|
The case of the clock is of oak, with a veneer of black stencilled chequer-board decoration. The face is made up of squares of mother-of-pearl with four squares of ivory at the corners; the numbers are of wood, inset into the face, and the hands are metal painted blue. At the back are two doors, to the clock above and the pendulum below; the movement is French late nineteenth century. Above the 12 on the dial is a small brass crescent to adjust the speed of the movement.
The clock was designed for the guest bedroom of Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke's house at 78 Derngate, Northampton. Mackintosh's transformation of a nineteenth-century terraced house in Northampton for the engineering-model manufacturer Bassett-Lowke was his last major commission in Northampton.
The guest bedroom at Derngate was designed in 1919; Bassett-Lowke described it as 'perhaps the most daring in the house', with its striking black-and-white striped wallpaper carried up onto the ceiling. There were matching curtains and bedspread, and the furniture was edged with blue and black chequerboard decoration.
This was the largest clock designed by Mackintosh for Bassett-Lowke (designs for several others are in the University of Glasgow Mackintosh Collection).
| 
