AFA 22nd Anniversary

history, in addition to art and needlework. The constellation of symbols underscores the impor tance of and changing roles and opportunities for women in the New Republic. The globes were a nod to the eminence at the time of geographic knowledge and growing sophistication and suggest a greater worldliness and a mindfulness of new frontiers. Jedediah Morse’s Universal Geography of the United States (1797) is contemporary with this clock. While teaching at a school for young women, Morse (1761–1826) saw the need for a geography textbook that would educate young minds about the physical details of the new nation, and published his first, Geography Made Easy in 1784. His school textbooks appeared annually in new editions, earning him the informal title, “father of American geography.” Why the parrot and hourglass? The hourglass was a widely familiar symbol of memento mori —the injunction to remember death and lead a virtuous life because we never know when we will meet our maker. With higher mortality rates and much higher rates of infant and childbirth mortality, eighteenth-century Americans were especially conscious of the uncertainty and fragility of life. 22nd Anniversary 108 www.afamag.com | www.incollect.com The big surprise about the Ellsworth clock is its astounding decoration. It is not the most ornately engraved dial from Connecticut, but it is the most unusual. When British clockmaker Thomas Harland (1735–1807), settled in Norwich, Connecticut, in the 1770s, he introduced a style of engraved brass dial clocks that spread, a lmost contagiously, a round southea stern Connecticut, and, via Burnap, whom he trained, to the Windsors. Ellsworth is one of at least three Windsor-based clockmakers to have made engraved brass dials, Samuel Stiles and Moses Wing being two others. Engraved dials are one of Connecticut’s great contributions to American art of the early national period. Most date from 1790– 1810. The Ellsworth dial shows an elegantly adorned woman staring intently at a parrot, surrounded by globes, beneath ornate neoclassical festoons and flourishes, with an hourglass and an abundance of engraver’s scrolls in the corner spandrels (Fig. 5, 6a). But why this imagery? What did it mean to Ellsworth’s contemporaries? We can’t know for sure, but the 1790s were a time when Americans were deeply reflective about the meaning of their recent revolution—what independence and self- government were about—as well as matters of equality, inclusion, and freedom. They had witnessed eight years of war and the extraordinary challenge of launching a new nation, the drafting of a constitution, and persuading all thirteen colonies to ratify it. “Remember the ladies,” Abigail Adams famously counseled her husband, future President (and Ellsworth friend and patron) John Adams. The 1790s were also a time of surging progress in female education. Female academies, like those founded in 1798 by Sarah Pierce in Litchfield and Lydia Royce in Hartford, had as their mission to educate the mothers and wives of the New Republic, who, in turn, would instill in their sons and daughters (and their husbands) the knowledge, virtues, and habits deemed essential in a self-governing nation. The curricula went way beyond needlework and lady-like social skills, and included math, science, geography, language skills, and Fig. 3: Oliver Ellsworth Homestead dedication, October 1903, CTDAR Archives. Image courtesy, Connecticut Daughters of the American Revolution (CTDAR). Fig. 4: David Ellsworth clockmaking advertisement, Hartford Courant, November 30, 1772. With their dramatic plumage and ability to mimic human speech, parrots were considered among the most wondrous of birds. Since the Middle Ages, with its unique ability to speak, the parrot was associated with the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. It was believed that the conception occurred through the ear, through the Word. The parrot was also considered a very clean animal and therefore associated with virginity and purity, qualities attributed to Christ’s mother, Mary. A parrot was also believed to have witnessed the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and appeared in many paintings depicting the story. So, its appearance in this dial is rich in moral symbolism. The engraving is also richly progressive in its nods to high fashion. The figure’s outfit, with its straight cut sleeves and