ILLUSTRATED LECTURES FOR GENERAL AUDIENCES
A former Congressional speechwriter, Bob Frishman offers richly-illustrated non-technical lectures, usually at no charge, for service organizations, historical societies, senior centers, museums, public library friends, and other organizations seeking an expert and enthusiastic speaker. Each talk is specifically tailored and updated for the host group, runs no more than one hour, and can be followed by an informal "road-show" session when attendee clocks can be identified and evaluated. He brings hands-on displays of ticking clock movements, reference books, and auction catalogues. TELLING TIME - The first and still most popular lecture presents an overview of clock and watch history, styles, makers, values, collecting, repairing and cultural importance. More than 100 projected images will illustrate familiar and unusual timekeepers from his own and museum collections and from the more than seven thousand clocks he has serviced.TIMEKEEPING AND TIMEKEEPERS IN EARLY NEW ENGLAND - This talk originally was presented as a paper at the 2009 Dublin Seminar in Old Deerfield Village, but has since been expanded with much additional information including Henry David Thoreau's banjo clock and his thoughts on the regularly scheduled trains passing the cabin on Walden Pond. With more than 100 digital images, the lecture offers a history of clocks and watches in New England beginning with the arrival of the Mayflower up to the adoption of standard time by the railroads in the late 19th century.EDWARD DUFFIELD: PHILADELPHIA CLOCKMAKER, CITIZEN, GENTLEMAN, 1730-1803 - Edward Duffield was far more than a leather-apron clockmaker in 18th-century Philadelphia. A wealthy property-owner and an active civic and Anglican Church leader, he nonetheless made, repaired, and sold elegant clocks that today are in world-class museums and private collections. He was a life-long friend of Benjamin Franklin, serving as an executor of the grant man's will. In 2024, Bob's comprehensive 256-page Duffield biography and catalogue of 71 Duffield-signed clocks and instruments was published by the American Philosophical Society Press. This presentation provides an overview of the book and an important artisan's life during crucial years in American history. Signed copies may be purchased at the event.THE CLOCK IN THE PAINTING - During the past several years, Bob has been collecting fine art images which have a clock somewhere in the picture. From Van Gogh to Dali, Titian, Homer, Magritte, Hopper and Rockwell, these artworks often are familiar to art lovers but have not often been joined together in this way. Digital images of more than one hundred paintings from more than five centuries are projected and described in an educational and entertaining combination of art and clock histories. Additional more-focused presentations also are available, including "Horology in American Folk Art", "Horology in Renaissance and Baroque Art", and "Horology in Photography".HOROLOGY & RELIGION - A groundbreaking exhibit was created and curated by Bob at Gordon College in Wenham, MA. More than eighty artworks, vintage prints and photographs, rare books, and important early American clocks were featured to tell the story of the centuries-long close connections between timekeeping and Christianity in Western Europe and America. From Renaissance prints with the earliest clocks, to Hogarth and Nutting prints showing timekeeping and timepieces, this richly illustrated lecture tells a story never before explored in this way in an exhibit and presentation. CLOCKWORK IN THE KITCHEN - Based on 2014 presentations to the Culinary Historians of Boston and the Roger Smith Food Technology Conference in New York City, this lushly illustrated lecture tells the story of kitchen timers, clocks, and 'roasting jacks' designed to steadily turn meat grilling in open-hearth fireplaces. For centuries, clocks in kitchens regulated meal times, timers became increasingly important as cookbook recipes designated more precise cooking times, and wind-up roasting jacks performed the hot, tiresome and dangerous work of evenly cooking meat over open flames. This presentation appeals to everyone interested in the history of food preparation as well as in culinary timekeeping.RUFUS PORTER: YANKEE ARTIST, INVENTOR, PUBLISHER - Rufus Porter (1792-1884) is best known for the scenic wall murals and individual watercolor portraits he produced as an itinerant New England artist. However, he also published best-selling instructional books and was the founder in 1845 of Scientific American magazine. He was granted more than twenty patents for innovative mechanical inventions, anticipating the future of dirigibles, revolver firearms, agricultural machinery, and more. His only known signed clock is in Bob Frishman's collection.HOROLOGY IN PHOTOGRAPHY: CLOCKS AND WATCHES IN VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHS - Since the earliest days of photography, clocks and watches have appeared in images for many reasons. Sometimes, as in 700 years of fine-art paintings that show clocks and watches, they are present for symbolic and metaphorical purposes — mortality, time’s passage, affluence, modernity, technological sophistication, etc. Other times they form a key element in a humorous or descriptive narrative offered in the picture, or are ‘occupational’ views of craftsmen. And from another angle, timepieces have been an important component of the photographic process, determining critical exposure and development times to ensure acceptable finished products. Using dozens of photographic images to illustrate these issues, Bob presents an in-depth program on the many links between horology — the science of timekeeping — and photography. HISTORY OF HOROLOGICAL ILLUSTRATION - Prepared for the 2022 NAWCC Symposium in New York City, this presentation tells the story, with dozens of impressive images, of artistic and technical drawings of clocks, watches, movements, tools, and hand-powered machines from the 15th to 19th centuries. Thomas Reid's 1826 clockmaking book, for example, includes engraved drawings by William Home Lizars of Edinburgh who engraved the first of Audubon's iconic American bird portraits.
