The partially painted brass case (imitating enamel) is in the form of cupola with five turned brass columns. The pendulum rotates within the colonnade; its crutch piece is fitted with a pointer that runs against a rough scale giving notional seconds indication. The time is shown by a single hour ring which is visible through an aperture in the decorative base.

The conical pendulum was popular as a novelty addition to domestic clocks in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Never good timekeepers, these clocks had visual appeal and also run, virtually, without noise.
A French manufacturer of novelty clocks, M. Eugene Farcot, exhibited an impressive longcase clock with a twenty-five metre conical pendulum suspended from the ceiling at the Paris Exhibition in 1878.