Timepieces of timeless beauty from the Horace Wood Brock Collection.(Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection)

Horace Wood "Woody" Brock (Fig. 3) is not a typical collector. The founder and president of an investment advisory firm that assesses risk in the international economy, he embraces a wide range of intellectual interests that include economics, political theory, mathematical aesthetics, game theory, moral philosophy, mathematical physics, and the philosophy of science. In his art collecting, Brock applies an innovative theory of aesthetics based on a set of scientific criteria he developed almost thirty years ago. (1) As a consequence of selecting works of art by invoking "high quality design" as the best hallmark of authenticity, Brock places less emphasis on illustrious provenance or dealer assurances than most collectors. Such an analytical approach is not, however, devoid of passion.

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Brock's impressive collection is the subject of an exhibition currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, entitled Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection, and his drawings were the subject of an article by Clifford S. Ackley in last month's issue of ANTIQUES. Highlighted here is a selection of distinctive clocks from his collection, many of them included in the exhibition, which illuminated Brock's unique criteria for acquiring beautiful objects.

The London antiques dealer Martin Levy of H.Blairman and Sons, who, like his father before him, has helped to guide many of Brock's acquisitions, describes his approach to collecting as combining "the precise mind of a mathematician and the exacting sensitivity of a musician" in selecting objects that represent "a pinnacle of human endeavor in design and quality of fabrication." (2) In his search for "high quality design," Brock measures the degree of satisfaction one derives from the beauty of an object's design by evaluating its intrinsic structural properties: its symmetry, coherence, and harmony.

Brock applies these criteria to what he calls the themes (or basic motifs) of an art object and to the transformations of its themes that complete the design. Just as transformations in music might include transposition from a major to a minor key or shifts of rhythm, Brock defines transformations in a decorative object as echoes of its theme or themes through such operations as reversal (mirror reflection), rotation, straightening, stretching, shortening, lengthening, or otherwise reworking the theme. He believes optimum aesthetic satisfaction results from simple themes balanced by complex transformations, or complex themes with simple transformations. For a work of art to be pleasing, the viewer should be optimally challenged, but neither bored nor overwhelmed, by experiencing a proper balance in the object's total complexity. (3)

Guided by this concept of beauty, Brock has assembled an impressive collection of clocks that all reflect his "high quality design" criteria. Among the earliest in the group are two rare tall-case examples of about 1685 by Andre-Charles Boulle (Figs. 2, 5), master cabinetmaker to Louis XIV (r. 1643-1715) and perhaps the first craftsman in France to process cases for long pendulum clocks/ Invented in 1656 by Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695), the pendulum clock required a new type of case char was long enough to protect the pendulum and its weights and wide enough at the center to allow for its swing. (5)

Although he did not devise the technique, Boulie's name became synonymous with the practice of veneering furniture with marquetry of tortoiseshell, pewter, brass, and various woods during the late seventeenth century because of the distinctive quality and large scale of his designs- The clock in Figure 5 incorporates marquetry in premiere-partie, or brass and pewter inlaid on a tortoiseshell ground. (6) The example in Figure 2, known as the "Three Fates" clock, contains marquetry in contre-partie, or tortoiseshell inlaid on a brass ground. (7) The highly intricate and complex decoration of the early models is offset their graceful proportions and balanced symmetry, a guiding principle for Brock in seeking the appropriate combination of simplicity and complexity in design.