Hickory Dickory Dock

September 15, 2014

One of the more amazing pieces (okay, let’s be honest, we think they’re all amazing) in the Boston Beacon Hill House is a case clock by Frank Matter, modeled after a piece by Eli Terry. The case clock contains the world’s smallest watch movement, which was taken from a diamond bracelet watch by Jaeger-LeCoultre.

Boston Beacon Hill House is created on one of the smallest miniature scales, 1:48, which means that 1 inch in miniature equals 4 feet in the full-size world. It also means that artists such as Matter had to create on a super-small scale without going blind. Matter’s solution to this issue was that he made most of his pieces using tools he created himself. And while today’s miniature artists work under multiple levels of magnification, Matter created all of his works using little to no magnification!