The owl wakes first. Its cage begins to revolve and bells sound around it. Then the peacock raises its head, opens its great tail and turns, allowing the gilded feathers to catch the light from another angle. A cockerel brings the performance to its close by opening its beak and crowing. Amid all this movement, the clock itself is almost comically discreet: its dial is set into the cap of a mushroom at the foot of a golden oak. [1][2]
The Peacock Clock at the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg is not a timepiece decorated with birds. The entire landscape is an automaton — a mechanism designed to perform a fixed sequence when wound. Made in James Cox's London workshop during the 1770s, it brings together bronze, silver, glass and gilding on a monumental scale. The Hermitage dates the object to 1766–72. [1][3]
Time concealed within a landscape
The composition takes the form of a miniature natural world in metal. The peacock stands on a substantial oak branch; the owl occupies a cage; the cockerel waits below. Leaves, acorns and small creatures fill the spaces between them. Their abundance is not merely decorative. It also conceals the rods, shafts and linkages that carry power from the movement to the birds. [1][2]
One reads the time on the mushroom while a goldsmith's fantasy spreads around it. That arrangement is characteristic of Cox. He was a goldsmith and entrepreneur rather than a master clockmaker who made every component himself. The Metropolitan Museum describes the network of specialist craftsmen behind his sumptuous mechanical objects. Friedrich Jury, a German-born mechanic working in London, is associated both with the Peacock Clock's construction and with its journey to Russia. [1][3]
An imperial commission for Catherine the Great
The Hermitage's account begins around 1777. Prince Grigory Potemkin knew Cox's work and commissioned a monumental automaton for Catherine the Great, whose collecting embraced art, natural history and ingenious machinery. Cox adapted an existing mechanical peacock, enlarging the scene with the owl, cockerel and clock in a mushroom.