Important Watches, Pocket Watches and...

Noga Hilton Hotel, Nov 13, 2005

LOT 167

?Love The Conqueror? Gaultier a Paris. Made circa 1750. Very fine and rare, weight driven, eight-day going kingwood marquetry and oyster veneered ormolu mounted longcase clock with seconds-beating center seconds, hour and half-hour striking and pin-wheel escapement.

CHF 70,000 - 90,000

EUR 45,000 - 60,000 / USD 55,000 - 70,000

Sold: CHF 69,000

C. By Nicolas-Jean Marchand, of waisted and bombé form, marquetry and oyster veneered with kingwood, bombé door with oval lenticle and lock, surmounted by a gilt bronze cresting representing Love the Conqueror - the kneeling figure holding cupid aloft, mounted throughout with foliate gilt-bronze mounts, the mount below the dial engraved with the coat of arms of a Vicomte with clasped hands and three flowers below a coronet. D. Cast and chased gilt bronze with white enamel cartouches, blue radial Roman numerals and outer Arabic five minute numerals, inner white enamel signature plate. Pierced and chased ?Louis XV? gilt brass hands and blued steel center seconds hand. M. 14 x 14 cm, gilt brass, with five pillars (four vase-shaped), weight-driven going train with brass-cased weight, pin-wheel escapement, striking train with spring barrel, numbered outside countwheel striking on a bell mounted above the movement, steel rod pendulum with cast gilt bronze flower bob. Dial and movement signed Gaultier a Paris. Case stamped Marchand. Dim. 244 cm. High; 55 cm. Wide; 35 cm. Deep.


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Grading System
Grade:
Case: 3

Good
Movement: 3*

Good

Overhaul recommended, at buyer's expense
Dial: 3-01

Good

HANDS Original

Notes

Nicolas-Jean Marchand A Parisian cabinet maker born circa 1697. He became a Master before 1738 and settled in the rue Saint-Nicolas, where had made fine furniture with met with great success. In 1756 he had a dispute with the metal founders' corporation due to his having secretly employed a bronze worker named Bonnière. Marchand was by then almost sixty and nearing retirement. He had worked for the Marquis de Paulmy, Gouverneur de l'Arsenal. A beautiful marquetry commode, richly ornamented with rocaille bronze mounts, with claw feet, is in the Musée Carnavalet. The Pin-Wheel Escapement This escapement was particularly popular in France and was invented by Louis Amant in 1741. The teeth of the escape wheel are replaced by pins standing vertically from the plane of the wheel, a swinging pair of levers attached to the pendulum allows the pins to ?escape? one by one, this also impulses the pendulum. The pin-wheel escapement is quite accurate and only needs a small pendulum arc.