Introduction.
A review of the literature appears to indicate that authors in the English language have distinguished the importance and specifics of Dutch clockmaking much at a much earlier stage and with rather more verve than their Dutch colleagues. This phenomenon is shared in other areas. Great Dutch architects like Berlage and Dudok, and even the old masters of the 'Golden Age of Dutch painting' seems to attract greater interest abroad than in the Netherlands itself.
 
Dutch authors.
The best nown Dutch authors, amongst others writing in the English language about essential history of Dutch clocks, Dr J.L. Sellink in his survey of Dutch antique domestic clocks (1973) and Dr R. Plomp in some splendid articles in Antiquarian Horology of 1971, 1972 and 1974, but mainly in his important case study of Early Dutch spring driven pendulum clocks (1979). Other Dutch authors, writing in their mother tongue, and setting a premier standard in Dutch horology are C. Spierdijk in his books on clocks and clockmakers (1962) and watches and watchmakers (1973) as well as Jaap Zeeman having written the first survey of the Dutch stool clock (a popular regional style Dutch domestic wall clock) (1969) and of the Dutch longcase clock (1977), as well as his compilation of exhibition catalogues in 1967, 1969 and 1983. In 1970 the late collector and connoisseur Enrico Morpurgo ('our own G.H. Baillie') compiled a list of Dutch clock- and watch-makers from the year 1300 onwards. He also mounted the most important temporary exhibition of highlights from the Dutch clock history in Amsterdam in 1956, the same year the Science Museum London organized a 'Huygens Tercentenary Exhibition' on the occasion of the 300 year celebration of the introduction of the pendulum clock by Christiaan Huygens.

Museum collections.
In the Netherlands there are at least three major museums which specialize in antique clocks. These are the Dutch Gold, Silver and Clock Museum in the silver-town of Schoonhoven (with a large international collection of clocks and watches), the most entertaining National Museum from Musical Clock to Street Organ in Utrecht, and last but not least the small but charming Museum of the Dutch clock in Zaandam (with its quintessential representative survey of Dutch clock history). For the Schoonhoven collection only a poorly illustrated catalogue exists by G.H. Faddegon (1955). The Utrecht collection is splendidly described by Dr Jan Jaap Haspels (1994) and the one from Zaandam by Prof C. A. Grimbergen (1991). Apart from these three clock museums important clock collections can be found in the National Museum of the History of Science (The Boerhaave Museum) in Leyden, The Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, the Municipal Museums of Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam, and also the Frisian Museum and Museum Het Princessehof in Leeuwarden, which next to Haarlem, The Hague and Amsterdam the other focal point in Dutch clock industry.

Furthermore, important Dutch clocks can be found in foreign museum collections like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Paris Louvre or German museums in Dresden, Kassel, Munich, Stuttgart and Wuppertal. There are of course some Dutch horological masterpieces in London, in the Science Museum, the British Museum (Ilbert Collection), The V&A and Museum of the Clockmakers' Company at the Guildhall.
One of the major private collections is the eminent Vehmeyer collection, described in a marvelous illustrated book/catalogue in 1994, containing at least twenty-five Hague clocks, sixteen Dutch longcase clocks, apart from a few Dutch Renaissance table clocks, late seventeenth century maritime watches and eighteenth century bracket clocks. A smaller but interesting collection is that of the Boom-Time Foundation on display in museums in Haarlem, Utrecht and Zaandam and described in a catalogue in 1999 by ir Jan Boomsma.

Historical survey: Middle Ages and Renaissance.
To give you a short introduction to the history of Dutch clockmaking I hope I can show you some examples and maybe demonstrate some of the characteristics as well as their similarities with British timekeepers.
We will probably never know whether my fellow countrymen by the names of Johan Lietuyt and the Uneman (or Vrieman) brethren John and Willem, being invited by King Edward III of England in 1368, were actually responsible for the famous turret clocks of |Salisbury and Wells, or (as others claim) that these illustrious mediaeval timekeepers were crafted by blacksmiths from Bruges, where Bishop Erghum who commissioned these dinosaurs of turret clocks, originated. However the document preserved in the British Library proofs the international claim to fame of Dutch clockmaker-blacksmiths even by royal standards.

