[Aaron Henkin] Oh, and that letter from Dubuque, the manufacturer, to someone in Baltimore that David Park Curry mentioned? [David Park Curry] He wrote to somebody, we don't know who, in 1815 or so, and he says, The mantle clocks with the statue of Washington, which we had the honor to plan when you were here (we wish we knew who he was) are completed, and I can assure you they are equal in elegance and intrinsic value to any work of the kind and price ever executed in this city (by which he means Paris and not Baltimore). And then he goes on to say, I pray sir that you will acquaint your gallant countrymen of this national and elegant piece of furniture. You may rely upon it that the statue is a good likeness of the father of the republic, as no pains and expense were spared searching the Louvre, the galleries and hotels which abound with efforts to perpetuate his memorable person.

[Aaron Henkin] Here's curator David Park Curry on this clock featuring America's first President, George Washington. The BMA owns two versions, so sometimes there might be another example on view. [David Park Curry] Well, in the age of the cell phone, people don't realize how important clocks were, what high end luxury goods they remained well into the 19th century. What's fun about this is that this is a French clock made for the American market. We actually have a letter from the manufacturer. His name was Dubuque, working in Paris. Washington was so popular after his death that there were images circulating everywhere. People were fascinated in Europe as well as in the United States with this sort of citizen king, a person who refused to become a ruler in the European sense, and so he was a great international figure. When you see something gilded with a hero and an eagle on it, you know you're talking about a work of art first and a timepiece second. This is an eight day windup clock, and if you look at the face, you can see two holes. One would wind up the timekeeping mechanism, the other, the chime that would sound the hour. We wound it up so you could hear what it sounded like in 1815 or so.