The wheel barometer, a mid-seventeenth-century innovation, was not widely produced until the late eighteenth century, coinciding with the introduction of the banjo shape case. In America the earliest record of barometer production credits James Winthrop in about 1786. Corti, Vecchio & Co. advertised that its firm made and repaired barometers, in addition to retailing looking glasses, art supplies, prints, and paintings. While it is debatable whether the company actually produced barometers, this example’s similarity to English ones suggests that Corti, Vecchio & Co. imported English components and simply assembled them.

Technical notes: Mahogany veneer, unidentified inlay; spruce (frame and rear door), dogwood, probably European, possibly North American (behind the upper dial). Originally the window was fitted with a convex glass. A turned brass finial was probably intended for the pediment.

Related examples: This is the only known barometer marked by Corti, Vecchio & Co. English examples are recorded in Goodison 1968, pp. 204–5; Christie’s, New York, sale 6842, June 3, 1989, lot 23.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.