The Peacock Clock
James Cox (about 1723-1800) · 1770s
Inside a tall glass case in the white and gold Pavilion Hall stands a golden oak tree with a life-size peacock perched on a branch, an owl in a cage at one side and a cockerel at the other. Squirrels, snails and a dragonfly hide among the leaves, and mushrooms grow at the base. The largest mushroom is the clock: its cap turns to show the hours and minutes, and the dragonfly on it is the second hand. When the mechanism is wound, the owl turns its head and blinks, the peacock spreads its tail and turns around, and the cockerel crows.
The automaton was made in the 1770s in the London workshop of James Cox, the most famous maker of mechanical toys of his age, and it was bought by Prince Grigory Potemkin as a gift for Catherine the Great. It arrived in Saint Petersburg in pieces and no one could put it together until the Russian inventor Ivan Kulibin restored and reassembled it in 1792. Look at the peacock's tail, made of dozens of individually chased feathers, and at the tiny bells in the owl's cage that ring as it moves. The whole thing is gilded bronze over a mechanism of springs and cams, and it still runs on its original works, which is why it is only demonstrated on certain days, usually once a week, to protect it.
The clock has stood in the Pavilion Hall since the nineteenth century and is one of the most beloved objects in the museum, with the crowd gathering well before the demonstration. The hall around it is worth attention too, with its slender columns, its mosaic floor copied from a Roman bath and its view over the Hanging Garden. Notice the order of the performance: the owl always wakes first, then the peacock, and the cockerel closes the show.
Did You Know? The clock still runs on its eighteenth-century mechanism and is set in motion only on scheduled days to protect it.
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