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Badbury Clump, near Faringdon, Oxfordshire.

HINGEFINKLE'S LOGBOOK (Tenth instalment)

The Perfect Pocket-Watch

“Hum,” I said, as Snowdrop snorted with displeasure and plodded back down the pathway, with Agrimony and King Math in the midst of a heated argument in the cart. With the stem of my pipe, I pointed out Petribeddroch on the map. “Well, here we are. Where would you like to go next, Gladys - or shall I spin the alidade to decide?”
“Nay, ‘Ingefinkle,” said Gladys Sparkbright, leaning on a stone statue of a tinker, squinting at the sun and adjusting the knitting needles in her hair. “Ah’ve been thinkin’. Let’s go an’ visit th’ Spodleian Library. It oughter be a week’r two sou’east fro’ ere, if t’Goblins ‘ave left it standin’.”

And at that moment, my dear little Alias, I knew that I could not have made a sounder choice of travelling companion. Ah! The Spodleian Library! It is the most - some might say the only - civilised place east of the Marches of the Elf Lords; not quite Heaven on Earth, perhaps (for that honorific title must surely be reserved for the celebrated Town of Books on the edge of the Black Hills, which, quite apart from its virtue of being on the right side of the border, has the advantage over the Spodleian because its books can be bought - as you may confirm, dear boy, by an examination of my bookshelves) - not quite Heaven on Earth, as I think I said before, but nonetheless a veritable treasure-trove, a subterranean labyrinth packed with parchments and manuscripts illuminated by some of the most accomplished scribes in the world. Oh, dear, sensible Gladys! Discerning Gladys! Intelligent Gladys! I gazed at her, my eyes filled with awe and delight, and as I looked at her disordered clothes, her threadbare cardigan with bulging pockets, her eminently practical shoes, and her convex-lensed half-moon glasses, I had cause once again to lament the passing of the Gnomes from our land, and I cursed the name of Scabpicker with renewed vigour. And I knew that this genius, this little inventive dynamo, creator of explosive magic, the microscope, the astrolabe and the giant mousetrap, was also lost to our little village. For this was more than an expedition for Gladys; it was a quest for a new home. And for those who remained behind, it was the end of an era.

And so, without another word, we turned our faces towards the west, and walked across the grassy plain, the frozen ground crunching beneath our feet, for there was no path. We walked for days, camping in a little tent which Gladys carried in her backpack, and at last the scorched trees and scattered skeletons told us that we had reached the Marches of the Elf Lords. In the distance there loomed the empty hulk of an Elvish castle; we walked towards it and wept for sorrow, for all was burnt inside. In the castle keep, the wooden roof had collapsed, baring the great stone staircases and the mosaic floors to the elements. Icicles lined the doorways, and ferns sprouted from the lintels; the stones and mortar were cracked and crazed from excess of heat. On the floor there lay goblets of Elvish glass, partly melted by the breath of the fire dragons, and once-beautiful jewelry, charred and encrusted with verdigris. There were rusted weapons, too, and spent bolts from Goblin crossbows, amid the clutter of broken furniture and collapsed beams covered with wood-ear fungi. Bats flitted about the battlements like fragments of burnt parchment on the wind, and the moss on the paving-stones was filled with glistening crystals of ice.

We would have hurried away from that desolate place, but as we picked our way through the heat-blistered rubble, dark clouds gathered in the sky above us, lightning threw the blackened battlements into unnatural prominence, and great drops of rain-water spattered against the stones. And so we were compelled to spend the night there, and I do not think, my dear little Alias, that I have ever had a worse night of wakefulness - not even when, on a journey I have yet to chronicle, a dreaded Yena came out of the sepulchre to terrorise a whole town in his (or her - it is so hard to be sure) unending hunt for human flesh. Indeed, on that night, there was something in the wind which was very like the howling of the Yena himself; something almost human, a perverse and miserific moaning which excited at once the deepest emotions of pity and of fear. We crept into the ruined cellars, huddled together for warmth, and gazed through gaping holes in the roof at a tumultuous sky rent by lightning. And then, as quickly as the storm had come, it abated, and presently, stars were visible through the breaches. Gladys picked up her astrolabe and scurried outside, and, since any thought of sleep had been chased from my mind, I followed her.

