Mr. Cox's Perpetual Motion, A Prize in the Museum Lottery
Description:
This line engraving depicts Cox’s Perpetual Clock, item number 47 in the Cox’s Lottery catalogue and one of Cox’s “star exhibit[s]” (Greater London Council 62). Much of the description of Cox’s Perpetual Clock in John Joseph Merlin: The Ingenious Mechanick applies to the engraving as well, which remains mostly faithful to its source (61-2). The clock is depicted on a circular platform, and its base is formed as a
rectangular plinth with projecting corners on which are raised free-standing Corinthian columns . . . Between these the case is formed with arch-headed glass plates revealing the mercury barometer . . . that gives motion to the clock. From the capitals of the columns rises a further arched stage . . . with corners in the form of fluted pilasters. (61)The engraving does not include “the lion’s head paterae which are applied to the case today"; however it does show a smiling, lion-headed mask at the head of the arch instead of the female masks on the Victoria and Albert Museum clock (Greater London Council 62). The dial includes both Roman and modern, or Arabic, numerals for every fifth minute, as well as a smaller second-hand dial within the larger dial. The time reads 9:32:55. An ornamental vase is raised on a pedestal above the arched hood. The title of the print is written in script at the top of the image, the text split around the vase. The overall style of the clock is a “fusion of the rococo and the neoclassical,” and is much less ornate than other Cox clocks (Greater London Council 62).
Copyright:
Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. Copyright, 2009.
Accession Number:
774.00.00.29
Height (in centimeters):
22
Width (in centimeters):
13
Marks Description
The lower left-hand corner of the print is signed by “J. Lodge sculp.”Printing Context
Mr. Cox's Perpetual Motion, A Prize in the Museum Library was, most likely, orginally bound in one of Cox’s lottery catalogues (Greater London Council 62).Associated Events
This print was published for Cox’s lottery in 1774-1775 as an advertisement for one of Cox’s masterpieces, the perpetual motion clock. Despite the success of Cox’s Museum, Cox petitioned Parliament in 1773 to hold a public lottery sale of all of his exhibitions. Cox’s high-risk ventures in the East Asian luxury trade and his mounting debts certainly motivated the lottery and the closure of the museum. However, as both Wright and Pointon emphasize, Cox’s lottery was also a “grand finale” that capitalized on the museum’s success, intended from the beginning to create a market for the sale of Cox’s items (Wright 52; Pointon 425). The value of the lottery was set at £197,500, and 120,000 tickets were sold at the price of one guinea over a two-year period (Smith 358-59). The catalogues for the lottery list fifty-six items, but there were to be 404 prizes drawn in total, with the top prize, a pair of diamond earrings, valued at £5,000 (Wright 52-53). After intense and prolonged publicity, the lottery finally took place in May and June of 1775; however, it does not appear to have been the success for which Cox had hoped and did little to restore his solvency. Winners were apparently slow or uninterested in claiming their items, and so many were left over in 1776 that Cox “tried unsuccessfully to persuade joint winners of the major exhibits to take over its [the museum’s] running” (Smith 359). He also attempted to buy back some of the most expensive items, including the diamond earrings, ostensibly in hopes of making a more lucrative sale abroad (Pointon 428). Many of the items ended up as exhibitions in Thomas Weeks’s Museum in Tichborne Street (c. 1795), including the perpetual motion clock and the famous silver swan automaton (Smith 358, n. 48).Associated Places
Cox’s MuseumThe Museum was illuminated by candles in candelabra and girandoles suspended from dragons’ mouths . . . Admission was half a guinea, which, according to a letter (probably written by Cox himself) in the Public Ledger . . . was the same as entry to the Pantheon, to Fischer’s benefit concerts, and to "hear Signiora [sic] Sirmen sing." (Pointon 431-32, Pointon’s brackets)Clearly, Cox marketed his museum as an artistic experience on par with other major “shows” and cultural venues, an extension of “the gradual encreased [sic] of taste and elegance, within these last twenty years, in this metropolis” (qtd. in Pointon 433). However, he also offered a reduced admission fee during certain hours, thereby enlarging his potential audience and customers.
variant compositions of an elephant and howdah; a temple with palm trees and crocodiles; a flute-playing Chinese boy; an aviary with fountains and bells; and a pair of gardeners' boys with musical pineapples. The basic compositions were further enriched by jeweled flowers, animals, clocks and chimes. (Le Corbeiller 352)These descriptions also make apparent the Orientalist element of Cox’s Museum. Cox publicized his museum along with his intention to sell these items in East Asia (whether true or not), though very few of them were marketed abroad. (Pointon gives an especially rich reading of the Orientalist economics of Cox’s automata.) Cox stopped exhibiting, though not dealing in, automata after the lottery; however, the Cox Museum spawned several subsequent shows, including Merlin’s Mechanical Museum and Weeks’s Museum.
Associated Texts
Frances Burney's Evelina (1778)Subject
This print depicts one of the luxury clocks exhibited at Cox's Museum along with numerous automata. It is probable that it was sold during Cox's lottery in 1774-1775, for which this print was most likely produced. Cox’s Perpetual Clock was exhibited at Cox’s Museum from 1773-1775 and was item 47 in Cox’s lottery catalogue (Greater London Council 61). It was also exhibited at Week’s Mechanical Museum (c. 1806), and is now owned by the Victoria and Albert Museum. This was one of Cox’s more famous and advertised clocks, and descriptions of it appear in advertisements for Cox’s Museum, press reviews, and mechanical and technical magazines. The clock’s “significant horological achievement” (62) is its ability to re-wind its own mechanism “by obtaining energy from the barometer in the lower part of the case, which is quite sufficient to keep the clock going continuously” (61).Theme
Clockwork. Clocks.Significance
The significance of this engraving lies mainly in its association with Cox’s Lottery and Cox’s Museum, as well as with the importance of luxury clocks to Romantic culture and aesthetics, mercantilism, and imperial commerce. Luxury clocks were closely linked with the production of automata during the latter half of the eighteenth century due to both new advancements in horological technology and a growing luxury trade market. As Pointon notes, luxury trade with China had been established in the late sixteenth century through diplomatic rituals of gift-giving, especially of clocks, and was greatly expanded in the eighteenth century through the commercial exploits of the East India Company (443-45). Automata in this period were thus associated with and often visually coded as “oriental”—observable in the prevalence of Turkish and Chinese figures, elephants and other exotic animals, “sing-songs,” and references to Orientalist religions—but were also made in London (and Paris, and elsewhere) for export to China, where they were received as representative of European aesthetics (Pointon 443). Cox, whose objects seem constantly to be on their way to or from the East, thus becomes an important figure for understanding the complexity of imperial commerce and Orientalism in this period.Function
Advertisement for Cox’s lotteryBibliography
Altick, Richard. The Shows of London. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP Belknap P, 1978. Print.Long Title
Mr. Cox's Perpetual Motion, A Prize in the Museum LibraryFeatured in Exhibit:
From the Collection:
Engraver:
Image Date:
c. 1774-1775
