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Clocks and watches instruments of the Time
When we talk about Art, we usually think about Architecture, Painting and Sculpture, but another kind of art is very important in the history of humanity, the decorative art: decorative arts are objects, like ceramics, glasses, carpets, furniture, that filled the houses of kings, noble people and collectors century after century. Very important it's also, in decorative arts, the clock, from one hand considered as a scientific instrument, from the other hand as a beautiful object for living rooms or bedrooms, decorated sometimes with gold, porcelains, precious stones, in particular during the XVII and the XVIII century, when the Baroque and the Rococo styles created elegant curved forms, full of fantasy and decorations. [E] [F] [I] [ES] Clocks followed the evolutions of European artistic styles, and we know that also very important artists, like for example Luigi Valadier in Rome, or the Manfredini family in Milan realized real projects and drawings for these beautiful objects. Clock was also, already in the past, an instrument to be brought during travels, so we know very little clocks created for this reason, or silent clocks created in particular for the bedrooms or very big clocks born to be put in big rooms in which the king or the noble men (or women) met visitors. More recent is the idea of the watch we bring on our arm: anyway, also this simple object fascinated artists in the XX century: one example is the American artist Keith Haring [E] [ES] [I] , who was paid to project a decoration for the watches of the Swatch Industries, now existing in a little number of objects, very rare to be found and very expensive on the market of art. [E & F]
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