“Aye,” said Gladys as I reached her side, “Ah make Capella ter be in th’ twenty-sixth degree, an’ Vega i’th’ fifty-third. Must be abaht one o’clock in th’ mornin’.”
“Hum,” I repli

"Sideboard table
1761-1771
Artist/Maker: Shop of William Buckland
Artist/Maker: William Bernard Sears
Origin: America, Virginia, Richmond County
OH: 32"; OW: 45 3/8"; OD: 31 1/4".
Cherry (by microanalysis), beech (by microanalysis), and marble.
Museum Purchase

Acc. No. 1993-64

Appearance: rectangular sideboard table on four projecting, canted legs in the form of architectural consoles with scrolled feet on blocks; the sides of each leg are carved with a large volute and an extended, full blown flower; the outward faces of the rear legs are molded; the outward faces of the front legs are molded and topped with carved acanthus leaves; front and side rails are trimmed with a large gadroon molding at the upper edge and rope molding at the lower edge; the front rails centers a large shell flanked by voluted acanthus leaves; the rectangular marble top is set within the rails and bordered by cherry facing strips.

Construction: The rails are tenoned into the legs and fastened with large pins. Three medial braces are open-dovetailed into the front and rear rails. The marble slab rests on these braces and fits into rabbets cut into the front and rear rails. Cherry facings are glued and nailed to the tops of the front and side rails to enframe the marble. The moldings on the front and side rails have complex miter joints at the projecting corners and are glued and nailed in place, as is the applied shell on the front. Each of the original foot blocks under the rear feet is held in place with four large rosehead nails set into countersunk holes.

Materials: Cherry front rail, side rails, upper rail facings, applied moldings, applied shell, legs, and foot blocks (by microanalysis); beech rear rail and medial braces (by microanalysis); marble top.

Mark(s): None.

Inscription(s): None.

Label:
William Buckland (1734-1774), an English-trained builder active in eastern Virginia and Maryland during the third quarter of the eighteenth century, was responsible for some of the colonial Chesapeake's most aspiring architectural productions and cabinet wares. Among the latter is this cherry sideboard table made during the 1760s for the Tayloe family of Mount Airy in Richmond County, Virginia. With its fully carved console legs, gadrooned rails, and marble top, this remarkably well-preserved object illustrates both Buckland's considerable artistic vision and the skill of his employees. It also alludes to Buckland's penchant for aesthetically integrated architectural schemes.

Born in Oxfordshire, Buckland was apprenticed in 1748 to his uncle, London joiner James Buckland. The young artisan completed his training in 1755 and soon signed an indenture with Virginian Thomson Mason. In return for passage to America and a modest annual salary, Buckland would serve Mason or his agent for four years "in the Employment of a Carpenter &. Joiner." In fact, Mason had secured Buckland's services on behalf of his older brother, George (1725-1792), a rising Fairfax County planter and politician. Then in the midst of building Gunston Hall, a brick house on the Potomac River, the elder Mason required the services of a skilled carver and joiner. Like thousands of other British artisans, Buckland undoubtedly accepted the indenture hoping to find better career opportunities in the colonies.

When Buckland arrived in Virginia, the masonry shell of Gunston Hall was apparently complete and ready for its joined components. Buckland and his crew designed and executed woodwork that was surprisingly elaborate and unusual for its time and place. They added a porch in the form of an engaged octagon closely resembling a Gothic garden temple in William Pain's BUILDER'S COMPANION AND WORKMAN'S GENERAL ASSISTAN (1758). This whimsical portico with Gothic arches and a now missing ornamental finial has no known parallels in contemporary American work. Buckland created equally interesting spaces inside the house, including a templelike central passage with a prominent Doric entablature supported by twelve fluted pilasters. In the parlor, the artisans installed woodwork that blends classical and naturalistic carved ornament with Palladian symmetry. The dining room was executed in the exotic Chinese taste, complete with pagodalike moldings on door and window surrounds. One can only imagine the surprised reactions of Mason's guests on their first view of his singular new house.

Buckland's work at Gunston Hall was nearly complete by 1759 when Mason endorsed the back of the Englishman's indenture with a highly complimentary recommendation, calling him "a complete Master of the Carpenter's &. Joiners Business both in Theory &. Practice." Two years later, the artisan moved his crew to Richmond County on the lower Rappahannock River where he evidently was commissioned to complete the interior woodwork of Mount Airy, the "elegant Seat" of John (1721-1779) and Rebecca Plater Tayloe.

Built of dressed stone, Moun