Frederick Bird - London. 18th Century mahogany Stick Barometer

A most elegant and rare mid-18th Century mahogany Stick Barometer ; the arched top with classically engraved silvered brass register plate, signed by the maker, with manually operated vernier slide; the trunk, edge-moulded, with book-matched herringbone veneers and the exposed barometer tube terminating in hemispherical cistern cover. Originally the barometer had a simple tube within an 'open cistern' reservoir, whose evidence remains, together with the very unusual large air-trap globe at the top

Brother of the more illustrious John, Frederick died of typhoid in 1772. Few of his pieces survive.