Louis Bernhard Thirty-day Wall Regulator

Louis Bernhard Thirty-day Wall Regulator, Bloomsburg (Columbia County), Pennsylvania, 1875, walnut and burl walnut veneered case with carved crest depicting "Columbia" and flanking finials, full-length glass door opens to the glass dial with Roman numerals and seconds dial, lower removable pedestal with carved stylized lion's head, thirty-day skeletonized movement signed on the front plate Louis Bernhard, Bloomsburg, Pa. , with front-mounted escape wheel, maintaining power and gravity escapement with pivoted detent arms similar to "Reids spring pallet" escapement, single faceted jar mercury temperature-compensating pendulum signed and dated Louis Bernhard/1875 and powered by a brass-cased weight, a separate skeletonized striking movement mounted in the base is also signed Louis Bernhard, Bloomsburg, Pa and carries a front-mounted count-wheel strike and rear-mounted hammer striking on a bell inside the case powered by a separate brass-cased weight, ht. 95, wd. 32 in. Note: Louis Bernhard (1839-1921) was a German immigrant finally settling in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Of the three timekeepers extant by this maker, one is a chronometer, the other two regulators. The present example remains the only one in private hands and is possibly the example in his home described in J.H. Battle's History of Columbia and Montour Counties, Pennsylvania, p. 323, as "a most elaborately finished case of black walnut, an astronomical clock of the most perfect workmanship...valued upward Read more…