On Display Summer 2022 — Winter 2023
The Horological Society of New York (HSNY) announces today the opening of an exhibit nearly a century in the making — “Watches From the James Arthur Collection” — named after one of New York’s most passionate and hands-on collectors.
Arthur (1842-1930) was born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, and migrated to the United States in 1871 where he found a job in manufacturing. Unlike many immigrants of the time who struggled to find jobs on the East Coast, Arthur was immediately employed in New York City as a mechanic. He went on to work with steam pumps and valves manufacturer Adam Carr and jointly patented an improvement to the condensing pumping engine, which was filed with the US Patent Office in 1876 and published the following year. Arthur would go on to establish his own business in 1885 — Arthur & Company Machine Works — where he made his own fortune and began collecting timepieces in earnest.
Interior of James Arthur’s home in Brooklyn, New York.
What separated Arthur from other serious collectors was that he wanted to understand his timepieces, often altering and tinkering with them. Other aristocrats, such as J. Pierpont Morgan, amassed collections based on their beauty rather than their technical allure. Over time, Arthur’s collection grew in the thousands, collecting everything from tall case clocks to pocket watch movements. (Archive images from his home show Arthur’s Brooklyn residence lined with timepieces along the walls, shelves and even floors.) Arthur was one of the first serious horological collector-scholars, publishing “Time and Its Measurement” in 1909, and built clocks of his own throughout his life, introducing new designs and materials never used before.
Arthur bequeathed his collection of more than 1,900 timepieces to New York University in 1925 with detailed instruction and generous financial backing (millions in today’s dollars) to make it available to the masses. However, history would paint a darker picture for the once unified collection, which in time would go on to be divided, sold and partially stored away from public viewing.
In 1983, the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors (NAWCC) was granted a large portion of what remained of Arthur’s intact collection — 561 complete watches, 1,107 uncased watches, 210 clocks, and additional uncased clock movements, sundials and tools. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where the collection had been on long-term loan, also received more than 200 timepieces. While Arthur’s wish of having his complete collection permanently displayed in New York was sadly never realized for numerous reasons, today HSNY rightfully restores some important examples to the Big Apple where his original dream began.
The “Watches From the James Arthur Collection” exhibit, loaned and curated by the NAWCC Watch and Clock Museum, highlights 14 items once belonging to Arthur, and interprets how he was fascinated by technical details rather than a piece’s purity or rarity. Notable items on show include a pocket watch made by Thomas Tompion of London around 1709, with a signed and numbered movement and an engraved balance cock with a large diamond endstone; a large pocket watch made by William Carpenter of London around 1790, with four subsidiary dials that show hours, seconds, fifths of a second, and the age of the moon; and a 19th-century quarter-repeating pocket watch, modified by Arthur to showcase the complex under-dial work. Additional highlights of the collection can be seen at the NAWCC Watch and Clock museum located in Columbia, PA.
“For nearly fifteen years, I have been researching and promoting James Arthur’s legacy,” said Bob Frishman, HSNY Exhibit Curator. “This exhibit is a small but meaningful step in honoring an avid and generous horological scholar and collector from the past. When I introduce the sixtieth James Arthur Lecture at the upcoming NAWCC symposium — “Horology’s Great Collectors” — October 21-22 in midtown Manhattan, I will remind my listeners that these lectures began in 1932 and that they will continue to be a vital feature of the NAWCC’s annual educational conferences and another ongoing tribute to this important figure in horology’s rich history.”
“Watches From the James Arthur Collection” is on display at HSNY from summer 2022 through winter 2023. Timed tickets are required to visit.
For more information about James Arthur and his collection, please read Jeanne Schinto's four-part series of articles, “James Arthur and His Temple of Time: A Cautionary Tale for Collector-Donors and Their Beneficiaries,” originally published in Maine Antique Digest (www.greathorology.com/arthur).