Suggestions for customized clock-related presentations will be gladly considered.
UPCOMING LECTURES: March 8 - Osterville (MA) Public Library May 17 - NAWCC Maine Chapter May 22 - Colonial Williamsburg June 1 - NAWCC Atlanta Chapter
August 8 - Eastern States Regional, Cortland NY November - Dingwall-Beloe Lecture, British Museum, London UK
PREVIOUS LECTURES: St. Albans Clock Club (UK) Sotheby's New York Arader Galleries New York Historic Deerfield Antiquarian Horological Society, Midlands Section (UK), Birmingham University Benjamin Franklin House, London UK Sturbridge MA, NAWCC Educational Symposium Provincetown Public Library American Philosophical Society Historic Annapolis Philadelphia Club All Saints' Torresdale Episcopal Church Christ Church, Philadelphia Wyck Historic House Andover Bookstore American Antiquarian Society NAWCC 2024 National Convention, Chattanooga (Keynote) Antiquarian Horological Society (UK), Midlands Section Hamilton (MA) Council on Aging Memorial Hall Library, Andover MA Robb Senior Center, Andover MA NAWCC Connecticut Chapter NAWCC Atlanta Chapter Rogers Memorial Library, Hudson, NH Provincetown (MA) Book Festival NAWCC Atlanta Chapter 24 NAWCC Time Symposium, Lancaster PA, James Arthur Lecture Ashland (MA) Historical Society Massachusetts Watchmakers Association Washington Street Art Center (Somerville) Bedford (MA) Historical Society Salem (MA) Athenaeum Gordon College Museum Studies Class "Horology's Great Collectors" NAWCC Symposium website Raynam (MA) Historical Society New Bedford Whaling Museum Local History Guild Farmington (CT) Public Library Historic Beverly (MA) Nichols Village (Groveland MA) Horological Society of New York NAWCC New England Chapter 8 Andover (MA) Elder Services NAWCC Chapter 141 "Horology in Art" Exhibit Opening, Horological Society of New York Preview of Edward Duffield Book, NAWCC Time Symposium, Philadelphia PA Brooksby Village Women's Forum, Peabody MA Spellman Museum of Stamps and Postal History NAWCC National Convention, Hampton VA New Mexico Zia Sundials NAWCC Chapter #106 Custom House Maritime Museum, Newburyport MA Philadelphia Club Daguerreian Society Library Company of Philadelphia Bowdoin College Museum of Art Sharon (MA) Adult Center NAWCC Mid-Eastern Regional, York PA New Bedford Whaling Museum U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Constitution Flotilla, Base Boston Fall River (MA) Second Half Lifelong Learning NAWCC 2019 Symposium "Time Made in Germany", Nuremberg Gibson House Museum, Boston NAWCC Chapter 182, Canberra, Australia NAWCC Chapter 72, Sydney, Australia Raynham (MA) Historical Society Henry Ford Museum, NAWCC "Cars, Clocks, and Watches" Symposium Dartmouth (MA) Historical & Arts Society Chelsea Jewish Foundation, Peabody MA NAWCC Madison, WI Chapter NAWCC New Hampshire Chapter NAWCC Vermont Chapter Dighton (MA) Historical Society Lynnfield Senior Center Society for Industrial Archeology "New England Clock and Watch Factories" Boston Athenaeum, "Horology at the Athenaeum" West Dean College, West Sussex, UK "Horology in Art" Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, "Horology in Art" NAWCC Symposium Bamberg, Germany, Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Chronometrie Salem State University Lifelong Learning Institute Rufus Porter Museum (Bridgton, Maine) Braintree (MA) Department of Elder Affairs Mass. Watch/Clock Makers Association NAWCC Maine Chapter 89 North Reading (MA) Historical Society Stonington (CT) Historical Society Queens College, Department of Anthropology Massachusetts College of Art and Design NAWCC Webinar "Riggs Archive at Winterthur" Bullard Memorial Farm (Holliston MA) Clinton (CT) Historical Society Winterthur Museum, NAWCC "Clocks at Winterthur" Symposium New York Horological Society (New York City) Leach Library (Londonderry NH) Old Colony History Museum (Taunton MA) Townsend (MA) Historical Society Burlington (MA) Historical Society Horological Art Chapter, NAWCC National Convention, Louisville, KY NAWCC Old Dominion Chapter, Williamsburg, VA NAWCC Pacific Northwest Regional, Tacoma, WA NAWCC Connecticut Chapter 148 Lawrence Heritage State