Playing card packing pieces
This post was written by Tobias Birch
As some of you might know I am passionate about Thomas Mudge. So in June 2023 I was delighted to be invited by the curator of horology at the British Museum, Oliver Cooke, along with esteemed horologists Andrew King and Jonathan Betts, to look at two Mudge clocks, the Lunar Mudge and the Polwarth Mudge.
Jonathan was researching for his upcoming talk to the AHS, 'The Technical Legacy of Thomas Mudge'. While inspecting the ebonised case of the Lunar Mudge, a case that is, I believe, the beginnings of the three pad top style case table clocks you see in the second half of the eighteenth century, I decided to remove the seatboard. You never know what you might find!
On removing the seatboard, made more involved as one had to first remove a brass carrying handle, the effort was soon rewarded.
To all our surprise, hidden beneath the seatboard I found some playing cards, and not your everyday, free in Christmas crackers playing cards. They were a well preserved hand-painted Queen of spades and a five of hearts. Most likely eighteenth century playing cards.
The cards were placed under the seatboard, as convenient packing pieces to raise the movement slightly, probably when the clock was originally made in the 1750s. After photography I placed them carefully back in the position from where they came.
This was the first time in over 30 years of working on clocks that I had seen playing cards used in this way, and I didn't expect to see it again. Yet, less than a year later, while working in my own workshop on a Thomas Mudge and William Dutton table clock of the three pad top style that I mentioned earlier, made around twenty years later than the Lunar Mudge, I once again did my usual practice of removing the seatboard. This was more easily done this time, as there was no handle to take off first.
You have no doubt guessed what I found.
Here the cards were folded over and held in place with small round head brass nails. The left card was too indistinct to make out the suit, the card on the right is a two of spades. Again, hand painted on similar colour card as the Lunar Mudge cards.
I would be interested to hear from anyone that has found similar playing cards placed under seatboards of table clocks. Perhaps there was an avid card player in the Mudge workshops and they used cards from incomplete decks they had lying around? Or perhaps they used cards from a deck that had proved unlucky and they no longer wanted to play with?
We will never know, but I liked the link back to an individual, long gone, whose work survives and who, if I were to somehow meet, would, I imagine, have plenty to talk about.
