Tiffany & Co.’s Mixed Metal ‘Night and Day’ Carriage Clock

This Tiffany & Co Carriage Clock is decorated with bats and roosters to represent night and day respectively. The background is embellished with a Martelé (hammered) texture while the top of the clock depicts the Unmon (Japanese cloud) motif. Tiffany & Co’s silver in the 1880s was primarily inspired by the Japonisme and Art Nouveau movements. The simplification of the bats’ features shows evident Japanese influence, namely by the work of Katsushika Hokusai. His book Denshin Kaishu (transmitting the spirit, revealing the form of things) was a reference book of flowers, landscapes, and animal designs for designers to copy. The rounding of the eyelids and ears appeals to the Japanese sense of kawaii (cuteness.)