Willard House and Clock Museum | |
 The Willard Museum and homestead in North Grafton, Massachusetts. | |
| Location | 11 Willard St. Grafton, Massachusetts |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 42°14′20″N71°40′24″W / 42.23889°N 71.67333°W Coordinates: 42°14′20″N71°40′24″W / 42.23889°N 71.67333°W |
| Built | 1718 |
| NRHP reference No. | 82004470 |
| Added to NRHP | June 1, 1982 |
The Willard House and Clock Museum is a museum located in North Grafton, Massachusetts, United States.
The Willard House and Clock Museum is located at the former farm homestead of the Willard brothers (Benjamin, Simon, Ephraim, and Aaron). The brothers made clocks there in the late 18th century, before they moved the business to Roxbury, where they became pillars of the emerging American clockmaking industry. The house was built about 1718. It stands in a rural setting, in the middle of a field that was part of the Willard farm back in the 18th century.
Like other contemporaneous horologists, the Willard family originally divided its life seasonally, between farming and the clock workshop. Eventually the business became profitable, at which point the house was further enlarged. While in Grafton, Simon, the most innovative and most famous of the Willard brothers, developed his first so called banjo clock, more properly called the "Willard Patent Timepiece", which was patented in 1802.
The museum was founded by Dr. Roger W. Robinson and his wife Imogene, collectors of Willard clocks, after they were able to acquire the Willard homestead. For a period in the late 1990s the museum was administered by the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, but soon was turned into an independent foundation again, governed by a board made up of representatives of the Willard family, the founding couple, the local community and some horological experts.
The original homestead farmhouse have been added to in recent years[ when? ] and in addition to the original rooms there are now two large galleries. The museum has over 80 Willard clocks, representing the craftsmanship of all the members of the family in the horological trade. While there are several clocks signed Grafton, the exhibits include also clocks made later after the Willard clock enterprise had moved on to Roxbury, Massachusetts, now part of Boston.
Besides hosting the world's most comprehensive collection of Willard timepieces there are many Willard family memorabilia on display. The original house is furnished with period furniture, and in the reconstructed workshop building there is a small collection of historic horological tools in a display showing what Simon Willard's original workshop may have looked like. The majority of clocks are shown in running condition.
There is a small gift shop, and the museum has a small Willard-centric library open to museum members by appointment.
Abraham-Louis Breguet, born in Neuchâtel, then a Prussian principality, was a horologist who made many innovations in the course of a career in watchmaking industry. He was the founder of the Breguet company, which is now the luxury watch division of the Swiss Swatch Group.
Horology is the study of the measurement of time. Clocks, watches, clockwork, sundials, hourglasses, clepsydras, timers, time recorders, marine chronometers, and atomic clocks are all examples of instruments used to measure time. In current usage, horology refers mainly to the study of mechanical time-keeping devices, while chronometry more broadly includes electronic devices that have largely supplanted mechanical clocks for the best accuracy and precision in time-keeping.
Mantel clocks—or shelf clocks—are relatively small house clocks traditionally placed on the shelf, or mantel, above the fireplace. The form, first developed in France in the 1750s, can be distinguished from earlier chamber clocks of similar size due to a lack of carrying handles.
Alexander Bain was a Scottish inventor and engineer who was first to invent and patent the electric clock. He installed the railway telegraph lines between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
The banjo clock, or banjo timepiece, is an American wall clock with a banjo-shaped case. It was invented by Simon Willard, originally of Grafton, Massachusetts, later of Roxbury, Massachusetts, and patented in 1802. The banjo clock normally lacks a striking mechanism and indicates time only by its hands and dial, for which reason some horologists may insist upon calling it a timepiece rather than a true clock. In popular usage though, no such distinction is made.
Simon Willard was a celebrated American clockmaker. Simon Willard clocks were produced in Massachusetts in the towns of Grafton and Roxbury, near Boston. Among his many innovations and timekeeping improvements, Simon Willard is best known for inventing the eight-day patent timepiece that came to be known as the gallery or banjo clock.
Benjamin Willard, Jr., was an American clockmaker.
Aaron Willard was an entrepreneur, an industrialist, and a designer of clocks who worked extensively at his Roxbury, Massachusetts, factory during the early years of the United States of America.
A lighthouse clock is a type of mantel clock manufactured in the U. S. from 1818 through 1830s by the American clockmaker Simon Willard, having the dial and works exposed beneath a glass dome on a tapered, cylindrical body.
Henry Graves Jr. (1868–1953) was an American banker descended from John Graves of Concord, Massachusetts.
All Willard Brothers were born at their modest family farm in Grafton, Massachusetts, successively between 1743 and 1755. Owning independent workshops at Boston, they were the most celebrated clockmakers in the early United States.
The Uhrenmuseum zum Rösli is a small horological museum in Zurich, Switzerland that was founded in 2006.
The American Clock & Watch Museum (ACWM), located in Bristol, Connecticut, is one of a very few museums in the United States dedicated solely to horology, which is the history, science and art of timekeeping and timekeepers. Located in the heart of the historic center of American clockmaking, ACWM is the world's preeminent horological museum in the area of American clocks, primarily industrial-made clocks of the 19th and early 20th century.
Gallet (ˈgæl.eɪ) is a historic Swiss manufacturer of high-end timepieces for professional, military, sports, racing, and aviation use. Gallet is the world's oldest watch and clock making house with history dating back to Humbertus Gallet, a clock maker who became a citizen of Geneva in 1466. The Gallet & Cie name was officially registered by Julien Gallet (1806–1849) in 1826, who moved the family business from Geneva to La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Prior to this date, operations commenced under the name of each of the Gallet family patriarchs.
Willard House or Willard Homestead may refer to:
The Cuckooland Museum, previously known as the Cuckoo Clock Museum, is a museum that exhibits mainly cuckoo clocks, located in Tabley, Cheshire, England. The collection comprises 300 years of cuckoo clock-making history, since the very earliest examples made in the 18th to the 21st century.
The Clamshell, manufactured between 1936 and 1951 by the Gallet Watch Company of Switzerland, is the world's first water resistant wrist chronograph.
A mystery watch or mystery clock, in horology, is a timepiece whose working is not easily deducible, because it seems to have no movement at all, or the hands do not seem to be connected to any movement, etc.
Seth Glanville Atwood was an American industrialist, community leader, and horological collector. He was the chairman and president of Atwood Vacuum Machine Company, one of the world's largest manufacturers of automobile body hardware, and a long-time leader of the Atwood family's business which involved in manufacturing, banking and hotel industries, with over 2,500 employees. In addition, Atwood was a director of the Illinois Manufacturers' Association, and had served in the Illinois Chamber of Commerce and the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago.
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