This is a fine example of the classic 18th-century London Act of Parliament or Tavern wall clock, signed by Thomas Eastland beneath the dial in flowing script. Clocks of this type were conceived for public spaces — taverns, coffee houses, and institutional interiors — where clarity, durability, and presence were paramount.
The large 18-inch cream painted dial, with outer minute track and bold five-minute markers, reflects precisely that purpose: time needed to be read easily across a busy room. The original brass hands, terminating in heart-shaped tips, retain the pleasing proportion and delicacy that temper the dial’s otherwise functional scale.
The movement is the traditional weight-driven eight-day A-frame construction, robust and straightforward in layout, fitted with an anchor escapement and regulated by a brass-faced pendulum bob. This form of movement, suspended within the upper trunk of the case, was well suited to long service in commercial premises — simple, accessible, and dependable.
What elevates this example is its original Chinoiserie decoration. The long, slender case is painted with a Chinese palace scene, birds in flight, and two figures beneath a blossom tree — motifs entirely in keeping with the mid-18th-century English taste for the exotic. Such decoration aligns these clocks aesthetically with contemporary japanned longcases and lacquered furniture, and examples retaining their original surface are increasingly uncommon.
At just 148 cm in height the proportions remain elegant and vertical, the dial dominating the composition while the decorated trunk provides narrative and movement beneath it will fit comfortably in a domestic setting
Altogether, this is a refined London tavern clock combining practicality, decorative ambition, and the enduring appeal of 18th-century chinoiserie — a type that once regulated the daily rhythms of public life, and now serves as a striking reminder of that world.
