James Cox (d. 1791)By training as a metal-plate worker, James Cox was established in his own business by 1749, at the latest, and described himself as goldsmith on a trade-card datable to 1751. The shop at the Golden Urn, Raquet Court, Fleet Street, where he dealt in jewellery, gold and silver objects and precious stones, was to remain the mainstay of Cox?s business throughout his career, however much he later diversified. From 1756-59, Cox was in partnership with Edward Grace. Exactly when he began to organise thconstruction of luxurious, complicated musical and automaton clocks and watches, studded with precious stones and fine woods, intended for export to the Ottoman, Indian and Chinese empires, is unknown but, since the first trace of such activity is a ?notice of two curious Clocks?? in the Gentleman?s Magazine,for December 1766, it must have been no later than 1765 or early 1766, probably at the same time as he employed the then unknown, but nonetheless remarkable, Flemish mechanicianJ. J. Merlin (1735-1803). Merlin is generally considered to have been Cox?s leading mechanician, ?his right hand man?, and any pieces signed by Cox which can be securely dated to before 1773, when Merlin left him, may have a claim to have been designed or even made by Merlin, although it is clear that many movements for both clocks and watches were imported from Switzerland.In the same way that Cox employed leading mechanicians to produce his movements, so for their design and decoration he addressed himself to such leading artists as Joseph Nollekens and Johann Zoffany. As the preamble to his act of parliament put it, ?the painter, the goldsmith, the jeweller, the lapidary, the sculptor, the watchmaker, in short all the liberal arts, have found employment in and worthily co-operated?. One of these collaborators was the bronze-chaser and designer Charles Magniac, wo supplied Cox with ormolu mounts. It was not only clocks and automata that left London for the Orient but also such items as the ?magic lanterns of an uncommon structure and several rich pieces of machinery?, mentioned in a newspaper report of 1769. It was perhaps a desire to diversify this trade still further, and to be his own producer, that led Cox in 1769 to purchase the Chelsea Porcelain Works. For reasons unknown, however, perhaps connected with the various lawsuits in which he was involvd at about this time, Cox sold the porcelain works again only five months later. For several years Cox?s venture in the Far East was successful; in 1774 he claimed to have exported goods to the value of £ 500,000 in the previous seven years. But from 1771 onwards, the Hong Kong merchants who negotiated his goods in China found themselves caught ina profit squeeze, and Cox with declining profits from a large stock which represented a very substantial capital investment.It was to relieve this situation that in 1772 Cox held two sales of items from his stock at Christie?s, (July and December), and at the beginning of the same year opened his mechanical museum in the Great Room, Spring Gardens, where a few years earlierJ. C. Bach had directed concerts and the child prodigy Mozart had made his London debut. For three years, Cox?s museum, despite the astonishingly high entrance fee of half a guinea, was the bemusement and talk of London. James Boswell, who visited it at the instance of Dr Johnson in April 1774, found it ?a very fine exhibition? for ?power of mechanism and splendour of show?. If Fanny Burney, though astounded and impressed nonetheless found it somewhat heartless, William Mason encapsulated it inerse:? ?when great Cox, at his mechanic call,Bids Orient pearls from golden dragons fall,Each little dragonet, with brazen grin,Gapes for the precious prize, and gulps it in.Yet when we peep behind the magic scene,One master-wheel directs the whole machine.The self-same pearls, in nice gradation, allAround one common centre, rise and fall... ?Despite the notoriety of his museum, Cox?s position remained difficult. In 1773 he obtained a private act of parliament to permit him to sell the pieces in his museum by lottery. The list of pieces so offered was published in 1774 and in the spring of 1775, the museum closed. The results of the lottery however are not known.Although in 1773, Merlin had left Cox?s employ, the latter continued to export elaborate mechanisms to the East. All did not go well however and in November 1778 he was declared bankrupt and a further sale of stock was held at Christie?s on 3rd March 1779. In 1782 his wife died. From 1783 onwards, however, Cox had his own establishment in Canton run most of the time by his son John Henry Cox. Most of the watches and automata sold by this firm were supplied by Jaquet-Droz & Leschot with whom Coxigned an agreement through Henri Maillardet, their London agent, in 1783. In 1790, James Cox & Son became Cox & Beale, and in 1792 Cox, Beale & Felix Laurent, although by that time the company was facing difficulties. In the same year the stock was shipped back to London. Possibly this step was consequent on Cox?s death in late 1791 or early 1792. Shortly afterwards the remains of his stock, 55 curious jewels and clocks, were auctioned at Christie?s where they raised 12,000 guineas.Bibliography- Richard D. Altick, The Shows of London, Cambridge (Ma) & London, 1978, pp. 69-72.- Alfred Chapuis & Eugène Jaquet, The History of the Self-Winding Watch, Neuchâtel, 1956, pp. 155-59.- T. P. Camerer Cuss, The Silver Swan in Antiquarian Horology, iv, 1965, pp. 330-34.- Anne French & Michael Wright, John Joseph Merlin, the ingenious Mechanick, London, 1985, pp. 50, 123-28.- Nicholas Goodison, Ormolu, the Work of Matthew Boulton, London, 1974, p. 21.- Clare Le Corbeiller, James Cox, a biographical Review inThe Burlington Magazine, cxii, 1970, pp. 351-58.- Allen H. Weaving, Clocks for the Emperor in Antiquarian Horology, xix, 1991, pp. 367-89, esp. pp. 377-8.E. J. Wood, Curiosities of Clocks and Watches?, London, 1866, (reprinted 1973).