Footnotes

Provenance:
Purchased from R.A.Lee, 15 April 1975. Lee had bought it privately.

Peter van Cortlandt Moore was born to an old New York family and raised in Manhattan. His attendance at Gordonstoun inspired a life-long interest in English Decorative Arts. During World War II, Dr. Moore was in the American Field Service Ambulance Corps in France, with Unit 38 in North Africa and Italy, and in the reactivated French section in France and Germany. He had a harrowing escape from the Nazis north of Paris in 1940 when his unit was scattered during a German attack. His mode of escape was the Parisian subway, which he used to rejoin his unit south of the city. His service included time in Yemen, Egypt, Palestine and Syria. After the War he took a degree in English Literature from Columbia University in New York, and went on to Medical Degree at the University of Virginia. His abiding interest was in late 17th and early 18th century English antiques, but his special passion was for his clocks. His daughter speaks of the weekly Sunday ritual: "He slowly, methodically and most reverently, wound his clocks on Sunday mornings. His clocks made 17th century London come alive for him and he envisioned and thought about the entire panorama of its history, from the very best of it all, the great scientific advances, to its lows as well."


I met Dr. Moore in 1970. My Father had written me about this charming man who had "...bought quite a good barometer." He wanted to send one of the men down to Washington with the barometer on the train. Could I meet the fellow, collect the barometer and carefully deliver it to Dr. Moore? Upon arriving at his house, Dr. Moore invited me to sit down and chat. He was a gentle man with an old-fashioned courtly manner with short flashes of dry humour. I spent a most delightful afternoon with him and became fascinated in seeing his collection. We immediately enjoyed each other and I was invited back for a Sunday lunch, where this experience was duly repeated and filled with all sorts of stories about the history of each maker, the history of London, the development of late 17th century clock-making, and the like. I was fascinated, intrigued and captivated. The two visits inspired me to join my father and become an antiques dealer myself. After all this time, and many years of blissful enjoyment, I know he would be most pleased to see these clocks return to the London market, where he so happily originally acquired them almost 50 years ago.

Christian Jussel
Stonington, Connecticut
18 September 2015