Page 24 - Demo

KNIBB VS. FROMANTEEL MOVEMENT COMPARISONS
The four movements opposite clearly demonstrate that the Fromanteel and Knibb workshops were in collaboration.
The question is, who was making them?
The argument that these movements were too sophisticated for Joseph Knibb to have made in Oxford is quite clearly incorrect, Joseph was a prodigious talent and more than capable. Another argument that seems equally unlikely would be that the young 25-year old Joseph could have afforded to buy such movements from the Fromanteel workshops, that would have been way beyond Joseph’s means at this time, and anyway, why would he do that when he could make his own in Oxford?
Joseph would have been keen to forge an relationship with the influential Fromanteels, and his Uncle Samuel could very easily have acted as the go-between. If, as seems likely, Joseph had apprenticed under his uncle Samuel then Samuel knew just what his young nephew was capable of, and of course Joseph would have been as keen as mustard for such work. The practice of outsourcing was, and still is, commonplace in many trades. In watchmaking in Paris, for example, the concept of buying in ‘ebauches’ or ‘blanc roulants’ from suppliers outside the City was common practice. A Saville Row tailor will use any number of out-sourced jobbing tailors to contribute towards your finished suit.
Clearly the common denominators between all these very early movements are:
• The shouldered, or scoop-top plates
• Identical wheel train layout
• Virtually identical hammer/bell strike systems.
However not a single one of the movements are identical, they all have their own character, for example the latched pillar ends of the two Oxford examples (opposite) have very different finishes, one with pointed ends, the other with flat ends – but they were made in the same workshop. Knibb’s bell stands are secured on the front plate whereas Fromanteel’s were secured to the back plate (see opposite). Perhaps for the London-bound movements Joseph made the plates and the basic wheelwork in Oxford, and they were then finished off in the Fromanteel workshops.
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