Park, White Fund Lecture, Lawrence, MA Greater Boston Watch & Clock Collectors Billerica (MA) Historical Society NAWCC Webinar "Horology in Art" American Clock & Watch Museum, Bristol, CT North Andover Historical Society Retired Men's Association, Sudbury, MA Newton (Mass.) Rotary Club Historical Society of Cheshire County, Keene, NH The Roger Smith Food Tech Conference, New York City Medford (MA) Historical Society Culinary Historians of Boston, Radcliffe College Time For Everyone Symposium, Santa Barbara, CA International Society for the Study of Time, Conference in Crete, Greece NAWCC Maine Chapter Wellesley Historical Society North Reading Historical Society Victorian Society in America, New England Chapter, at Gibson House Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester MA Collector Roundtable: Boston Book, Print & Ephemera Show Martha's Vineyard Museum Wellfleet Historical Society Middleton Historical Society Topsfield Historical Society Edgewood Retirement Community, North Andover Annual NAWCC Convention, Overland Park, KS Merrimac Valley Masonic Fellowship Waring School (Beverly MA) "It's About Time" special end-of year project Tewksbury Public Library Reading (MA) Antiquarian Society Memorial Hall Library, Andover MA Spellman Museum of Stamps & Postal History, Weston MA Willard House & Clock Museum, Grafton MA Northeastern University NU@Noon Alumni Program Boston College Physics Department, "Vibrations and Waves" Course The Dublin Seminar in American & New England Studies New England Chapter 8, National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors Rockport MA Public Library Massachusetts Watchmakers-Clockmakers Association Senior Citizens Club, Epping, NH Nashua NH Public Library Salem NH Public Library Flint Memorial Library, North Reading MA Reading MA College Club Boston Antiques Weekend Winchester MA Historical Society Andover Historical Society Whelden Memorial Library, West Barnstable MA Amherst, NH Town Library Wilmington MA Memorial Library Kiwanis Club, Andover MA Rotary Club, Andover MA Lions Club, Lawrence MA Senior Center, Methuen MA Senior Center, Andover MA Town of Andover MA Department of Community Services Cambridge Center for Adult Education Gibson House Museum, Boston
PREVIOUS LECTURES: St. Albans Clock Club (UK) Sotheby's New York Arader Galleries New York Historic Deerfield Antiquarian Horological Society, Midlands Section (UK), Birmingham University Benjamin Franklin House, London UK Sturbridge MA, NAWCC Educational Symposium Provincetown Public Library American Philosophical Society Historic Annapolis Philadelphia Club All Saints' Torresdale Episcopal Church Christ Church, Philadelphia Wyck Historic House Andover Bookstore American Antiquarian Society NAWCC 2024 National Convention, Chattanooga (Keynote) Antiquarian Horological Society (UK), Midlands Section Hamilton (MA) Council on Aging Memorial Hall Library, Andover MA Robb Senior Center, Andover MA NAWCC Connecticut Chapter NAWCC Atlanta Chapter Rogers Memorial Library, Hudson, NH Provincetown (MA) Book Festival NAWCC Atlanta Chapter 24 NAWCC Time Symposium, Lancaster PA, James Arthur Lecture Ashland (MA) Historical Society Massachusetts Watchmakers Association Washington Street Art Center (Somerville) Bedford (MA) Historical Society Salem (MA) Athenaeum Gordon College Museum Studies Class "Horology's Great Collectors" NAWCC Symposium website Raynam (MA) Historical Society New Bedford Whaling Museum Local History Guild Farmington (CT) Public Library Historic Beverly (MA) Nichols Village (Groveland MA) Horological Society of New York NAWCC New England Chapter 8 Andover (MA) Elder Services NAWCC Chapter 141 "Horology in Art" Exhibit Opening, Horological Society of New York Preview of Edward Duffield Book, NAWCC Time Symposium, Philadelphia PA Brooksby Village Women's Forum, Peabody MA Spellman Museum of Stamps and Postal History NAWCC National Convention, Hampton VA New Mexico Zia Sundials NAWCC Chapter #106 Custom House Maritime Museum, Newburyport MA Philadelphia Club Daguerreian Society Library Company of Philadelphia Bowdoin College Museum of Art Sharon (MA) Adult Center NAWCC