HISTORY OF TOWER CLOCK MAKERS

FROM SANT’ANGELO IN VADO TO MONTECAROTTO

Among the most important clocks built at the beginning of the 19th century by the masters of Sant’Angelo in Vado, we recall some of the most important ones built by Antonio Podrini: the clock of the Government Palace of Ancona, in Piazza del Plebiscito, the clock of the Urbino Cathedral, the Tolentino clock.

In 1826 Antonio Podrini died while he was building the clock in Cingoli (MC). The business passed into the hands of his shop heirs: his son Eustachio Podrini and his partner Pietro Mei from Montecarotto. Pietro Mei, of humble origins, probably demonstrating a precocious talent, had been sent to learn the job in Sant’Angelo in Vado, probably thanks to acquaintances within the agrarian or religious bourgeoisie; over time he had gained Podrini’s trust, eventually becoming his partner. In fact, Pietro Mei would become the Marche watchmaker par excellence of the 1800s. He established his workshop in Montecarotto and continued the activities of his master.

Unlike Podrini, Mei invariably signed the mechanisms on the escape wheel by engraving his name, the village of origin, the year of construction and the work number. His workshop became so renowned that, towards the middle of the 19th century, a 23-year-old blacksmith from San Marcello, Antonio Galli, moved to Montecarotto to specialize in the construction of “time machines”, becoming in turn Mei’s partner and prosecutor of the activity upon his death. The same story repeats itself around 1890 when a young Senigallian, Edoardo Marconi, moves to Montecarotto to attend “the University of horology”, that is the workshop of Pietro Mei and Antonio Galli, whose activity he would continue always declaring, in his advertising postcards, to be his “heir and successor“. Marconi worked in the construction of tower and house clocks, but also in the maintenance of the mechanisms of his predecessors, until the advent of electricity which would completely transform the watchmaking sector.