Dr Kirsten Tambling – Curator

Kirsten is the inaugural Curator of The Clockworks. She has previously worked in museums and collections including The Royal Collection, Bethlem Museum of the Mind, Dr Johnson’s House, The National Gallery and Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village, where she co-curated the exhibition James Henry Pullen: Inmate Inventor, Genius (2018).

Kirsten is interested in uncovering and sharing compelling narratives in historical collections; as well as curating exhibitions, she has written widely for publications including Apollo, Country Life, Literary Review and The Art Newspaper. Her research background is in eighteenth-century French and British art (the subject of her PhD, which dealt with seduction in the work of William Hogarth and Jean-Antoine Watteau). She has taught and lectured for the V&A, Birkbeck and The Courtauld Institute of Art, and between 2018-2022 was Research Associate on the ‘Shakespeare in the Royal Collection’ project led by King’s College, London, in partnership with the Royal Collection Trust. Her monograph, Shakespearean Objects in the Royal Collection, 1714-1939 will be out with Oxford University Press in September 2025.

Kirsten Tambling

Dr James Nye – Founder

James Nye

James has been involved with clocks since the age of fourteen, when he was put in charge of a Gents distributed time system at his school in Sussex. This sparked an abiding interest in electric timekeeping.

Following graduation from Balliol College, Oxford, James worked in commerce, though horology increasingly filled his time. In 2011, he completed a PhD in history at King’s College, London. His thesis focused on company promotion and included case studies of Victorian and Edwardian electric clock companies.

Throughout his career, James has assembled a wide-ranging collection of electric time artefacts which have been enjoyed by many visiting specialists and enthusiasts over the last thirty-five years. In addition to research into the emergence of distributed accurate timekeeping from the late nineteenth century onwards – a field in which he collaborates with David Rooney – James has in recent years covered much earlier ground, and researched clockmakers across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

James is chairman of the council of the AHS, and has been Secretary of its Electrical Horology Group since 1996. He is a longstanding member of the BHI and a Life Member of the NAWCC. He belongs to the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Chronometrie as well as Chronometrophilia He is a Past Master of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers.

Publications

  • James Nye, Clockmaking on Lothbury: Craft, Community and Commerce in Pre-Fire London, AHS, 2023.
  • Anthony Turner, James Nye and Jonathan Betts, A General History of Horology, Oxford University Press, 2022.
  • James Nye, A Long Time in Making, Oxford University Press, 2014.

Conference and Symposium Papers:

  • London Group of Historical Geographers Symposium: Time, Modernity and the City, Autumn 2012: ‘The Tricky Business of Selling Time – an exploration of European civic time distribution systems, their financing and failure.’
  • British Academy Symposium: Soothsayers of Doom? December 2011: ‘From Boom to Bust: Speculators, Promoters and Journalists in the City in the 1890s.’
  • Greenwich Time Symposium June 2010: ‘“He met with an abundant share of the trials and difficulties which proverbially beset the inventor” – an account of the life of George Bennett Bowell (1875–1942).’
  • Monetary History Group April 2009: ‘The World of the Company Promoter in the London Capital Market: 1890–1914.’

Lectures

  • AHS London Lecture Series, Royal Astronomical Society, July 2012: ‘A Good Time in Berlin – The remarkable clocks of Normal-Zeit’.
  • AHS Northern Section, July 2012: ‘Synchronome – a look behind the scenes’.
  • BHI West Country Section, September 2011: ‘The Importance of Being on Time: an exploration of new technologies in the transmission of information at a distance: 1850–1950’.
  • Electrical Timekeeping Group, AHS: March 2011: ‘Submarines and the Submergence of Synchronome: the wartime operations of the Synchronome Company and their impact on the business’.

Conservator-in-Residence

Since 2023, our Conservator-in-Residence has been Alex Jeffrey.

Governance

We are a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIC), registered with the UK Charity Commission (no. 1192875). We are supported by a group of expert trustees:

  • Dr James Nye – Writer and speaker on the history of time measurement
  • Luci Collings – Freelance editor and specialist in history of art
  • Campbell Fleming – Senior investment manager
  • James Naylor – Former retail and communications expert at McKinsey & Co
  • David Rooney – Writer and curator