Belleek Shamrock Basketweave Cashel Mantel Clock, German Quartz, Blue Mark, c. 1993–1999

The Piece

A Belleek Parian china mantel clock in the Cashel shape, the Irish pottery's small architectural timepiece of the 1990s, molded as a miniature clock tower with a stepped pediment, a pair of rope-twist columns and a stepped plinth, the whole in Belleek's creamy ivory body under its soft pearly glaze. The pediment and the roundel around the dial are worked in the firm's signature basketweave, and the face is hand painted with the Belleek shamrock pattern: sprays of green three-leaf shamrocks on fine trailing stems, two at the top corners and two at the bottom, each leaf shaded by hand from pale to deep green. A thin gilt line runs around the foot of the plinth. The dial is set in a brass bezel under a domed glass, cream with Roman numerals, pierced gilt hands and the Belleek script name, and the movement, set into the back of the case under a brass cover, is a German quartz by Gebr. Hauser, stamped Germany, Mercedes-Quartz, Gebr. Hauser, with the setting knob and battery housing accessible from the rear.

The base carries the Belleek mark in blue: the Irish wolfhound, the round tower and the harp over a banner reading Belleek Co. Fermanagh Ireland, with the registered trademark R in a circle beside the tower. The clock is in excellent condition, with no chips, cracks or crazing to the china, the shamrock painting bright and the gilt line intact; the brass bezel and the movement cover show light tarnish. The movement takes a single battery, not included.

History & Provenance

Belleek Pottery was founded in 1857 on the River Erne in County Fermanagh, where a deposit of feldspar on the Castle Caldwell estate made possible the thin, lustrous Parian china the pottery has made ever since. The shamrock pattern on a basketweave ground was in production by the 1880s and became the firm's best known line, the piece that Irish emigrants carried to America and that American visitors carried home, and the pottery has applied it to everything from tea services to vases to clocks. The Cashel clock, named for the Rock of Cashel in Tipperary, was one of several small mantel clocks the pottery made in the last decades of the century with movements bought in from the German quartz trade, Gebr. Hauser of the Black Forest among them, and it has since been retired from the range.

The dating rests on the mark rather than style alone. Belleek has changed the color and detail of its backstamp in a documented sequence since 1863, and the blue mark with the wolfhound, tower and harp over the Co. Fermanagh Ireland banner and the registered R in a circle, without the Deanta in Eirinn line of the earlier marks, is the mark the pottery used from 1993 through 1999. The German quartz movement is consistent with that window, and the clock is dated c. 1993–1999.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

This is the small clock for a mantel, a bedside table, a bookshelf or a desk, where the ivory china and the green shamrocks read as a quiet piece of Ireland rather than a souvenir. It sits with the white ironstone and the brass of a traditional room, lifts a collected shelf of creamware and green glass, and makes a natural gift for a wedding, an anniversary, a new house or anyone with Irish roots. For a shop or designer client it is the marked, retired, excellent-condition Belleek piece that sells on the name and the shamrocks, a small, light, easy-to-ship item with a steady collector following.