Dutch turret clocks are documented as early as 1367 in Maastricht in the most southern province of Limburg, right at the border of both modern day Belgium and Germany. The oldest surviving turret clocks on Dutch soil probably are the clock in the Lanscroon in Maastricht (dated approximately 1400) and the church clock, dated approximately 1420, of the small village of Winkel in the North of Holland. (Holland by the way being not synonymous with the Netherlands, but originally the historical power centre of the (Northern) Netherlands).

A smaller turret clock, dating from about a century later and now in the museum in Zaandam, demonstrates very clearly the vertical verge escapement and foliot or balance bar with adjustable weights on top, typical for the mediaeval concept of variable hours, derived from the sundials of the ancients.

Another mediaeval turret clock worth mentioning (known from the illustrated books by H.A. Lloyd, E.J. Tyler and C. Jagger) was made in 1542 by the clockmaker Heynrick Vabrie of Breda in the southern province of Brabant. This is the oldest known Dutch turret clock with musical drum made for the church of St. Jacob in The Hague, but now on display in the Museum in Schoonhoven.

The oldest preserved Dutch domestic clock is referred to as the Barentsz clock, (Fig. 1) because of its use during an unfortunate nautical expedition seeking a North passage to China by a captain Willem Barentsz in 1596. This clock, rediscovered on the Island of Nova Zembla (modern day Russia) and now on display in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, proofs to be of fifteenth century gothic origin, both in style and type of construction, with its retaining buttress like shaped corner posts, peg-alarumdial, balance wheel and count wheel similar to those described in the Almanus Manuscript of 1480 from the Augsburg City Library, very skillfully transcribed by John Leopold.

A portrait of a gentleman from Burgundy by a follower of Rogier van der Weyden from c. 1440, now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp and depicted by H.A. Lloyd (1958), is claimed to portray the first spring-driven clock-movement. It is however without doubt that the centre of the earliest watchmaking industry was concentrated in Bavaria (ref. the famous Nuremberg egg-shaped watches). (There was e clockmakers guild in Nuremberg as early as 1565.) Important early Dutch watchmakers from c. 1600 onwards are the Frisian watchmaker Vibrandi of Leeuwarden and the Haarlem-based Salomon Coster. Exquisite examples of their work can be found in museum collections in Amsterdam. The Ashmolean Museum shows two oval Vibrandi watches out of a total of eight Dutch watches. (David Thompson, 'Watches in the Ashmolean Museum, Part I' Antiquarian Horology, September 2000). An example of a later Vibrandi watch can nowadays be seen in the Museum in Schoonhoven. Coster also made small horizontal table clocks of the Bavarian type, known from the Vehmeyer collection.

The 'Golden Age': Christiaan Huygens and collaborators.
Salomon Coster moved from Haarlem to The Hague in 1643 and his greatest claim to fame is as the maker of the first pendulum clocks, the so-called 'Haagse klokken' (Hague clocks). Coster worked under the directions of the outstanding homo universalis of seventeenth century Dutch science with the guttural name Christaan Huygens, astronomer, mathematician, physicist and optical scientist. Strangely enough, in contrast to the English, the general Dutch public is completely unaware of the international scientific significance of this inspiring genius. In preparing this paper I came across an article at the BBC website in which I may have found a reason for this omission. It read that the English like Huygens because Huygens simply liked the English, and by the way disliked the Dutch.

Unfortunately, amongst horologists I still encounter anything but consensus, just as Huygens must have experienced, introducing as his original ideas, his inventions and mechanical improvements, like the construction of the pendulum clock, his endless rope, the balance spring, the remontoir or his equation and maritime timekeepers. There were the claims by rivals as Simon Douw of Rotterdam and contemporary Galileo followers concerning his pendulum system or by the French Abbé de Hautefeuille and the English inventor Dr Robert Hooke concerning the invention of the balance spring.