Live Auction 21043The Collection of Sir Nicholas Goodison - British Art: Innovation and Craftsmanship
BENJAMIN MARTIN, LONDON, CIRCA 1760
Lot 25

BENJAMIN MARTIN, LONDON, CIRCA 1760

A GEORGE III STICK BAROMETER

Closed25 May 2022

Estimate

GBP 8,000–12,000

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BENJAMIN MARTIN, LONDON, CIRCA 1760
A GEORGE III STICK BAROMETER
The case with broken-arch pediment and brass urn finial, ebonised columns with ivory capitals and bases, the serpentine section trunk with carved gadrooned cistern cover with ivory and ebonised balusters, the silvered plates with engraved feather edging, manually operated vernier, portable cistern with brass screw, fahrenheit mercury thermometer mounted on plate with engraved border, gut hygrometer with steel hand in arch, signed 'Martin / London'
Mahogany, ebonised, ivory and brass
39 3⁄4 in. (101 cm.) high; 6 in. (15.2 cm.) wide; 3 1⁄2 in. (8.9 cm.) deep

with Moss Harris, New Oxford Street, London.
Acquired from R.A. Lee, London, June 1965.

Specialist note


Benjamin Martin (1704-1782) was a self-taught mathematician and lecturer on several scientific subjects, he settled in Fleet Street as an optician in 1756 and became a noted optical, mathematical and physical instrument maker. Martin was visited in 1769 by Jean Bernoulli, the astronomer to the King of Prussia, who noted his 'beaux instrumens' were Martin's advantage over the more eminent scientific lecturer James Ferguson.

Sir Nicholas Goodison noted: This is another but much grander example of Martin's 'Triple Weather Glass' or 'Aerometrum Magnum' as he described it in 1756 in an advertisement appended to 'An Essay on Visual Glasses', a tract which he issued from his shop in Fleet Street. The barometer is very close to the illustration in the tract (see Goodison, 1977, (op. cit.) pl. 118, p. 180).