Design Art, Decorative Arts, Clocks, Baroque, Johann Jacob Schübler, Antique Prints, c. 1730

Johann Jacob Schübler (artist and engraver) (1689-1741)
Johann Jacob Schüblers Fünffte Ausgab seines vorhabenden Wercks/ Quinta Edizione Dell’Opera
[Johann Jacob Schübler’s Fifth Issue of the Planned Works]
from Erste Ausgabe Seines Vorhabenden Wercks
Jeremias Wolff Heirs, Augsburg: c. 1730
Black-and-white engravings
15 x 9 inches, overall
11.75 x 7.5 inches, platemark
$375 each

Six prints of imposing Baroque pendulum clocks in elegant, sunlit interiors. The author, architect and artist Johann Jacob Schübler, described them on the title page for the original publication as various new, never before seen illustrations of inventions benefiting from the modern technology of pendulum clocks, regulated according to principles of geography and astronomy. Some of the clocks incorporate globes. These plates come from the fifth section of a two-part work issued in 24 sections, each devoted to a different aspect of interior or exterior architecture or ornament.

Johann Jacob Schübler was a German artist and architect. As a child he was apprenticed as a copperplate engraver. Between 1705 and 1713 he traveled through Germany, England, Denmark and the Netherlands, then returned to Nuremberg, where he remained thereafter. In 1717, he erected a triumphal arch for the court in Sulzbach. Schübler published numerous writings on architectural theory. He was admitted as a foreign member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1734 and in 1736 was named the Greater Council of the City of Nuremberg.

Jeremias Wolff (1663-1724) was an Augsburg publisher. After Wolff’s death his firm was continued as “Wolff’s Heirs” (Haeres Jer. Wolffii) by his son-in-law Johann Balthasar Probst (1689-1750).