Mid-Eastern Regional, York PA New Bedford Whaling Museum U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Constitution Flotilla, Base Boston Fall River (MA) Second Half Lifelong Learning NAWCC 2019 Symposium "Time Made in Germany", Nuremberg Gibson House Museum, Boston NAWCC Chapter 182, Canberra, Australia NAWCC Chapter 72, Sydney, Australia Raynham (MA) Historical Society Henry Ford Museum, NAWCC "Cars, Clocks, and Watches" Symposium Dartmouth (MA) Historical & Arts Society Chelsea Jewish Foundation, Peabody MA NAWCC Madison, WI Chapter NAWCC New Hampshire Chapter NAWCC Vermont Chapter Dighton (MA) Historical Society Lynnfield Senior Center Society for Industrial Archeology "New England Clock and Watch Factories" Boston Athenaeum, "Horology at the Athenaeum" West Dean College, West Sussex, UK "Horology in Art" Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, "Horology in Art" NAWCC Symposium Bamberg, Germany, Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Chronometrie Salem State University Lifelong Learning Institute Rufus Porter Museum (Bridgton, Maine) Braintree (MA) Department of Elder Affairs Mass. Watch/Clock Makers Association NAWCC Maine Chapter 89 North Reading (MA) Historical Society Stonington (CT) Historical Society Queens College, Department of Anthropology Massachusetts College of Art and Design NAWCC Webinar "Riggs Archive at Winterthur" Bullard Memorial Farm (Holliston MA) Clinton (CT) Historical Society Winterthur Museum, NAWCC "Clocks at Winterthur" Symposium New York Horological Society (New York City) Leach Library (Londonderry NH) Old Colony History Museum (Taunton MA) Townsend (MA) Historical Society Burlington (MA) Historical Society Horological Art Chapter, NAWCC National Convention, Louisville, KY NAWCC Old Dominion Chapter, Williamsburg, VA NAWCC Pacific Northwest Regional, Tacoma, WA NAWCC Connecticut Chapter 148 Lawrence Heritage State Park, White Fund Lecture, Lawrence, MA Greater Boston Watch & Clock Collectors Billerica (MA) Historical Society NAWCC Webinar "Horology in Art" American Clock & Watch Museum, Bristol, CT North Andover Historical Society Retired Men's Association, Sudbury, MA Newton (Mass.) Rotary Club Historical Society of Cheshire County, Keene, NH The Roger Smith Food Tech Conference, New York City Medford (MA) Historical Society Culinary Historians of Boston, Radcliffe College Time For Everyone Symposium, Santa Barbara, CA International Society for the Study of Time, Conference in Crete, Greece NAWCC Maine Chapter Wellesley Historical Society North Reading Historical Society Victorian Society in America, New England Chapter, at Gibson House Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester MA Collector Roundtable: Boston Book, Print & Ephemera Show Martha's Vineyard Museum Wellfleet Historical Society Middleton Historical Society Topsfield Historical Society Edgewood Retirement Community, North Andover Annual NAWCC Convention, Overland Park, KS Merrimac Valley Masonic Fellowship Waring School (Beverly MA) "It's About Time" special end-of year project Tewksbury Public Library Reading (MA) Antiquarian Society Memorial Hall Library, Andover MA Spellman Museum of Stamps & Postal History, Weston MA Willard House & Clock Museum, Grafton MA Northeastern University NU@Noon Alumni Program Boston College Physics Department, "Vibrations and Waves" Course The Dublin Seminar in American & New England Studies New England Chapter 8, National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors Rockport MA Public Library Massachusetts Watchmakers-Clockmakers Association Senior Citizens Club, Epping, NH Nashua NH Public Library Salem NH Public Library Flint Memorial Library, North Reading MA Reading MA College Club Boston Antiques Weekend Winchester MA Historical Society Andover Historical Society Whelden Memorial Library, West Barnstable MA Amherst, NH Town Library Wilmington MA Memorial Library Kiwanis Club, Andover MA Rotary Club, Andover MA Lions Club, Lawrence MA Senior Center, Methuen MA Senior Center, Andover MA Town of Andover MA Department of Community Services Cambridge Center for Adult Education Gibson House Museum, Boston