Welsh Journals

REVIEWS SAMUEL ROBERTS, CLOCK MAKER, AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CRAFTSMAN IN A WELSH RURAL COMMUNITY. W. T. R. Pryce and T. Alun Davies, National Museum of Wales (Welsh Folk Museum) 1985. Pp. 450. [19.50. "Samuel Roberts, Clock Maker", is a beautifully presented product of years of dedicated and imaginative research into the work of an eighteenth century Montgomeryshire country craftsman. Both authors, Dr W. T. R. Pryce of the Open University and T. Alun Davies of the Welsh Folk Museum, are to be unreservedly congrat- ulated on their achievement. The principal author, Dr Pryce, is himself a Montgomery- shire man and a member of the Powysland Club. Both authors collaborated to produce the first two chapters: Background and Context (Chapter 1) and "The Man and His Family" (Chapter 2). Three of the four chapters of an horological nature are exclusively the work of Dr Pryce whilst T. Alun Davies is solely res- ponsible for the chapter on the clock cases. Dr Pryce has produced two chapters on Samuel Roberts' clientele and some of his individual customers. He also provides the final chapter which evaluates the significance of the clockmaker's work and of this study of him. The text is liberally supported with 129 Figures, mainly maps and black and white photo- graphs, nine coloured plates and thirty tables. All these are presented in an immaculate fashion and form an integral part of the study. There are seven Appendices which provide a wealth of background information. Although Samuel Roberts's physical appearance is not known to us, readers will come away from this book with the feeling that they themselves have toiled, grafted and calcul- ated alongside the craftsman as he produced his lifetime's output of clock movements and sun dials. This intimacy is facilitated by the authors' analysis of the small Account Book in which Samuel Roberts recorded details of every clock and sun dial made by him between 1755 and 1774. In this Account Book, Samuel Roberts noted the specifications of each clock, the name and address of the customer, the date of delivery and perhaps most fortunately the serial number of each clock produced. Data extracted from the Account Book and a plethora of detail obtained from a wide range of contemporary historical documents are skilfully analysed to give a profound insight into this eighteenth century clockmaker's world. Samuel Roberts' clocks carry the serial numbers noted in the Account Book. By under- taking a survey of extant clocks the authors have been able to relate document to artifact. This has laid the basis of the book's substantial and intricate horological dimension, provided an illuminating insight into the work of the local cabinet-makers and joiners who collaborated with Samuel Roberts and this has given the work an invaluable photographic dimension. This study lies firmly in the tradition of scholarship established at the Welsh Folk Museum by Dr Iorwerth C. Peate, its first curator. In keeping with this tradition these scholars of a new generation have succeeded in combining a highly professional under- standing of craftmanship with an acute perception of the social processes associated with it. What gives this study its outstanding distinction however is the manner in which the