyo, 1983, p. 105
Mervyn Levy,  Liberty Style, The Classic Years: 1898-1910, London, 1986, p. 40
Barbara Morris,  Liberty Design 1874-1914, London, 1989, p. 2
Stephen Martin,  Archibald Knox, London, 1995, p. 89
Adrian J. Tilbrook,  The Designs of Archibald Knox for Liberty & Co, London, 2000, p. 112, no. 94
Stephen Martin,  Archibald Knox, London, 2001, pp. 10 and 233
Paul Carter Robinson,  20th Century Pewter, Art Nouveau to Modernism, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2012, p. 119, no. 2.7
Archibald Knox: Beauty and Modernity, a Designer Ahead of His Time, exh. cat., The Archibald Knox Society, London, 2014, p.12, no. 2

Archibald Knox (1864-1933) was one of Liberty's designers at the peak of the influential department store's popularity in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. He mainly created gem-studded decorative art objects in pewter, their fluid and energetic designs typical of the European-wide movement known as Art Nouveau. However, he also creatively fused this Art Nouveau spirit with elements of Celtic design, and was particularly inspired by the traditional art of his native Isle of Man. Knox was chosen to design the gravestone for Sir Arthur Lasenby Liberty, the founder of the great department store that bore his name and that made Knox's style so well-known, upon his death in 1917.